How Bruntwood Farms ditched paperwork for effortless farm safety

Company

Bruntwood Farms stands as one of the biggest privately owned orchards in the Bay of Plenty. Mark Mayston and Robbie Mayston, both third-generation kiwifruit farmers, lead the way as industry leaders in the region.

Challenge 

With multiple kiwifruit farms covering extensive areas, Bruntwood Farms is a hive of activity. From pruning and grafting to mowing, mulching, and weed spraying, various tasks keep the farms bustling.

And for Robbie, the director at Bruntwood Farms, health and safety is a top priority.

"With so many people coming and going, and the management of around 20 different orchards, there are often different things happening across various locations. Therefore, risk management is key for us.”

“In the past, we had to deal with everything on paper—different forms, folders upon folders—it was quite a nightmare. We were always on the lookout for a better way of doing things.” 

Hannah Mayston, Compliance Specialist at Bruntwood Farms, identified three key areas that need to be addressed.

Firstly, Bruntwood Farms identified the need for a system that could accurately track contractor visits to their orchards, without “the old style, paper-based and cumbersome sign in/out register that was always getting tatty or got lost.”

Secondly, the safety of their staff during solo orchard assignments was a significant concern for the Bruntwood team, “particularly when they went on their own to carry out orchard work.”

Hannah says, “We were always conscious that if something did happen to them while carrying out that job, we wouldn’t necessarily know for some time.”

Lastly, Bruntwood Farms faced the challenge of integrating a new orchard in Gisborne within the existing Health and Safety system. Unlike other local orchards, this one was in a different area, and they didn’t think our current system was robust enough to handle that.

Solution

For Robbie it was important to find a way to reduce admin that was also easy for everyone to use.

“We were trying to move away from a complete paper-based system where it wasn't working for us because it was too much admin. And when you're dealing with many people, the less admin involved, the more likely it is your staff will use it.”

After exploring various alternatives, Bruntwood Farms discovered that Onside was the ideal solution to address all their identified challenges.

“We looked at several other options that might have provided a solution to all the above issues, but it wasn’t until we came across Onside that it removed all the pain points. Onside also ticked a few more boxes than we had initially expected,” explains Hannah. 

Implementing Onside has transformed Bruntwood Farms' health and safety practices. 

Today, they use Onside to: 

• Know where people are.

• Know when people arrive and leave.

• Know what tasks they're doing when they arrive at an orchard.

• Making sure people on the farms are safe.

Robbie finds the lone worker feature especially useful now.

“The lone worker functionality is really great in terms of giving us confidence that people in remote areas people are safe doing what they're doing because they obviously sign into the orchard, do the job that they're there to do, and then they sign out and we get notifications of when they're coming on and off the orchard.”

With this feature, if someone were to get injured and failed to sign out as scheduled, the system would notify the right people that their departure time has been surpassed. They can then call them to make sure they are okay.

Onside makes it easy to manage the health and safety of people who work on properties that are isolated from the main farm.

Hannah explains, “Our Gisborne operation is incorporated into the same system, so we can rest assured that our staff down there are informed about H&S-related matters – and that we are keeping an eye on their safety, albeit from a distance" 

Impact

The team at Bruntwood Farms says “Onside has provided a very efficient platform for us and most certainly saved us time and money in:

• Hazard management; documenting incidents, reviewing and training

• Documenting when visitors and contractors are on-site

• Providing more/better quality information in a user-friendly format to visitors, contractors, and employees, around the hazards associated with each orchard under our responsibility.”

Robbie also highlights how easy it is to get up and run Onside. He described how the customer support has been fantastic for them.

“They're always on the end of the phone if we have a problem. We've been involved with them in the development phase as well. So, any ideas that we've had around our business or any needs that we've had around our business, Onside have certainly been very open to creating or developing part of the app to cater for us.”

Bruntwood Farms is all about keeping their people safe and reducing paperwork and Onside has helped them achieve this goal. 

Discover how our farm health and safety features.