I work for a charity who wanted something similar. We laid down what we wanted and then went out to tender to find an IT company who could design and deliver. W We found one and in a few months we will have an all singing all dancing integrated system which can produce reports in respect of fields chosen (includes everything Nic78 has mentioned above + more besides). It has cost a few thousand but once the teething troubles are over it will be a fantastic aid to our H&S Management system (Note the use of the word "aid" Rich

Hi The company I work for has had a go at this in the past and the experience was not a happy one. It felt as if the software company wanted us to write the package for them. After about 18 months we gave up and cancelled the contract. I was not directly involved but it seems to me that there should be an off the shelf vanilla package that would do the job to get you started then once you're running you can have some minor tweaks added to suit your particular situation. I don't see that the requirements of different businesses should be fundamentally all that different. It seems that getting reports out is still a challenge with the simpler package we're using now. My simplistic view is that putting the data in should be quick and easy, it isn't (get a 70 year old lady to try it out first); then getting lots of different reports out should not require lots of time, effort and what's worse the expense of having the software supplier charge you for the code that they then sell to another buyer. I've often thought there's a niche here for someone with some Excel skills to develop a package. Maybe something to do when I retire... Good luck with your hunt. Graham

I have looked into this in the past. Sadly off the shelf packages invariably don't do all you want and in house developed will take up lots of time. Also when you do it in house to the spec everyone agrees on, once complete you realise that is not what you wanted. I would still prefer inhouse, that way I can make it do what I want. I was once given a demonstration of an off the shelf package, where they proudly said you can record RIDDOR accidents and send of the output to HSE. Then there was a blank expression when I asked about Dangerous occurrences and Diseases. I would probably go with some sort of access type database -but I can use that. You Really Really need to decide what you want to get from it and what you are willing to record (in detail), before looking. Chris

This has been discussed many times in the past so may be worth a forum search. There are many different systems out there and a range of costs. Last year we went on the search and discovered there was no way we could afford perfect and exactly what I would want (probably wasn't out there) but there was a good cost effective alternative. We are still implementing it and most issues are our doing - not the system. To make an effective choice you need to be really sure of what you want - must and nice to haves - how you want to manage the system - our issue was that I wanted everyone to be able to write risk assessments and this would in general be cost prohibitive for licence fees - what you want the system to produce and manage. We are happy with the system that we procured - there are frustrations but anyone can write risk assessments, there are excellent reporting tools or work rounds and the support has been excellent from the company. It is Health+safety from Effective. PM me if you want more information.

Hi all, Thanks for your comments on this. We have a really good in house development team so it could be that we could go down that route but I'm meeting with our Operations Director to discuss and review this to get his opinion before we go any further. Nic :)