It's safe to say that Graham Neate possesses extensive hands-on experience in safety. Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, Graham is a dedicated health and safety practitioner with over 25 years of experience in the agricultural industry.
Driven by a passion for agtech solutions, Graham stumbled upon Safe Ag Systems while tackling health and safety concerns for a livestock company.
Impressed by the digital safety management system, Graham saw Safe Ag Systems as an effective way to maintain safety on the farm. It was obvious to him - a digital farm safety app was a great idea.
History of a Safety Practitioner
Graham is a Health and Safety practitioner (Dip OSH) based in Christchurch, New Zealand. With over 25 years of ‘hands-on’ experience in the farm safety space, Graham started as a wool classer and then became a high country musterer. After that, Graham decided to enter the meat industry - managing stockyards, rural properties, and rendering departments.
Back in those days, health and safety responsibilities weren’t dictated or easily documented like they are today. When New Zealand introduced health and safety legislation, Graham led the charge, assisting in the creation of procedures for the areas he oversaw.
Until recently, Graham served as the Health and Safety Manager for a trucking company in Mid Canterbury. He was responsible for safety in livestock transport, freight, bulk transport, fertilizer spreading, agrichemical spraying, logging, and terminal shipping container handling. Wanting to focus his attention further towards farm safety, Graham has since made the transition to a health and safety practitioner.
Discovering Safe Ag Systems
Graham’s first introduction to Safe Ag Systems was through one of his clients. They were a large beef and cattle operation with multiple properties. They were in search of an intuitive and user-friendly digital solution for overseeing safety on all their farms. Concerned with the amount of paperwork that was weighing their team down, Graham’s clients started investigating agtech solutions that would make their safety documentation and workload easier to manage.
Without a current digital system that integrated into their daily operations, the solution needed to manage key safety areas, including critical risks and training records. Their Head Office needed to oversee and track each farm's safety performance and download relevant reports.
When Graham saw how thrilled his clients were after finding Safe Ag Systems, he recalls their excitement at finally finding a digital system to assist their farm safety program. Graham hasn’t looked back since.
“I always like to see what technology is out there and a farm safety app makes sense. We use a phone as a diary, a camera, a notebook, a calculator so why not as a farm safety management tool? It’s a no-brainer.”
Safe Ag Systems was the digital solution his clients were searching for. It was just a bonus that some features helped to streamline daily operations too. Safe Ag Systems removed the need for paperwork and collated everything into one digital system for them.
Safe Ag Systems had the tools for workers on the ground and supervisors in the office. Graham notes, that before a digital solution like Safe Ag Systems, his clients were using paper-based systems to manage their daily operations, which weren’t easily accessible to their farm workers.
Impact of a Digital Safety System
Graham reports Task Manager made farm operations easier. From scheduling machinery maintenance to vehicle registration, it brought all the company's tasks into one place. Bonus? Safe Ag Systems assisted them in tracking any corrective actions for near miss or incidents.
Providing clarity to the team, Graham states that Task Manager increased productivity and efficiency when assigning a task with a deadline to workers. A digital safety system that can clarify roles and responsibilities resulting in increased productivity - who wouldn’t want that?
Task Manager lets you add tasks whenever and wherever you are - even outside areas of connectivity. By using Task Manager workers can manage their workload and stay focused on what’s important.
Graham also found Safe Ag Systems to have comprehensive Inventory Management. The chemical inventory feature allows users to track their usage, input withholding periods and application notes. Making record-keeping so much easier as it’s done in real-time.
Inventory Management provides better visibility over all your assets from machinery, equipment, tools and chemicals. From tracking machinery hours, equipment maintenance and linking Safety Data Sheets to your chemicals.
A major win for Head Office? With Safe Ag Systems' reporting functionality, they can finally monitor all areas of their farming business with a digital safety system. They can run reports on key safety areas, worker training records and identify critical risks. Their team can even download reports. The functionality even lets them save reports to their Safe Ag Systems dashboard.
And the benefits don’t stop there. Safe Ag Systems has a wide variety of features to keep things running smoothly like Safety Checklists and Worker Records. To experience our full range of features, start a Free 7-Day Trial and explore what Safe Ag Systems can do for you.
Graham discovered Safe Ag Systems ticked all the right boxes when it came to farm safety management. Powering New Zealand’s farmers with a digital safety solution in their pocket.
If you want to connect with Graham you can find him on LinkedIn or follow his farm safety pages on Facebook and Twitter under Safe n Boots.
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