At the HSE conference 2024, LSI and DownRight will introduce Maia, a new digital training assistant that could change the way HSE managers work in the future.
With the support of Lifting & Safety International (LSI), Maia will offer a tailored sparring tool. She combines modern digital usability with years of expertise. This can save HSE managers many hours of (boring) work each week.
«We have to adapt to a future that is sure to consist of a lot more than paper books.»
-Kristin Elmholdt Kjelsrud, Lifting & Safety International
Maia: A new tool in HSE planning
Maia, which stands for Multilingual AI Assistant , is being developed to support both HSE managers and employees in an industry where safety and correct execution are central. With the help of Maia, DownRight AS and LSI can offer a unique tool that makes it significantly easier to navigate complicated security procedures and regulations. With access to the country’s most comprehensive learning material from LSI , Maia will be able to answer questions directly and precisely. Maia is not designed to be a competitor to the very comprehensive Lifting Guide of the SfSBA , which goes through the process of lifting operations step by step. Maia can rather be used in the same way as a colleague to discuss details and local conditions.
The pilot project will be launched for a limited period at the HSE conference 6-7 November
To test Maía in practice, we will present an online prototype at the HSE conference 2024. This is the year’s most important gathering point for HSE managers. This will be an opportunity for potential users to get to know Maia, ask questions and give feedback that can contribute to her further development.
She will be available to anyone curious via downright.no, but will be deactivated after the conference is over to carry out further development. She is only made available for a short period to gather experience and feedback.
Maia is your personal assistant (and she has no ambitions to steal your job)
Fortunately, an HSE manager need not be afraid that artificial intelligence will take over their job in the near future. It cannot go into protective mode and should not be put to work without supervision. She is a powerful tool in the same way that a carpenter prefers electric hand tools to manual ones.
It is an important point that AI will save HSE managers hours of searching for documents, looking up legislation and writing blocks with a blank screen. Maia can also save the employer unnecessary overtime hours. This is largely about saving time.
How does Maia work?
Maia learns from the books as you do yourself. If someone asks you to explain what lifting gear is, you might say that it’s everything between the hook and the load. Maia will most likely provide you with a detailed list covering the most common types and explaining them briefly. You can also ask her to elaborate on them and ask, for example, what the security factors are.
Maia learns from the books in the same way as we humans do. She herself is able to see things in context. However, she can make mistakes, so a person must always quality control and adapt the information she provides, before this is translated into a relevant work task.
Maia’s strength is that she can, for example, help you write an SJA for a critical operation. Maia should then be able to function fully from your mobile phone out on the construction site, so that you can solve challenges faster and wherever you are.
Writing a detailed SJA from scratch can quickly take an hour, but imagine if you could do this in the time the work team spends having a cup of coffee? If there are 8 people + HSE manager involved in this operation, then one unproductive hour will correspond to a full day for one person. In this way, Maia can help increase the bottom line profitability of the projects.
Creating a chatbot in itself is not more demanding that many teenagers can do it. Giving her the years of expertise we get from the LSI collaboration is something that hardly anyone in Norway can compete with.
Why do we need Maia?
Safety training is facing major changes, with digital solutions becoming increasingly important to meet the expectations of a new generation of workers. Kristin Elmholdt Kjelsrud from LSI says it well in an e-mail: «We have to adapt to a future that is guaranteed to consist of a great deal other than paper books.» Maia responds to this need by making security information more accessible, user-friendly and always up-to-date.
Maia can support training programs and help HSE managers and employees understand complex topics in a simple way.
the information will always be adapted to the level and needs of the users, based on how they ask the questions. Good input = good output. This means that smart questions most often generate smart answers. If something is unclear, you can ask follow-up questions or ask Maia to elaborate in the same way as a colleague does.
For a student who struggles to understand a topic, Maia can also simplify, shorten and summarize content quickly and precisely. This will be an additional resource for those who use the books. This can be compared to having your own private instructor who is available around the clock.
She will therefore hardly replace the paper books in the first place, but rather supplement them. Where the path leads from here we just have to see and assess as we tread it.
Privacy and copyright in focus
Privacy and copyright are central to the development of Maia. All content used, such as textbooks and safety manuals from LSI, is processed so that Maia never quotes directly from the sources. Instead, she provides summaries and explanations that are in accordance with the Copyright Act. Anders Kanten in DownRight describes this as follows: «She will be trained not to quote passages directly from the book, but practice it in her knowledge database in the same way as the students do.»
This ensures that copyright is respected, and users can be confident that their privacy is safeguarded as no information is stored. Maia will then only supplement the information and will not be able to replace the paper books as of today.
What does our tester say about Maia?
For HSE managers who play an important role in ensuring safe working conditions, Maia can become an evolving resource. With the help of Maia, we can eventually offer a tool that provides immediate answers to questions. This can be about HSE regulations, risk analyzes and necessary safety procedures.
Maia can also help with tasks such as designing safe job analyzes (SJA). She can also make risk assessments and answer specific questions about statutory requirements for safety equipment. This gives HSE managers access to up-to-date information quickly, and saves time by avoiding searching through extensive documents.
As we have rescue equipment and have held an exercise on the K2D project Fornebubanen , we were just as happy to let HSE engineer Hamsund test out Maia.
Our tester at Implenia had this to say about his first meeting with Maia:
«Hey,
Now I have tested! I am attaching a screenshot of the conversation below here. Could sit for hours and talk to her, so much fun and good answers you get! Worked really well and she made me think about several things. Like having the perfect sparring partner.
I have not checked carefully whether there is something that does not agree with what she says, or whether she first says no and then something completely different, for example. Have only checked that she answers the questions, and thought about the quality of each answer. I think this was very well done and it seemed to me that she had good control over what was previously said.
In summary:
- Easy to create a user
- Good and understandable language
- Answers come quickly
- No sluggishness in the system otherwise
- The answers are good and helpful
In any case, I can’t think of anything that could be improved.»
With kind regards
Sunniva Hamsund
HSE engineer
Implenia Norway AS
This conversation made Hamsund «think about several things», which naturally benefits the company and the employees.
This was a particularly nice feedback. We must specify that this was before she had received the learning material from LSI into her memory. She still has nowhere near everything saved, but enough to be convincing.
We have tried several solutions and the answer above is via the ChatGPT model. This turned out to be imprecise on some points, so at the time of writing we are using a different and much more closed model with which we are so far extremely satisfied. Maia will only get better over time.
Maia can be duplicated and adapted to the individual company
LSI and DownRight see Maia as a resource that can eventually be adapted to companies’ specific needs. For large national contractors, Maia can quickly navigate between countless internal guidelines and procedures. Creating a chatbot in itself is not more demanding that many teenagers can do it. Giving her the years of expertise we get from the LSI collaboration is something that hardly anyone in Norway can compete with.
This can save a lot of time and ensure that HSE standards are complied with across projects. Such adaptation may, for example, mean that Maia offers a tailored risk analysis. This will be in line with the company’s specific HSE requirements. Many contractors have stricter internal guidelines as the legislation only provides minimum requirements.
Technology can be absolutely wonderful, but only if it is used correctly.
Maia will not retrieve information from search engines such as Google (or other open and dynamic sources). She will rely exclusively on hand-picked and quality-assured information that has been manually entered into her memory. The content is updated and quality assured regularly.
Together about knowledge and safety
LSI and DownRight have a common vision of making knowledge more accessible to the entire industry. With Maia on the team, the goal is to establish a new industry standard for effective digital security training. Kranteknisk Forening has also given permission to use the KTF standard as learning in the model. This is the very industry standard for safe lifting.
Maia has the potential to not only streamline and improve current HSE practices, but also to raise the training standard within the entire industry. She can also assist instructors in designing learning materials, or provide one-to-one training to students. Over several years, LSI has become more and more digital with regard to e-learning and courses. A pilot project on an «omniscient» digital assistant comes as a natural further development.
Meet Maia at the HSE conference 2024
DownRight AS will present Maia at the HSE conference 2024 – Norway’s largest forum for HSE managers. This is a unique opportunity to get to know the HSE assistant of the future. She will be digitally available as a test for everyone via downright.no during these two days. After this, she will be taken offline for further training.
Visit our stand to see how Maia can contribute to safety and efficiency in your company. With Maia on the team, we can together create a safer workplace for everyone.
