City of Fargo Streamlines Incident Reporting, Saves Money with Vector’s Safety Management Tool

With so many departments within the City of Fargo, it was nearly impossible to track incidents and keep related information organized. But when the City of Fargo purchased IndustrySafe, also known as Vector EHS Management, all that changed.

“Before IndustrySafe, departments collected different types of information in case an incident occurred,” said Luke Lindberg, who serves as safety manager for the City of Fargo. “Fire collected what they wanted to collect; public works collected what they wanted to collect, etc.”

Back in 2011, Lindberg knew the City of Fargo needed a way to centralize how it gathered and stored risk management information, so he turned to IndustrySafe. Fast forward to today, Fargo is not only using IndustrySafe for storing safety data, but is also using it to manage incidents, from the initial report to corrective actions, all the way to workers’ compensation.

“IndustrySafe is our claims management software for workers’ comp and insurance. All our claims are in IndustrySafe,” said Lindberg.

It’s not just accidents that Fargo is tracking. The city uses IndustrySafe for hazards, exposure tracking, and even inspections. “We average about 1,000 incidents a year between all the modules,” Lindberg said.

Return on Investment

Before IndustrySafe, the City of Fargo had a major blind spot in regard to employees being off full-time duty for too long. Now, the HR team pulls up IndustrySafe reports in its weekly meetings and can identify and negate any potential abuses of employee leave, saving the city thousands of dollars.

Additionally, centralizing all incident and risk management information enables Lindberg to make data-driven decisions about how he can keep his employees safe.

“IndustrySafe makes it easy to identify recurring problems and trends, and you can track how well you’re solving those problems,” explained Lindberg.

With the cost to an organization per medically consulted injury being around $39,000, and the cost per death at $1.15 million, preventing just one injury provides a massive return on investment to an organization.