Cost Savings / RoI Calculator for E-PTW

Customers often ask us, “What’s my RoI in a digitized Permit-to-Work system?”. Just exactly, how much time and money can be saved by switching to a digitized, electronic permit-to-work system (E-PTW). If you are following a paper-based or a standalone XLS or Word Document-based PTW System, then this article may be of help to you.

At Safetymint, we put this to test with our own E-PTW module, and we painted a use-case scenario to compare the time taken. This helped us arrive at the number of man-hours spent – starting from filling and requesting a Hot Work Permit form to approvals and issuance. This gave us a Time Value of man-hours impacted and saved.

We then put a base rate of $10 per man-hour for a contract worker who has been issued a Permit. To arrive at a Money Value of cost savings, we set the number of permits issued per day to 10. You can change the figures in the calculator below to suit your nature of business operations.

We put the math together and you would be surprised with the results. Try the calculator below to check how much you can save every year just by switching to a digital Permit to Work system.

Enter the values against each parameter below to calculate total cost savings. You can assume your local currency here.

A. Enter Total Number of Permits issued per Day :
B. Enter Cost per Man-hour (in your currency) :

Time taken from Request to Approval for 1 Permit:

C. With paper-based or existing PTW :
D. Using an E-PTW :
Total Cost Savings per Year (in your currency):	00

*For more appropriate numbers, you can measure the actual hours spent for one permit in both the paper-based format as well as the digital format, and enter the values above. Try out Safetymint’s E-PTW module with a 14-day Free Trial.

The formula used to arrive at the cost savings is simple. Calculate the difference in hours saved between the paper-based and electronic formats. Multiply this with the number of permits per day and cost per hour. Then multiply this with 240 (20 days in a month * 12 months in a year).

With the Cost Savings above, compare this with the price you pay for your E-PTW system, and you will be able to calculate your RoI. With Safetymint’s micro-plan, your returns on our E-PTW system is 20x your investment.

The productive hours lost in a conventional Permit system – be it paper-based or XLS/Doc based system – are due to the following factors …

Waiting in the queue – for obtaining forms, approvals
Manual filling of the forms in duplicate or triplicate
Transit time to work location for checklists
Scanning of Permits – at different stages and emailing them
Communication delays to multiple stakeholders at different stages of the Permit
Preparing a Permit Register
Searching for Permits issued in the past

At a base minimum each Permit takes at least 2 hours from request to approvals and actual work getting started, and a maximum of at least 1 day (at organizations where there are multiple levels of approvals required).

Comparing these to a digitized permit system helps us address these pain-points and save hours of productive time, and in turn also save money. By switching to an E-PTW system like Safetymint, you gain by the following advantages …

Request Permits on-the-go – from a desktop or mobile
Instant communication – Alerts and Notifications – both via Email and In-App Mobile
Customizable Permit to Work Checklists
Print to PDF with QR Codes
Automated workflows for instant review and approvals
Automated archival of permits
Search years of data in minutes (even seconds)

Hope you found this Cost Savings Calculator useful. You can adopt the same calculator for also measuring your Incident Reporting and Actions Tracker, as well as your periodic Audits and Inspections. Do share with us your thoughts to info@safetymint.com.

If you would like to talk to us regarding digitizing your permit-to-work system and safety management processes OR are looking to revamp your existing EHS system, you can reach out to us or our authorized regional partners.

View our following calculators:
TRIR Calculator
DART Rate Calculator

Browse our collection of free permit to work templates and Audit and Inspection Checklists available on the Safetymint app.

Also read: Our article on the meaning of PTW