Mr. Doug Mayer reports

BLACKLINE SAFETY REPORTS 50% GROWTH IN FIRE-HAZMAT BUSINESS

As the global workplace safety market continues to grow -- estimated to reach $42.96-billion by 2032 with an annual growth rate of 11.8 per cent according to Polaris Market Research -- Blackline Safety Corp. has seen a 50-per-cent increase in its fire/hazmat personal and area gas monitor business in the past year alone.

This translates to over $2-million in total contract value of Blackline's real-time, cloud-connected safety devices and services, used by hundreds of fire and hazmat, oil and gas, petrochemical, food production, biotech, transportation, utilities, and water and waste water organizations across North America, Europe, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

Crediting the growth to the company's industry-first product capabilities, Doug Mayer, Blackline fire/hazmat business development specialist, explained: "Blackline's No. 1 priority is helping organizations keep their employees and communities safe and recognizing that every second counts in an emergency. We have reimagined safety solutions for various scenarios -- from chemical spills and fires to floods, gas leaks, explosions and any other high-risk situation -- by enabling organizations to respond with unprecedented speed, accuracy and as-it-happens visibility."

Blackline's award-winning G7 personal gas detectors and G7 Exo area gas monitors -- built for extremes and the toughest conditions, with GPS-enabled (Global Positioning System) location tracking -- provide layers of protection to ensure a critical lifeline during an emergency. Supported by Blackline Live, the company's powerful, cloud-connected monitoring and analytics platform, the technology enables organizations to view in real time all their workers' locations and gas readings in the field and configure their devices from any Internet-connected smart phone, tablet or computer, no matter how remote the location.

"Imagine being able to position an incident command centre and direct responders from anywhere in mere minutes -- that's the game-changing capability of the Blackline Live monitoring platform," Mr. Mayer said. "With quick connectivity and real-time data continuously streaming to the command centre, decision makers can immediately understand the situation and risks, and confidently and quickly deploy potentially life-saving responses, including co-ordinating and communicating with stakeholders like local, state or federal agencies."

Key features of Blackline's G7 solutions include:

• Real-time connected safety for lone workers/workers in emergency situations: Incident commanders can always see the location of incident responders and monitor team members -- as well as variables such as gas exposures, person down, no motion and SOS latch -- from any location.
• On-the-go flexibility: Swappable gas sensor cartridges enable users to select single-gas diffusion, multigas diffusion or multigas pump cartridges for any device. Each device can be configured while travelling to the scene by swapping out the precalibrated sensor cartridge rather than the entire device.
• Device connection to Vlahi's Web-based and smart-phone-based Ceres software: Using Vlahi's proprietary, government-endorsed plume dispersion modelling platform, incident leaders can see the size, direction, speed and spread of released gases to minimize exposure and respond most effectively to protect communities.
• Community alerts: In the event of incidents like major fires or chemical spills, the devices' area monitoring capabilities inform first responders when evacuation or shelter-in-place orders might be needed and help reassure communities they are safe.
• Automated analytics: All data collected by Blackline devices can be imported into central control room -- or third party -- software platforms to analyze incident responses and identify areas for improvement.

"Subjective postmortems are no longer enough to ensure effective fire and hazmat responses," Mr. Mayer said. "Blackline Safety's advanced technology allows organizations to actually see what's happening in the field in real time so they can effectively collaborate with down-range responders in real time and also give them the ability to predict what might happen in the future."

According to the fire department lieutenant of a major U.S. city, the instantaneous, big-picture view provided by Blackline's safety devices is invaluable. When responding to a dangerous fuel spill last year, for example, the G7 personal gas detectors worn on the scene by the department's firefighters "proved their worth to us right then and there," the fire department lieutenant said.

"With the real-time data, we could follow how the incident was progressing ... and being able to hear the radio transmissions and see the location of the responders on the map, we were able to quickly direct and adjust the response remotely," he said.

About Blackline Safety Corp.

Blackline Safety is a technology leader driving innovation in the industrial work force through IoT (Internet of Things). With connected safety devices and predictive analytics, Blackline enables companies to drive toward zero safety incidents and improved operational performance. Blackline provides wearable devices, personal and area gas monitoring, cloud-connected software, and data analytics to meet demanding safety challenges and enhance overall productivity for organizations with coverage in more than 100 countries. Armed with cellular and satellite connectivity, Blackline provides a lifeline to tens of thousands of people, having reported over 200 billion data points and initiated over seven million emergency alerts.