Wahidat Mawji: Integrating data analytics to improve workplace safety

February 2022 – At first glance, data analytics can seem complicated and intimidating, but Wahidat Mawji explains, analyzing data can help us develop simple solutions to complex problems, so staff make better risk-based decisions to improve our workplace safety.

Wahidat, Health & Safety Analyst, Occupational Safety & Analytics at Cenovus Energy, joined the company in 2010 in a completely unrelated role. She steadily worked toward her current position by completing health and safety and data analytics courses while taking advantage of our job development opportunities. In her present role, Wahidat provides data-driven performance reporting and creates interactive tools which identify correlations and patterns that help mitigate risk, uncover potential solutions and process improvements.

“Generally, as humans we are naturally unstructured in our thought processes and we tend to jump between ideas, concepts and possible distractions,” says Wahidat. “By using some of these customizable and collaborative data analytics tools, the Safety & Operations team has been able to track safety data at Cenovus to provide visibility on the pulse of our operations in a way that empowers teams to learn from incidents and helps them mitigate risk in the future.”

These interactive data tools combine company safety and environmental information in a single source, allowing staff to better track metrics such as recordable incidents and process safety events. Wahidat aims to continue collecting reliable and consistent data and applying deep analytics such as predictive modelling and cognitive intelligence to help improve our safety performance.

“The next steps for these tools include growing the platform to make data and key metrics available for teams to analyze, discuss and create coaching opportunities to further promote a learning culture, as we all do our part in continuing to support and align with Cenovus’s safety values, improving our safety performance.” says Wahidat.

At Cenovus, safety is foundational to everything we do, and with creative staff like Wahidat helping to find innovative solutions, we can further promote a culture of continuous improvement in safety performance and process safety management.

“What excites me most about what I do at Cenovus is seeing how much we’ve grown over the years in our data reporting capabilities,” says Wahidat. “I’m excited to see what the future holds as we continue to identify systemic safety trends and am motivated by the work my team and I do to help advance Cenovus’s top-tier safety journey.”