I used to work as a Health, Safety and Environment Data Analyst in the oil industry in North Dakota. I was constantly digging through safety and injury data. One day, my co-worker Alex and I were investigating a case where a truck hit some power lines. Fortunately no one was hurt. A month later, another truck pulled down some power lines. Two months past, another electrical line strike. Alex and I continued to ask the same question over and over; Why is no one solving this problem?
I codesigned a physical product that helped truck drivers stop their vehicle before striking a low hanging power line. Other uses for the device included oil site entrances, and land markers.
We called it the O.H.A.S. (overhead hazard awareness system).
North Dakota oil fields are typically remote areas far from city lights or the public. Most are reached by dirt roads. North Dakota weather can also be extreme resulting in very low visibility for anyone driving on them. Unfortunately for truck drivers, they have to make trips down these roads frequently.
Power lines run across some of these dirt roads. Because of the oil boom happening, new roads were rapidly being paved with no attention to marking any traffic hazards. This resulted in high amounts of truck drivers striking low hanging powerlines. Each line strike cost the truck driving company around$50,000 to fix. It was also extremely dangerous.
- Is there any type of system that already solved this problem?
- What type of interest will people have if they know this product exists?
- How hard will it be to scale a physical product we are building by hand?
- Will a physical design withstand the extreme North Dakota winds and winter?
- How do we test our ideas?
We started off by doing some domain research. To put it simply, no one had a real solution yet. Some oil companies were hanging some hacky flagging up with wooden posts that would rip apart in the extreme winds. Other than that, the solutions were non-existent. We both agreed to start sketching out ideas of possible solutions we could feasibly create.
We visited every large and medium industrial company website in the USA. We surveyed everyone in our immediate work group as well as other companies. We drove miles and miles of North Dakota oil fields looking for any possible solutions people had come up with. It became pretty obvious that we were going to be the first ones to develop a specific product to address one very specific problem.
After throwing around ideas and third grade level drawings, we brainstormed a list of issues we needed to design around. Here’s a list of just some of them:
- Visibility; day vs night.
- North Dakota Winds; because gusts can be as much as 140 m.p.h.
- Ice; During winter the oil field grounds can become a ridiculously thick layer of ice
- Portability; our product would need to be moved from one location to another by people, frequently
- Setup; the simplicity of the setup and teardown was critical
To give you an idea of what the environment might look like at the worst times of the year, see below.
IWe probably spent 30 hours a week driving to different hardware stores researching different types of materials, contraptions, nuts & bolts, and tools. We were about to hack together a 'thing' from hardware designed for plumbing, flooring, and even parachuting. We also spent a considerable amount of time online looking for other solutions. It took us about 2 months of material research before we started our first build.
Once we had our prototype standing, we took a step back and just stared at it for about five minutes. There was a lot of head tilting, walking around it, jumping on it, and pulling on it. Without saying anything to each other, we were both super excited, but also acknowledging all of it’s flaws.
We made a list of what needed to be improved. Version two was put together within a week. We went from taking 3 weeks for assembly to just a week. We knew we were on the right track. The third iteration took one weekend.
We found the perfect property in a rural area where we able to truly test out our design. “Version three vs the environment”. We were confident enough to set it up and leave it stranded there for 30 days without returning. When we did return, to our amazement it was still standing.
We made some changes to it and left it out for another 60 days. We returned again to a very satisfying sight. It was still standing as if we had just set it up the day before. Success.
Below is a video of how the o.h.a.s looked as you pull up to it. Notice the flickering ribbons across the top of it, that was an accidental design causes by connectors we used to hang the ribbon. It actually accomplished an even more visible system!
Our third iteration became 'the product' we built four systems and had them deployed in different around North Dakota. Eventually, we had a meeting with a safety distribution company that wanted to purchase the designs and idea from us. We accepted the offer. Now, when you drive around oil field dirt roads in North Dakota, you will see copies of our design, which truly is a form a flattery.
