About Farhana Ahmad

Farhana Ahmad is a Content Marketing Manager at Intelex Technologies. With over 15 years of experience in key industries, she is a customer-focused professional specializing in delivering best-in-class Marketing and Content strategies and programs. Her degree in Environmental Science complements her marketing know-how, allowing her to incorporate her academic knowledge to the real-world applicability of the EHSQ space in general and Intelex in particular.

The Texas Blackout is a Powerful Reminder that Systems Can Be Fragile

Texas Blackout Energy

To describe the blackout that occurred in Texas recently as tragic would be an understatement. It had serious consequences on the well-being of individuals, took a heavy toll on the state’s energy infrastructure and will end up costing taxpayer’s billions to repair. However, what is truly heartbreaking is that the suffering continues for many.

To date, the weather conditions that caused the blackout have resulted in:


According to the Independent, the estimated cost of damages is close to the $50 billion mark. While it appears that the situation couldn’t get worse, ERCOT – the Electric Reliability Council of Texas – now says the Texas … Read more...

CapEx versus OpEx: What’s the Best Way to Fund Your Software Purchase?

Software Purchase CapEx vs. OpEx

The sheer number of EHSQ software solutions in the market can make the software buying journey very complex. In addition, getting buy-in from internal stakeholders can be equally as challenging. With the introduction of cloud-based or software as a service (SaaS) options, where the licensing component is considered an operational expense, comes an additional consideration: whether to view the expense as a capital expenditure (CapEx) or an operating expenditure (OpEx).

Purchasing EHSQ software–and this is true of most large procurement projects– requires a lot of research and preliminary work to ensure that you are making the best long-term decision. Not only can the process be long and arduous, there are also many factors to consider and many scenarios to examine. In fact, when it comes to deciding which software solutions to select, technology and technological capability are merely one aspect of the final decision. As such, one of the most important … Read more...

High Quality of Healthcare = A Robust Quality Framework + a Strong Maturity Model

Cost of Quality in Healthcare

“Health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time,” was aptly stated by American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator C. Everett Koop. While that statement is simple, the healthcare industry is farthest from that.

Like many industries, healthcare has some challenges that are endemic to that industry. Issues such as poor communication amongst teams, procedural workarounds and bias or preferential treatment to senior physicians can often have serious repercussions from misdiagnosed treatment to fatalities.

But all is not lost. In fact, some agencies and organizations have been able overcome challenges through frameworks that focus on the culture of quality.

Let’s take a further look.


The Center for Disease Control’s Key Recommendations to Protect Both the Safety and Quality of Patient Care


According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), there are ten … Read more...

Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty: Our Upcoming Expert Connect Session on October 28th

Expert Connecting Quality in a Time of Uncertainty

According to best-selling author Linda Lambert: “One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever.”

Designed to provide attendees with an exciting experience based on the exchange of ideas, experiences and industry knowledge, our Expert Connect series is a true testament to our continued focus on trying to provide our customers, prospects and community with a breadth of experiences.


Introducing Our Third Session: Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty


We’re excited to announce our third session, Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty, which will be held on Wednesday, October 28th!

This session is designed to explore how COVID-19 has changed your manufacturing operations and strategies for ensuring quality does not falter. Attendees will learn:

  1. The unique challenges experienced this year.
  2. How to adjust quality programs to ensure consistency.
  3. Best practices for using your quality data for decision-making.

While the facilitators will start off by providing their … Read more...

Safety First: Boosting Your Organization’s Culture of Safety by Steering Clear of Seven Dangerous Mistakes

Safety Management Program

As they say, “invest in tomorrow by practicing safety today.” While that may seem to be a very commonsensical statement, common sense is not always common.

With safety being a key component to most post-pandemic business continuity plans, there has been a re-focus on the culture of safety. Most organizations that have a safety-first mantra have put a strong focus on creating effective safety observation programs. According to Chuck Pettinger, Process Change Leader for Predictive Solutions Corp, these programs “bolster employee engagement and provide a great repository for leading indicator analysis.”

While the focus of any safety program is to incorporate best practices and learnings to ensure that your program is founded on foolproof methods, there is also a lot we can learn from their failures. Put another way, we can identify additional opportunities to further test and optimize.


How Multi-Faceted Safety Programs Can Effectively Drive a Strong Safety Culture
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Breathing a Sigh of Relief: The Answers to the CDC’s Top Ten FAQs on Respirator Use

If “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” then the importance of wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during this post-pandemic time is beyond critical. Within this category of equipment, respirators are high on the list. However, given that it is quite an advanced piece of equipment (compared to some of its counterparts), users can often have questions in terms of how to best use them.

This brings us to the objective of this blog: to provide you key best practices and the answers to the to the CDC’s top 10 FAQs on respirator use.


What Are Respirators and Why Are They Important?


Let’s take a step back and start from the definition of what a respirator is. Basically, a respirator is a device worn over the face or head which covers the nose and mouth areas. By design, they are also used to reduce the wearer’s risk … Read more...

Directly from the Source: How to Best Transform EHS Today’s Return to Work Survey Results into Action Plans

There’s something to be said about hearing something directly from the source. No presumptions, no exaggeration—just pure, unadulterated facts. It’s for that very reason that surveys and focus groups play such a critical role in business in general and in EHS in particular. While this applies to most initiatives, this is especially true for return to work (RTW) programs, as they were developed quickly in response to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19.

For these programs, capturing employee feedback, particularly in the early stages post implementation, is critical. This is not only to improve processes where areas of improvement have been identified but also to course-correct where action plans are not working. Essentially, creating closed-loop processes will differentiate evolving RTW ones from their static counterparts.

To explore this further, we will look at the latest survey-focused report published by EHS today, Safety Professionals Prepare for the Post-Pandemic Workplace.


EHS Today’s Safety
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