Two and a half years ago, Nick Cantoni, the WHS manager for Catholic Education Northern Territory (CENT) partnered with 1 Place to enhance the reporting capabilities within CENT. What started as a 1Place implementation for CENT early learning centres has grown into a system-wide solution covering ELCs, out-of-school hours care programs, preschools, and Primary and Secondary school operations. 1Place collaborated with Nick to understand CENT requirements and to develop an information system solution that aligned with their Work Health & Safety Management System.

The adoption of 1Place across CENT has resulted in regular and reliable reporting onto the platform, identification of behavioral and system-wide patterns and comparable metrics to improve performance, enabling Nick to provide support, allocate resources based on real-time data, and confidently reports safety performance across 17 schools.We sat down with Nick to understand how 1Place transformed their approach to safety and compliance.

How did Catholic Education NT first start with 1Place?

We’ve been with 1Place for about 2.5 years since joining with CENT. It was brought in primarily for the ELCs, and then we ramped it up to include our OSHCs, preschools, and now it’s across our full system. We have 17 schools using it. We’ve probably upscaled above and beyond what it was designed for, and we’ve been really supported by the team at 1Place in doing that.

What was safety reporting like before 1Place?

One of the big things about having paper forms was they weren’t all making it to the office. Before, I couldn’t tell anyone in the executive with certainty how many incidents there were in the last 12 months. We had poor visibility into what was actually happening across our sites.

What’s changed since implementing 1Place?

Now I can go straight away and say, with confidence, this is where we’re having issues. We had X amount of incidents last year. We’re improving, we’re not improving. We’re able to identify triggers in our operations where we can now say, we need to divert some of our focus to help alleviate those issues schools are facing, or what strategies we need to implement.

You mentioned identifying patterns. Can you give an example?

Being able to look at an incident report and go, I remember seeing that name a few weeks ago. Then you look and it’s a different teacher, maybe a different student involved in the same type of incident. What’s the common factor here? Is it the student’s behaviour, or is it potentially the staff behaviour where maybe they’re not fully across a behavioural management plan for that student? Before, we weren’t really looking at the behavioural aspects potentially driving some of the incidents with our students. Now we can see those patterns and provide better supports to both the student and staff.

How has your team responded to the platform?

One of the really good things is that we’ve moved away from doing stuff in the portal to being in the app. Everything’s in the app now, so everything marries up. We operate off QR codes for incident reporting so staff can access it without having to be on a computer. They just scan a QR code, log in, and they’re good to go. It’s really helpful to be able to present off my computer in training sessions and say, this is exactly how it looks on your phone or device.

Have you seen changes in reporting culture?

From a culture point of view, there was probably under-reporting initially. We’ve actually only increased about 8% from last year to this year in total incidents. Potentially there was a culture where workers didn’t feel comfortable to report. I’ve actually had a paper cut incident report with photos. That was about a month after we started the rollout and we were encouraging people ‘that it is ok’ to report. To me, it’s a good talking point because the worker felt comfortable and reported they had an incident. To me, that shows the cultural shift happening.

What impact are you seeing on actual safety outcomes?

Even with an 8% increase in reporting, we’ve seen a decrease in the number of first aid visits, doctor visits, and ED visits. We’re getting more minor incident reports and we’re at a stage where we’re actually getting a lot of “no injury” reports. The severity is lessening. People say, “Do I need to report it?” And I say yes, because that comfort with reporting is exactly what we want. It’s about changing the culture within the organisation.

What’s been most valuable about having this data?

The ability to move from reactive to proactive risk and incident management. I can support leadership and school teams in decision-making with real data. We can understand root causes instead of just counting incidents. We can see where our focus needs to go, where staff might need additional training, resources, and where we’re actually improving. That visibility changes everything.

Catholic Education NT’s journey shows what’s possible when safety data moves from paper based reporting limitations to digital clarity. From classroom to boardroom, everyone now has the visibility they need to protect students, support staff, and make informed decisions. That’s multi-level protection in action.

Interested in learning how 1Place can transform safety and compliance in your organisation? Let us show you how, book a demo with the team.