Question 1

How is Vygard different from older lone-worker apps and basic panic alarms?

Accepted Answer

Older lone-worker apps are little more than a panic button wired to a control-room number. Vygard adds the AI dispatcher copilot (Howie, on Claude Opus 4.8) that drafts the incident briefing in under a second, a proactive welfare-ping engine that catches a worker in trouble before they can reach SOS, rural sector packs tuned to real on-farm hazards, and a tamper-evident audit trail that keeps your HSE and RIDDOR records straight without chasing paperwork. A basic alarm offers none of that — no audit, no AI, no escalation and no proper reporting.

Question 2

Does Vygard need special hardware?

Accepted Answer

No — the standard rollout is BYOD on phones, watches and the web PWA. Native iOS, Android, watchOS and Wear OS apps unlock the richer features such as vital-signs streaming, watch SOS and fall detection. For people working in muck, weather and rough handling, Vygard also supports BLE pendants and toughened handsets like the Cat S62, Sonim XP10 and CrossCall.

Question 3

What is "Howie" and what does it actually do?

Accepted Answer

Howie is the AI watcher built into Vygard, powered by Claude Opus 4.8. It does three jobs: (1) a sub-second SOS briefing — when a worker triggers, Howie writes the situation summary, the next action and the priority call list into the dispatcher's alert window before they've even finished reading it; (2) welfare anomaly detection — Howie reviews vital signs, location, weather fronts and livestock zones every 60 seconds and decides when a proactive check-in is warranted; (3) audit support — structured output to a strict JSON schema means every action Howie takes is logged, reviewable and ready to export for RIDDOR or HSE.

Question 4

How fast can it be deployed?

Accepted Answer

Vygard's standard rollout is live in 10 working days from order. There's no hardware to buy for a BYOD launch, no device-management enrolment and no app-store deployment to wait on — a worker opens the PWA link or installs the native app and they're on the system. The ready-made rural sector packs make this far quicker than building lone-worker workflows from a blank sheet.

Question 5

Is it compliant with UK lone-worker regulations?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Vygard is BS 8484-aligned for provision, follows HSE-aligned workflows per sector pack (including FISA 302 guidance for forestry), and produces RIDDOR-ready auto-PDF exports. It's UK-hosted in AWS eu-west-2. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are in audit (targeted Q3–Q4 2026), with Cyber Essentials Plus in flight.

Question 6

Will it work where there's no mobile signal?

Accepted Answer

Yes — and that's exactly the scenario it's built for. On most farms, in deep woodland and across open hill ground the mobile signal drops out entirely, so Vygard hooks into Iridium satellite-fallback SOS that keeps working when GSM doesn't. A worker out at the far edge of a holding, or in a forestry block with no bars showing, can still raise the alarm and still be located.

Question 7

What does it integrate with?

Accepted Answer

Outbound: Microsoft Teams and Slack for comms, ServiceNow for ITSM, BambooHR and Workday for HR, Twilio for SMS and voice, Resend for email, MQTT for IoT sensors, SIA-IP and Fast Format for alarm-receiving-centre escalation, and Salesforce for CRM. Each Vygard tenant publishes events by webhook, so wiring it into your own farm-management, scheduling or HR systems is straightforward — most customers have it connected within the first week.

Question 8

What does it cost?

Accepted Answer

Transparent per-worker pricing. Starter is £9/worker/month (core safety, live map, basic audit). Pro is £19/worker/month — the most popular tier — adding the AI module, risk scoring, the compliance hub and one sector pack. Enterprise is custom from £49/worker/month (bespoke escalation, a dedicated account manager and a 24/7 SOS line). All plans come with a 14-day free trial, and there's no per-supervisor fee.

Vygard — UK Lone Worker Safety Platform with AI Dispatcher