Vygard — UK Lone Worker Safety Platform with AI Dispatcher

Nobody on the land works truly alone. SOS, fall detection, welfare check-ins, geofencing and escalation in one console — backed by Howie, the AI dispatcher, and tuned for fields, woodland and estates where the signal runs thin.

Vygard is a UK-built, AI-augmented lone-worker safety platform shaped for people who spend their days out on their own — farmers checking stock at dawn, contractors in distant fields, foresters and tree surgeons, gamekeepers and estate staff, drivers covering miles of single-track lane. It pulls real-time SOS, man-down and fall detection, geofencing, welfare check-ins, escalation and a tamper-evident audit trail into one place. "Howie" — the AI watcher built into Vygard and powered by Claude Opus 4.8 — writes the dispatcher's situation summary in under a second, flags worrying changes in a worker's vital signs, nudges people to confirm they're alright before they think to ask, and insists on a three-step acknowledgement before any incident can be marked closed. You can be live in 10 working days with no hardware to buy, it is BS 8484-aligned and UK-hosted, and it ships with sector packs covering everything from livestock handling to forestry.

Key features

• AI Dispatcher Copilot — "Howie". Powered by Claude Opus 4.8 with adaptive reasoning. The moment an SOS lands, Howie writes a sub-second briefing — what's happening, what to do next and who to ring first — straight into the dispatcher's alert window, then holds the incident open until a three-step acknowledgement is complete.
• SOS, Man-Down & Fall Detection. Accelerometer-tuned fall detection running quietly in the background with automatic SOS escalation, panic-button SOS on phones, watches and BLE pendants, and 30-second confirmation windows. Patterns are tuned to rural realities — a chainsaw kickback on an Apple Watch, or a quad-bike rollover caught by a 4-second tilt threshold.
• Welfare-Ping Engine. Eight trigger reasons — drifting vital signs, entering a livestock pen, an incoming weather warning and more — prompt a proactive check-in. It asks a worker if they're OK before they ever have to reach for the button, re-reading each person's state every 60 seconds.
• Rural Sector Packs. Ready-made packs for arable and livestock farming, forestry and tree surgery, estate and grounds teams, equestrian yards, agricultural contracting, rural delivery and lone driving, and remote engineering visits. Bespoke packs can be built in around six weeks.
• Geofencing & Risk Overlays. Map polygons for weather fronts and known hazards automatically flag anyone working inside an alert zone. Watch for workers straying into flood-prone ground, slurry stores or unfenced field margins, with Working Time monitoring built in to catch fatigue on long harvest days.
• Vitals, PPE & Cert Gap Detection. Continuous heart-rate and SpO₂ streaming wherever the device supports it. A quick selfie gate at sign-in confirms the right PPE is being worn for the job. Certification expiry detection flags lapsed tickets — chainsaw, telehandler, sprayer — with severity weighted to how risky the task is.
• Rugged Devices & Satellite-Fallback. Built for kit that survives mud, rain and dropped tailgates — BLE pendants and toughened handsets like the Cat S62, Sonim XP10 and CrossCall. Iridium satellite-fallback SOS kicks in when the mobile signal disappears, which on most farms, in deep woodland and across open hill ground is simply a fact of life.
• BYOD-Friendly with No MDM. One-tap PWA — a worker opens a web link, with no app-store download and no device-management enrolment to wrestle with. Everything wipes cleanly when someone leaves. Native iOS, Android, watchOS and Wear OS apps add richer features, and BLE pendants and rugged handsets are fully supported.
• Regulator-Ready Audit & Reporting. Auto-generated RIDDOR PDF exports, BS 8484-aligned provision, and HSE-aligned workflows tuned per sector — including FISA 302 guidance for forestry work. Every incident carries a tamper-evident audit trail, and everything is UK-hosted in eu-west-2.

Why lone-worker safety on the land is a workflow problem first, a hardware problem second

Most lone-worker incidents that end badly do so for one of three reasons: the alert never fired (the worker was hurt before they could reach SOS), the alert fired but landed somewhere nobody was watching (a generic inbox while everyone's out at first light), or the alert fired and was seen but nobody actioned the next step ("noticed it, assumed someone else had it in hand"). The hardware side is solvable — phones, watches, pendants and rugged handsets all exist — but it's the workflow that decides whether a deployment actually saves someone.

Vygard is designed around closing those three gaps. The welfare-ping engine reaches workers who can't trigger for themselves — someone thrown from a quad in a far field, or knocked down in a livestock pen. The mandatory three-step dispatcher acknowledgement (read, actioned, welfare confirmed) is tamper-evident, so the audit trail proves the workflow ran. And Howie drafts the next action in under a second, so whoever picks up the alert isn't reading it cold and alone — which is precisely the moment an older setup tends to fail.

Frequently asked questions

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

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.

Does Vygard need special hardware?

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.

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

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.

How fast can it be deployed?

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.

Is it compliant with UK lone-worker regulations?

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.

Will it work where there's no mobile signal?

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.

What does it integrate with?

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.

What does it cost?

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.