The sale of the 'Permit To Work' software to energy generator and briquette maker Energy Brix follows on from previous sales to Queensland's Collinsville power station and to Loy Yang Power for its two plants.

Sage said the system assists power station and process operators to efficiently manage the isolation of plant to help ensure the safety of staff involved in routine and emergency maintenance.

"This does more than print tags for equipment. Our software program automates the very, very strict procedures necessary to keep people safe and builds in security procedures that surpass what can be done manually," said chief operating officer, Clinton Rodda. " It also greatly improves the efficiency of plant isolation compared to manual systems.

"A power station has lots of potentially hazardous equipment and environments including high voltage electricity and high pressure steam so when you do maintenance work on the plant you need to be able to guarantee safe access for workers.

"We're setting a new benchmark for best practice in Permit to Work technology, providing safe access, rigorous cross-checking of isolation points, equipment tagging and the production of detailed audit records of permit to work activity."

Sage said the product took its biggest test during a 32-day Unit 3 outage at Loy Yang power station, which saw 1130 permits issued in 32 days to govern the work of 600 contractors and 650 staff over three shifts.

Mr Rodda said that in addition to power generation, the software had applications for oil and large manufacturing industries.