SIMOPS risk is not limited to the same piece of equipment, since hot work next to a venting line or a lift over an area where people are working can be just as dangerous. The problem is that permits are usually organized by job rather than by location, so nobody sees the full picture of what is happening in one area.
When permits are tied to locations on a site model, the system can show all active work in an area and flag combinations that the site has defined as conflicts. That is how conflict detection works in Interface, and it gives the permit coordinator a map of the work instead of a stack of separate permits.