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September 2015

Sep 04
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Worksite Safety Starts with Building the Right Culture

By Construction Insurance Bulletin
safety_Equipment
One of the major focuses in the construction industry is safety. After all, the very nature of the job requires that workers use potentially dangerous equipment in harsh situations. However, while periodic training and providing the proper safety gear can help reduce injuries, the real answer is to create a culture of safety among the workers themselves. There are several actions that employers can take to help develop this type of culture in their own construction workforce.Create a Safety CommitteeEmployers can only remedy potential safety issues if they know about them. That’s why it’s vital that every construction group have a safety manager that oversees a safety committee. While the safety manager will drive the implementation of safety initiatives, the safety committee plays an even more important role. This committee should be comprised of workers at all levels who meet regularly. At the meetings each member can bring up safety concerns and discuss new polices or procedures and their effects on the workforce.

Identify Risks During Pre-Planning

The best time to prevent accidents is before they happen. That’s why every project planning session should include a risk assessment of potential safety issues and how to prevent them. These recommendations should then be compiled into a project safety plan just prior to the project start. The plan should identify the safety concerns and designate an individual who is responsible for implementing preventative safety measures as well as the measures that they are to implement.

Train Workers 

Training is one of the most vital aspects to keeping workers safe. However, to create a true culture of safety, employers should provide proper equipment and safety training prior to each project start, not just at new hire orientation.

Celebrate Success and Penalize Failure

Celebrating safety successes is just as important as penalizing failures. To reward successes, consider offering free lunch or ice cream when workers have a reaches a set number of accident-free days. Conversely, when safety failures occur they must be penalized. However, it’s vital that the business penalize not only the worker who violated safety protocol, but also their supervisor and other staff who also failed to follow protocol.

 

 

Sep 04
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Establish Site-wide Safety Rules

By Construction Insurance Bulletin
constructioaccidentGeneral contractors usually maintain a set of safety rules for all subcontractors and suppliers to follow while on site. As a contractor, establish basic safety standards you require on site. Don’t accept less for your employees than a safe workplace including other trades.
  • Sound. Construction sites are noisy workplaces under the best of conditions. Hearing protection is often required. So why do some sites allow radios and music boxes? The added decibels hurt, the distraction unwise, inability to hear back up warnings dangerous, and competing music choices raise the sound level and create animosity on site.
o Ban all radios and music boxes, or any other extraneous noise producer.
o Ban cell phone use, including texting, except for supervisors.
o Turn off unused generators.
  • Sight. Safety eye wear, everyone. Anyone not wearing safety eye wear grants permission for others to follow. Don’t allow this slippage to begin. Workers wear reflective vests or bright colors for easy identification. Make them be seen.
o Everyone wears safety eye wear.
o Reflective vests or bright colored uniforms for easy location.
  • Smell. Smoking on a job site covers important warning odors like gas leaks or electrical fire. Careless disposal of cigarettes is the second leading cause of construction fires.
o Ban all smoking from the site.
  • Proper Attire. Loose clothing catches on edges and rotating shafts. Work pants, no shorts, and steel-toed shoes prevent injuries to the legs and feet. Easy to spot colors. Require hard hats.

Safe work is productive work.

Other issues which should be discussed prior to mobilizing on site include work space access and shared use on site. Address adequate storage, security, and any issues with two crews occupying the same space at the same time. Safety issues should not be compromised or run by committee. Insist on protecting your employees with site-wide minimum expectations of safe practices. Most general contractors will welcome the support.

 

Sep 04
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Investigating Accidents: the process

By Business Protection Bulletin

investigateIndustrial accidents, on the job injuries, begin with cause and end with effect; they are not, in any real sense, accidents. For this reason, any injury mandates investigation, correction, and forecasting.

What are the proper steps in investigation?

  1. Reserve Judgment. Questioning employees can be tricky. Assure everyone knows the facts are important. You’re trying to build a narrative about an incident, not to fire someone.
  2. Begin with the physical location of the incident. Are guards in place, floors even, floors wet, proper equipment in place? Is the physical location in good working order?
  3. Was personal protection equipment available and in use?
  4. Gather any recordings of the incident, visual or audio.
  5. You have your setting, now interview the characters. Interview the injured party, how did this incident occur? Interview co-workers who witnessed events leading up to the moment or the incident.
  6. Find the Human Error. Always a factor, and here’s why: either the employee erred in the execution of their job, or management erred in their design of the job.
  7. Mentally walk through the incident after creating the narrative of events. Where could this incident have been prevented?

These steps should lead to a narrative which is specific about the incident from just before cause to effect, not just a description of an injury, but a detailed story describing what happened.

The investigation should state whether or not procedures were followed, and were those procedures adequate in protecting the employee. Why were they appropriate or ineffective?

Did the normal work conditions lead to injury, or did some unusual conditions play a part?

Define the unsafe elements: employee behavior, management process, workplace conditions, personal protection, time of day, time into the shift (weariness), any event or condition contributing to the injury.

Find the primary cause, secondary cause and tertiary cause of the incident.

Employee fell down and broke their wrist does not tell the story, and not much can be gleaned from that report to prevent future incidents.

Employee lost footing when stepping into a pothole in the parking lot and broke their wrist. The employee was carrying a load which blocked their view, and was too heavy. This narrative suggests:

  • fix the parking lot to create a smooth surface
  • teach employees about carrying loads
  • use hand trucks for heavy or large loads.

This report can prevent future incidents. Who, what, why, when, where and how.

Step 8: Forecast incidents by applying these lessons learned from the investigation by inspecting similar components across company operations. Fix the potential problems before the incidents occur.

 

Sep 04
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Defensive Driving Management

By Business Protection Bulletin

drivingDriving is a skill. At training camp, veteran football players start with fundamental drills: blocking, tackling, throwing, catching and running. Why? Didn’t they learn that stuff in pee-wee ball? Professional athletes still get into poor habits. And so do your professional drivers.

Skills are honed, refreshed, updated, practiced and coached. Think about these words when discussing defensive driving.

Drug free, no cell phones, well-rested and physical fitness for the job are driver requirements to ready them to sit in the vehicle. These are company obligations for safe operations: assure the driver is ready to take the wheel, schedule deliveries with enough time to drive safely and assure the drivers are well-instructed and coached in defensive driving.

Standard operating procedures and company culture set the stage for safe driving. Set procedures and expectations which reflect safety as more important than on-time delivery. The best way to accomplish this goal is to allow plenty of time for delivery. Realistic driving schedules accounting for traffic and seasonal variations take management logistics skill, but they assure safe delivery of goods and services.

The company culture expresses the value of safe driving above delivery schedule. Checking driver fitness and logistical favor-ability towards safety lets the driver know it’s up to his skill level to complete a do-able task.

On line products regarding safe driving can be useful as reminders, but direct monitoring and correction work better.

Catch the drivers doing something right. Whether it’s a thorough pre-trip inspection of the vehicle, buckling up or turning off their cell phones, praise good behavior. Make a point of positive reinforcement for safe driving habits. Drivers tend to get negative criticism more often than positive reward. Like the left tackle who hears about his missed block causing a sack, the driver only hears about his one accident in ten years.

If praised regularly for safe driving, the driver is more willing to accept criticism or corrective action for poor habits.

Employ trainers to re-evaluate drivers at least annually on a ride-along. Small habits can cause large accidents.

 

 

 

Sep 04
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Plus and Minus of Packaged Safety Software

By Business Protection Bulletin

Software can be a great tool for managing aspects of business. Nearly every specialty has a softwaremanagement software package suitable to run most businesses in that industry. Do you get the feeling business is over-managed and under-lead? Risk management programs need leadership first to create a culture of corporate safety. These software programs are tools, not decision-makers.

Some packages have excellent incident management tools: checklists, timelines, procedures. Some have safety meeting models and handouts for topics. Most have compliance tools to assure government regulations and industry standards are completed. Risk management surveys are popular.

Management is a process by which other processes and operations are measured, changed and rewarded. It’s the head of the operations.

Leadership is the big idea, the dream, the heart of the operation. Leaders decide if employees come first and production second; or if bottom line dollars trump everything else. Management then decides key performance indicators, measuring strategies, and standard operating procedures.

The strength of these software packages is in the management role. The weakness is in the inability to translate the KPI mentality to the cultural setting of the business. The software is like receiving a mathematical explanation of the Declaration of Independence.

Managers need to take the useful tools, and interpret the data into the company jargon. Enlightened company leadership treats safety as an employee benefit. Safety reports should not just list the failures in the system, the injuries and damaged property.

Communications should include the investigations of close calls which sparked some change in procedure and reduced the likelihood of future claims. Industry average loss rates should be compared with your company loss rates. Is management doing a good job?

Safety software tends to concentrate on incidents or canned meeting topics. Then, a summary report is generated. Good information. But risk management depends on implementation of a safety culture, not just incident reduction or accounting.

Use the tools, but accept leadership responsibility and move employees to enlightened safety awareness.

 

 

Sep 04
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HAZWOPER: Teach environmental awareness

By Business Protection Bulletin
HWOHAZWOPER is short for Hazardous Waste Operation and Emergency Response. Emergency responders or operations likely to encounter hazardous waste partake in this training.
In the modern day office, chemicals, cleaners, solvents, mold, mildew, pesticides,
or just poorly filtered recycled air can impact health issues.
All employees need minimal training in hazardous waste. Some examples:
  • Employee changes a nine volt battery and discards the dead cell in the trash can.
o One of the top causes of ignition is nine vault batteries thought to be dead, and the two terminals contact the same piece of metal. A circuit is completed and the battery heats up igniting other trash. Electric tape over the two terminals wrapped around the battery prevents this problem.
  • Employee cleans the bathroom with bleach. Next employee cleans the bathroom with ammonia. The combination causes toxic gas fumes.
o Schedule cleaning with specific chemicals and procedures.
  • Plastics or chlorinated compounds, such as solvents, heat up releasing phosgene gas. Phosgene gas kills unmercifully by burning lung tissue.
o Store chemicals properly and be aware of dangerous combinations which should never be stored together.
  • Instruct all employees in HAZWOPER awareness. In a chemical environment, even in an office, combinations of inks, solvents, cleaners, heat and poor storage habits can create unhealthy conditions quickly.
  • Create standard operating procedures for all cleaning and maintenance chores to avoid incorrectly disposing of waste products.
  • Choose products which are easily recycled, for example ink cartridges. Recycling avoids combining chemicals in the trash can.
  • Inspect your building for mold and mildew and remediate the smallest colony before it grows. Professionally inspect your duct work at least annually and pre-treat for biological hazardous material. Using positive pressure (pumping clean filtered air into your building) can reduce the biological intrusion through cracks and air seeps throughout your building.
  • On line or in classroom instruction is available to create awareness and provide knowledge for all employees.
  • Awareness: your best defense against environmental hazards.
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