O&M

Safety: People or Processes

In September 2002, I was working onsite at a power plant construction project. It was just like every other Tuesday morning, only this Tuesday morning would change the beliefs I had about safety.

By Jamie W. Butler, Vice President Corporate Safety and Health Director, Burns & McDonnell

In September 2002, I was working onsite at a power plant construction project. It was just like every other Tuesday morning, only this Tuesday morning would change the beliefs I had about safety. I believed the most important part of a good safety program were the processes and “rules.” Supported by our extremely low injury rates, I believed our project was as safe as any I had ever worked on; why wouldn’t I? However, that belief ended on this morning when a subcontractor employee lost his life due to an incident on the project. To this day, I remember the look of fear and panic on the foreman’s face as I arrived on the scene of the accident.

We work in a dangerous industry.

Historically, the electric utility industry has one of the highest worker accident and fatality rates in the country and the world. Many utility headquarter lobbies or operations centers have memorials to those who have died in the course of their duties. Unnamed are the thousands more who are burned, disabled or dismembered by electricity and the dangerous work environment created to supply, operate and maintain “the most complex machine of the 20th century.”

Much has been accomplished over the last several years to improve the recognition and appreciation of safety. Since 2002, I have come to realize that although safety processes and rules are important they are just one part of a safety program designed to achieve an organization’s safety goals. My current employer has developed a strong safety culture over the last decade. We are consistently best of class in every measurable key performance indicator as it relates to safety, placing us in the top 5 percent of safety performance for all contractors nationwide. How did we achieve these numbers? And, more importantly, how to do we improve upon these numbers?

As with most successfully safe companies, leadership starts at the top. Our then CEO immediately made the company aware of his goals and initiatives. The goal, simply put, was to “make us one of the safest engineering and construction firms in the world.” The first step in this process was to define what “safe” looked like. He formed a team to look at the company’s risks, both from a corporate perspective as well as a project perspective.

The next step was to establish a successful safety program that would align with our strategy of achieving our goal. Over the past 13 years, we have implemented several different programs to strengthen not only our safety processes but also our culture. Some of the more notable programs are our Task Safety Observation Program (Behavioral Recognition Program), Employee Engagement program and a robust training initiative. We also realized that improving the culture at our firm would only get us so far; we had to also improve the culture of the entities that we choose to work with – our clients and in particularly our subcontractors. Without engagement and a desire from these groups, a continually improving culture of safety could not exist.

We started with investing and maintaining a safe workplace. It may sound simple, but when people see the effort and commitment demonstrated by management towards creating a culture where safety is a value they immediately want to be part of the solution. Another effort was to create a system to track and prevent safety concerns. An electronic employee concern notification system and an incident management system developed to give our employee-owners a way to voice their concerns and suggestions. These contributed to our folks being actively engaged in improving their safety climate.

The words “Behavioral Based Safety” are often met with hesitation, and I agree that BBS on its own is not as effective as other stand-alone programs. However, when incorporated into an overall safety program BBS can have several benefits. Used properly, BBS identifies at-risk behaviors, assists with evaluating the effectiveness of training programs and your current safety programs, and provides a way to promote engagement from all levels of an organization.

Training is another term that generally doesn’t promote excitement, mostly because safety related training is highly technical and a bit boring at times. That said, it in no way downgrades its importance. Training is vital to any successful safety program. Not only is it required by law for certain tasks, but good safety training helps people identify hazards, understand expectations, be able to accurately evaluate risk, and know what to do to ensure that hazards do not negatively affect themselves or others.

How do you improve your safety performance? Leadership, Commitment and Effort. It starts with what we are at our core. The very foundation of every company begins with its people. When you positively motivate employees to contribute to the safety success of the organization, you get an engaged employee. There is no “follow these requirements and everything will go as planned.” Safety isn’t about rules or requirements; it’s about the safe execution of those processes.

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