JobScope Notebook

Guidelines for safety success

By Damon Gowan Chairman, JWP Gowan

The following article, from the pages of the JobScope Notebook, first appeared in the fall of 1993, but continues to offer useful, common sense ideas for building or improving a company safety program.

What got me personally involved in safety was when I finally understood how workers’ compensation insurance works, and could relate safety to the big dollars involved and to so many of the activities of a mechanical contracting company.

For example, I relearned the basic fact that safety is not an occasional thing. It must be planned into all work activities. You can’t separate it, depending solely on a safety specialist who comes out to the job now and then. No, you have to plan safety just as you plan buying, delivering and installing pipe and valves. And while safety success hinges on superintendent and foreman involvement, it has to start (and continue) at the top.

Keep in mind that a company’s costs go deeper than insurance and loss prevention expenses. Many costs are hidden. These include lost time by injured employees, the loss of earning power and the economic hurt to their families. But that’s only the start — look at time loss by other crew members taking the injured to the clinic, efficiency losses when a crew is broken up, the cost of breaking in a new worker, damage to tools and equipment, possible fire or chemical damage, possible inability of the customer to fill an order, extra time and overhead costs for handling and reporting the accident, etc.

Thus, work accidents have a direct effect on future costs. Prevent accidents, and you reduce future workers’ comp insurance premiums. It penalizes employers with poor safety records. It’s that simple.

But establishing and making a safety program effective is hard, continuing effort. It’s more than just accident prevention. It involves a company-wide commitment. As we’ve gone along, we have found that the big money isn’t in the EMR classification itself, but in eliminating accidents.

Program Elements

Here are the key elements in our company’s safety program.

• Start at the top. Management must first accept responsibility for loss control. Management must make a firm statement to project managers, superintendents and foremen making them accountable for safety.

• Safety manual. We have our own manual. It is based on the excellent manual published by MCAA. But we feel certain sections should be written by our people, to make sure we use language that custom-fits our firm. In the process, your own internal training program gets underway.

• Employment procedure. Our safety program starts the day an employee is hired. We avoid job-site employment. Instead, prospective employees come to our office. An application must be completed. We follow the law carefully in what questions we ask, but we do ask for a waiver of confidentiality. This permits us to get an individual’s workers’ comp record and their driving record. The latter is important, since most employees will eventually drive for us. We want to know about driving tickets and whether there’s any DWI record. This procedure not only gives us information but makes it clear to the new employee that we’re serious about safety.

• Initial training. If the worker is hired, we have two people who brief him on our safety rules, using our manual. We talk about our hazardous communications policy, and ask the new employee to sign that they have been oriented on Hazcom. This can avoid future complications with inspectors and others.

We keep this material updated, since all of us are subject to fines. We had our fourth OSHA inspection recently, each ending with compliments and no fines. This builds the credibility of our safety program.

• Eye protection. We have a prescription safety glass program. Every employee, whether in the field or in the shop, has to wear safety glasses with side shields. I don’t permit anyone, including myself, to go into the shop without adding side shields or putting a cover over them. We used to have a lot of eye injuries, but no longer.

• Ladder safety. OSHA now puts this on you. All employees, even if they have been on your payroll for 30 years, must be briefed on ladder safety. We record this briefing and put it in each worker’s file. Complete record-keeping is part of any successful safety program.

• Drug and alcohol policy. We’re a 100% drug-free company and, to keep it that way, all new employees are drug tested. They are re-tested periodically. Specifically, every employee agrees to be re-tested if they are involved in an accident.

Drug testing was a problem the first time around. About 6% of our people failed, and there was lots of concern. Slowly, nearly everyone found it was proper to drug test when others’ safety was at risk. When our people realized that jobs are more important than drugs, the momentum turned. The drug users don’t work for us. One employee was struggling and, after a special program, turned his life around. Our crafts support our drug-alcohol program.

• Asbestos policy. If there’s an abatement effort in an area, our employees can’t work there. If there’s mechanical work to be done in an asbestos area, our people must wear masks. This means, in turn, a physical, an X-ray, and training in how to work in this type of environment. We now have complete records on our people and their asbestos exposure. Asbestos-caused cancer is infrequent but also incurable.

We have policies in all key areas, such as housekeeping, vehicles, and oxygen-acetylene bottle safety. This means we train new and old employees in each policy, and then re-train them regularly.

We have a safety poster and a first-aid kit on every job, even the toolbox level of job. We make certain emergency numbers are posted so there’s no confusion or delay if there’s an accident on the job site.

Steps for Safety

Our safety program began years ago, after I attended an MCAA safety seminar and found that our EMR multiplier was far higher than those of our competitors. It took 23 years for me to learn how important safety was. That’s when I took personal responsibility for safety within our company, and told those in my command chain that they were accountable in their areas.

We have a safety meeting twice a month now. The first involves all managers and superintendents. It starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends about 15 minutes later. We decide on a safety topic for the month, often based on problems we’ve had in recent weeks. We also use this meeting to bring everyone up-to-date on what jobs we’ve acquired, how the company’s doing, etc.

The second safety meeting involves all superintendents. They report on any accidents and accident investigations. We think everyone learns from this experience, even though no one likes to discuss accidents in their territory.

Finally, any safety program needs incentives. Some are positive, and others aren’t. For example, no operational boss can have repeated accidents without a cut in his or her bonus — and in some cases, discharge. Your people have to know you are serious about safety.

We also have safety awards, given out each year to the teams with the best safety records. We let a committee of superintendents and workers select the awards, such as binoculars and radios. This isn’t cheap, but it wasn’t intended to be. We are recognizing our safety winners. We are also sharing savings with our employees.

We are now setting up job site programs where there’s a monthly drawing for $100 for everyone on the job, providing there have been no accidents that month. If there’s an accident on that job, there’s no drawing. Peer pressure is an important element in a solid safety program.

In the past few years, our company has saved more than money. We’ve helped reduce the number of injuries, and the amount of suffering. There are fewer lost fingers and major head injuries. Those are major gains for everyone.

Originally adapted from a seminar presentation at a past MCAA convention.