Safety Observation Teams
7/20/2020
Over the past few years, the United States has seen the number of annual workplace fatalities hover at 5,000 cases, while nonfatal workplace injuries average about three million cases. The severity of these incidents’ ranges from minor cuts to permanent disabilities. The causes of workplace incidents are recorded and classified into such classifications as slips, trips, and falls or “struck bys,” electrocutions, sprains/strains and “fall from heights (not the same as slip, trips and falls).” And even though detailed accident investigations may reveal the reasons or root causes of these events, we still see the same accidents occur year after year. This has been illustrated in the annual National Safety Council’s listing of the “Top 10 Most Cited Violations” where infractions for fall protection, hazard communications, scaffolding, lockout/tagout, ladders, powered industrial trucks (aka forklifts), and machine guarding always seem to be on this list. This suggests that while we may know the causes of occupational accidents, such information does not guarantee that we will prevent similar events from happening again. Yet as it is often stated during an investigation, the purpose of the investigation is not to place blame but to find out the reason for the occurrence and thereby, prevent a similar incident from happening.
Since the advent of OSHA in 1970, the field of S&H has undergone significant strides to control accidents in the workplace. As the frequently cited “general duty clause” states, workers have the right to a work environment that is free of recognized hazards. And as the S&H profession so often states, hazard recognition is the key to controlling injuries and illness in the workplace. Yet, after years of emphasizing this, accidents continue to occur. So, S&H professionals began to rethink the basic philosophy and through such pioneers as Abraham Maslow and his “Hierarchy of Human Needs” (which is a topic that has been discussed at TPMC a number of times – especially those that have gone through our S&H cross training ES&H Rep program) the question of why do people do the things they do, became the important question to answer. And by finding an answer, maybe the S&H profession could understand why the same type of accidents continue to occur; even when we find root causes.
The fact is, we, as human beings, are fallible. We are not robots or programed to react in a specific manner at any given situation. We know this to be true, as we have all witnessed ourselves respond differently to that of a friend or coworker from a similar event. For example. some of us abhor needles when blood needs to be drawn from our veins while others do not even flinch.
In addition to our varied characteristics, persons that have studied human responses understand that we make mistakes on a continuous basis; it is said that on the average, we make four mistakes an hour. As a result, these human imperfections can result in workplace incidents, such as, forgetting to document field data or collecting data from the wrong well and, of course, backing our vehicles into an object or forgetting to perform a 360-degree walkaround of our vehicles prior to entering. So how can these inherent human errors be controlled?
As the saying goes, this is easier said than done. Hazard recognition remains a vital factor to control workplace incidents. Once a hazard is recognized, we can correct the situation by implementing the appropriate controls. Such is the intent with today’s back-up cameras on late-model vehicles as they help to provide a clear picture of what may be directly behind our vehicles. But unfortunately, even with such modern technology, there is not guarantee that an accident will be prevented. After all, the driver must first look at the screen on the dashboard prior to backing up. Hence the fallibility of being human can override even the best engineering control.
So, the challenge is to how to compensate for our humanness. Obviously, we can’t become unhuman (which has been the theme of countless sci fi stories). But we can focus on our fallible human nature for the express purpose to provide checks on our behaviors and thereby, compensate for our human nature.
This is where S&H professionals strive to establish a safety culture; an understanding and attitude for which employees perform assigned tasks with a concerted effort and questioning attitude that focuses on an individual continuously being aware of the task at hand and his/her surroundings before acting. While a discussion of all the tools that can be used to reinforce human performance is, indeed, lengthy, we can present a number of practical options today and thereby, have them implemented at our project sites.
Identification of accident precursors: These are elements, that while do not necessarily translate into an accident, they do present an increased risk. And by eliminating these precursors, we can significantly remove hazards from our work. The most notable is time constraints; This causes people to rush through a task and often results in a loss of awareness of the surroundings or to forsake the decision of taking a few minutes to examine the immediate work area for hazards.
A very important aspect in a proactive safety culture is to watch out for each other….I hope this rings a bell with everyone since it is my typical opening line for the Weekly Safety Message. When something doesn’t look right, say something.
Another valuable tool is using an Observation Team. This is a group of persons that work in the field and note accident precursors such as persons not wearing proper PPE or working with a damaged piece of equipment or not using the right tool (i.e. improvising with a tool that was not designed for the task at hand – for instance, using wrench as a hammer). The important thing is to capture the unsafe or precursor event – and to NEVER associate the instance with a person. By tallying the various observations into specific categories, we can capture a possible trend, that if left unnoticed, may result in someone getting hurt.
The topic of a proactive safety culture and identifying precursor events are all related to human performance improvement. Throughout the coming weeks we will discuss the various methods that are available to us to help ensure we keep our humanness in check. In the meantime, if you see something that does not look right, speak up. You just might prevent a friend, a coworker, from getting hurt.
Learning Never Exhausts the Mind
Leonardo de Vinci