Example The Slippery Slope of Safety

Many years ago, while working as a safety manager, I was responsible for safety in a water treatment plant. Treatment plant operators were required to climb ladders to the tops of million-gallon switch-batch reactor tanks and then walk along the top of the tank to the middle, where a hatch would be opened and the tank could be inspected. The tanks were crowned on the top, which made them difficult to walk on. This difficulty became even more challenging when changes in the weather or humidity made the tops of these tanks slippery. 

The situation got attention when the operators voiced a concern during a safety inspection. After some discussion, the operators were given harnesses and lanyards and asked to tie off when they reached the top of the tank. The safety committee felt that a long-term solution would be an engineered guardrail system around the tops of all the tanks that would include a toprail, midrail, and toeplate. This system would eliminate the need for a tieoff and improve the overall safety of the job. 

This all sounded good, and each month during the safety meeting, the situation was reviewed. It turned out that the cost of these rail systems was determined to be substantially above what anyone on the committee had estimated it to be. This cost was way above what the local manager could order without approval. The committee was asked to come up with other alternatives. Other alternatives were discussed over the next two months, but none of the alternatives that were discussed seemed to provide an adequate solution. The consensus was that the engineered guardrails should be pursued. With a little red tape, and a couple of months wait, the guardrail systems were ordered. 

However, these guardrails were not an in-stock item they needed to be fabricated. The fabrication and delivery of these items took another three months. When these items finally arrived, we discovered that the vendor had sent the wrong pieces. With a little urging and some rush shipments, the improper pieces were shipped back and proper pieces arrived. These guardrail systems were installed on all of the switch-batch reactor tanks within the next couple of months. 

let s get back to the subject at hand, which is why do workers commit unsafe acts After we have asked ourselves Why several times and found core reasons for shortcomings, let s ask ourselves a couple more questions. The first question I would ask would be Have we performed a job safety analysis (JSA) on this task K the answer is no, we need to do that right away. If the answer is yes, we need to revisit the JSA and see where that leads us. If we are not following the guidelines in the JSA, we need to determine why we are not following them. The JSA is discussed in detail in Chapter 7, Training.  

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