Safety Management Articles

• Solid Footing

  In a few years I’ll be 60. I’ve been in the business now for 37 years, but no one ever talked to me about how to care for my feet until I finally had to go to a podiatrist a few years ago. When he looked at my X-rays he said, quite confidently, “You are a lineman right?” It seems he had seen the picture several times before.

• LOTO vs. Switching and Tagging

  Electric utilities have unique issues that are not easily addressed in a traditional LOTO program. Traditional programs typically address equipment and system designs that rarely change. This is certainly not true with electric utility Transmission and Distribution (T&D) programs. LOTO procedures are dynamic, changing from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour.

• Is Your Company Ready for the Next Disaster?

  The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and ongoing spill is only the latest in a series of dramatic high-profile disasters. A decade that began with the devastation of 9/11 has also featured Hurricane Katrina, massive flooding and destructive wildfires in the U.S.; high magnitude earthquakes in China, Haiti, and Chile with the resulting Tsunami in Malaysia and Thailand; the H1N1 epidemic; terrorist attacks or attempts worldwide; and mass killings by lone gunmen at Ft. Hood, Texas and Virginia Tech. If there is one lesson these horrific incidents clearly demonstrate, it’s the critical importance of proper disaster response and preparedness.

• Best Practices

  Prior to 1950, sources report that 30 percent of all linemen were electrocuted on the job. As a result, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has ranked “Lineman” as one of the 10 most dangerous jobs. Since then, insulated equipment such as fiberglass tools and rubber goods, along with well-documented safety techniques and work standards, have improved safety dramatically. Also, mandated periodic safety tests help to keep tools and equipment in working order.

• People Focused Safety

  Workplace safety is not an exact science. We can determine hazards, measure risks, provide protective equipment, implement policies and procedures – and then inject corrective actions when needed – but may still fall short of stellar performance.

• Confused About Arc Flash Compliance?

  If you’re in a quandary over arc flash compliance, you’re not alone, according to Incident Prevention’s recent survey.

• Root Cause Analysis

  Even the safest among us will occasionally veer off the road to safety excellence and encounter an incident. When this happens, the best management practice is to identify and correct the cause(s) so that you can get back on track and avoid future mishaps.

• A FULL Commitment

  We all know the data. Typically, one third to one half of our field injuries are musculoskeletal disorders such as strains and sprains, rotator cuff syndrome, lower back disorders and tendonitis. Workers’ compensation costs for these injuries far exceed those for acute incidents such as burns, cuts and even fractures.

• NESC-2012-Part 4: Summary of Change Proposals

  NESC-2012 change proposals have been published and are available for comment through May 1, 2010. Subcommittee 8, Work Rules Sections 40-44, is responsible for the changes to Part 4 of the NESC. The main change proposal includes a requirement for employers to determine potential electric arc exposures for employees who work on or near lines, parts or equipment 50- 1,000 volts. NESC-2007 does not specifically require employers to perform an arc hazard analysis on low-voltage systems so this will be a major change for 2012.

• Soil Resistivity Testing & Grounding System Design: Part II of II

  The sole purpose of the design exercise for grounding systems is to make the performance predictable upon installation. For ground system designs, there are several options for the design process or the method of manipulating the data by formulas, spreadsheets, or software. Likewise, there are alternatives for the design result or the actual instructions showing locations, models and quantity of grounding electrodes required to achieve the grounding system performance indicated by the design.

• Huge Steps

  If you’ve tuned into the news in the last two years, you have undoubtedly seen reports of crane accidents that have occurred across the country. There have been many injuries and in some cases fatalities due to the highly populated areas in which these events have taken place.

• Soil Resistivity Testing & Grounding System Design: Part I of II

  For utilities designing site-specific grounding systems, soil resistivity testing is an absolutely necessary step. Soil resistivity data is required for the ground system to meet a specific performance requirement. With resistivity data, the design becomes predictable so that you know the final ground resistance to expect after installation.

• Making Safety a Core Value

  E.ON U.S. recently introduced its next phase of safety development at its Operation Safety Summit.

• Incident Analysis

  The essence of safety is preventing incidents from having the opportunity to occur. When they do occur, it is usually the result of one or more safety systems failures. Failures, however, are the seeds of opportunity. Incidents provide us with opportunities, albeit unfortunate, to improve our safety systems and prevent future incidents. The process used to identify what improvements are needed is called Incident Analysis.

• Moving from Operations into Safety or Training

  Over the past 50-plus years in production settings of all types, training has been largely made up of new employees spending either specified or unspecified periods of time with more experienced employees. At the end of that period, the experienced employee was responsible for pronouncing the new employee “trained.”

  Sometimes, these practices produce an effective safety or training professional. It has been our experience in over more than 20 years of observing and discussing moves from operations to safety or training with several hundred organizations in a number of production industries, including electric utilities, that the move is not automatically successful. Furthermore, it is far less than automatic for some of the individuals that for years have been assumed to be perfect fits for these positions.