Days
:
Hours
:
Minutes
:
Seconds
iPi Monthly Forum for Utility Professionals
The iPi monthly forum is where you can get answers to questions you have from subject matter experts like David McPeak, Jim Vaughn, Danny Raines and other utility safety and ops professionals like yourself. Forums will include industry specific topics, challenges, trends, and solutions along with best practices in leadership, operations, and safety.
Assuming full responsibility for your well-being includes taking ownership of your physical condition.
Accelerating Safety Through Technology: A People-First Approach
Utilities are investing millions of dollars in drones, automated monitoring systems and artificial intelligence applications. These tools offer unprecedented safety and operational advantages as grid complexities evolve – assuming crews willingly use them as intended.
New technology should make it safer and easier for frontline workers to execute their tasks, particularly when stressed or fatigue…
Spiritual Preparation for Safer Work
The previous articles in this series examined two factors that strongly influence personal safety. Accountability is the idea that meaningful improvement begins when workers accept responsibility for their own safety decisions. Through mental preparation, workers gain an understanding of the ways in which temperament, emotional triggers and habits affect their judgment under pressure.
This articl…
May-June 2026 Q&A
Q: In the April-May 2024 issue, Incident Prevention responded to a reader’s question about the OSHA digger derrick exemption for licensed operators (see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/april-may-2024-qa/). Have you heard anything since then about exemption enforcement trends? For example, has…
Pro Tips for Trainers: Our Frontline Playlist
If you’re trained to provide CPR, do you know the average number of chest compressions you administer per minute? Most people don’t.
What if we ask you to name a song that would help you keep an even tempo as you deliver those compressions? We bet you could answer that, and if you can’t, we’ll g…
Preventing Heat Injury and Illness
During the annual T&D PowerSkills Trainers Conference earlier this year, several of our clients asked about OSHA’s stance on heat illness prevention. Months later, we are still fielding questions about the topic, as are Incident Prevention’s subject matter experts.
The bottom line is that em…
Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention
The electric utility industry experienced some catastrophic events during the first quarter of this year, including the deaths of multiple employees. I always feel incredibly sad when I hear about another serious injury or fatality (SIF). My heart goes out to everyone who has been impacted by these…
Subscribe via your favorite podcast platform
Social Networks
Recent Posts
Safety Management
Physiological Health for Safer Performance
If you’ve been following this series, you know that it was founded on a simple but powerful idea: personal accountability.
In Part 1, we discussed agency, or the degree to which you believe you are responsible for your own safety. Part 2 examined mental preparation, the “firmware” that governs h…
The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions
Our industry’s persistent serious injury and fatality (SIF) statistics indicate that we are aiming at the wrong target, despite our best intentions. A small shift in our industry’s approach to incident investigations, however, could lead to meaningful change.
Decades of professional experience h…
6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs
Despite decades of progress in occupational safety, serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) continue to occur in organizations with mature safety management systems, extensive training programs and low total recordable injury rates.
Focused prevention programs have proliferated in response to the…
Accelerating Safety Through Technology: A People-First Approach
Utilities are investing millions of dollars in drones, automated monitoring systems and artificial intelligence applications. These tools offer unprecedented safety and operational advantages as grid complexities evolve – assuming crews willingly use them as intended.
New technology should make…
The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions
Our industry’s persistent serious injury and fatality (SIF) statistics indicate that we are aiming at the wrong target, despite our best intentions. A small shift in our industry’s approach to incident investigations, however, could lead to meaningful change.
Decades of professional experience h…
6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs
Despite decades of progress in occupational safety, serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) continue to occur in organizations with mature safety management systems, extensive training programs and low total recordable injury rates.
Focused prevention programs have proliferated in response to the…
Accelerating Safety Through Technology: A People-First Approach
Utilities are investing millions of dollars in drones, automated monitoring systems and artificial intelligence applications. These tools offer unprecedented safety and operational advantages as grid complexities evolve – assuming crews willingly use them as intended.
New technology should make…
Assuming full responsibility for your well-being includes taking ownership of your physical condition.
Physiological Health for Safer Performance
If you’ve been following this series, you know that it was founded on a simple but powerful idea: personal accountability.
In Part 1, we discussed agency, or the degree to which you believe you are responsible for your own safety. Part 2 examined mental preparation, the “firmware” that governs h…
Overcoming Safety’s Blind Spot
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” -Sir Ken Robinson
Innately curious and hardwired to seek order, humans often grasp onto the latest ideas and inventions that help us satisfy our need to understand the world around us. Don’t believe me? Consider g…
Worksite Safety
Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees
Beneath every major American city lies a hidden electrical network that powers homes, hospitals and commercial industry. Manholes and vaults are the gateways to these underground systems, providing access to low-, medium- and high-voltage infrastructure essential to reliable power distribution. Bec…
Anatomy of a Medium-Voltage Splice
Open the trench, vault or manhole. Strip back the jacket. Expose the neutrals. Remove the semicon and insulation. Crimp the connector. Rebuild the conductor shield, insulation and semicon. Seal the outside.
This splicing routine eventually becomes second nature for medium-voltage cable splicers…
Spiritual Preparation for Safer Work
The previous articles in this series examined two factors that strongly influence personal safety. Accountability is the idea that meaningful improvement begins when workers accept responsibility for their own safety decisions. Through mental preparation, workers gain an understanding of the ways i…
Cable Identification and Cutting Safety for Medium-Voltage Splicers
A medium-voltage underground splicer’s ability to safely and correctly identify, test and cut cable is more than part of their job; it is a survival skill. These splicers must be trained to make their first cut remotely – every time – whether performing routine maintenance or responding to an emerg…
Anatomy of a Medium-Voltage Splice
Open the trench, vault or manhole. Strip back the jacket. Expose the neutrals. Remove the semicon and insulation. Crimp the connector. Rebuild the conductor shield, insulation and semicon. Seal the outside.
This splicing routine eventually becomes second nature for medium-voltage cable splicers…
Spiritual Preparation for Safer Work
The previous articles in this series examined two factors that strongly influence personal safety. Accountability is the idea that meaningful improvement begins when workers accept responsibility for their own safety decisions. Through mental preparation, workers gain an understanding of the ways i…
Cable Identification and Cutting Safety for Medium-Voltage Splicers
A medium-voltage underground splicer’s ability to safely and correctly identify, test and cut cable is more than part of their job; it is a survival skill. These splicers must be trained to make their first cut remotely – every time – whether performing routine maintenance or responding to an emerg…
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Confronting Confirmation Bias in Incident Investigations
Several months ago, my dad and I drove to Roanoke, Virginia, to watch my son compete in a collegiate boxing match. It was the kind of weekend that makes you grateful: time with family, a little adventure on the road, and a front-row seat to watch your child chase a dream.
One of the moments that has stuck with me most, however, had nothing to do with boxing. It was a lesson in how quickly the human mind can create stories that feel true in the moment yet aren’t rooted in reality.
The Missing Wallet
At one point during our drive, I pulled my wallet out of my pocket to pay a tollbooth fe…
Increasing Weather Events Require Increasing Safety Measures
The 2025 Guadalupe River flooding tragedy in Texas was not a surprise. Nor are the hurricanes, wildfires and other flooding events that continue to accelerate in frequency and intensity.
What is surprising is how many organizations still treat extreme weather as an external disruption rather tha…
Eliminate Hazard Awareness Delay
It’s 2 a.m. on an early fall day in Northern California’s Sierra foothills. The winter rains haven’t arrived yet. A large tree limb in the area snaps and falls on a distribution line, triggering a fault powerful enough to trip circuit breakers at a substation 15 miles away. Alarms sound in the comp…
‘I Am a Good Putter’: What Golf Teaches Us About Safety Success
During my trip to Glendale, Arizona, for the most recent iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo, I received the single greatest piece of golf instruction I have ever heard. Now I want to share it with you, particularly as it relates to safety.
But first, you may be wondering how I obtained such…
Be the Light
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
Light. We literally cannot live without it.
In addition to sustaining life, light can be used in various other ways, including helping us to see clearly and sanitizing unsafe conditions. That sounds…
Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention
The electric utility industry experienced some catastrophic events during the first quarter of this year, including the deaths of multiple employees. I always feel incredibly sad when I hear about another serious injury or fatality (SIF). My heart goes out to everyone who has been impacted by these…
Easing the Transition to Utility Safety Leadership
Our industry’s frontline workers are commonly promoted to supervisory positions in rapid fashion. Some struggle with the transition as they discover that their new role involves far more than increased compensation, a fancier title and the keys to a company pickup truck. This installment of “Voice…
‘Can I Be the Leader?’
Leadership continues to be a critical area of focus for utility safety and operations professionals. In my own career at Georgia Power, “Can I be the leader?” was a question I often asked myself and my employer. Now, in this installment of “Voice of Experience,” I am going to discuss the opportunit…
Don’t Cross That Line
In this installment of “Voice of Experience,” I am going to share a safety perspective that struck a real chord with me when someone offered it during a recent meeting. My goal in passing it along during this season of reflection is to prompt readers to contemplate and continue refining their safe…
May-June 2026 Q&A
Q: In the April-May 2024 issue, Incident Prevention responded to a reader’s question about the OSHA digger derrick exemption for licensed operators (see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/april-may-2024-qa/). Have you heard anything since then about exemption enforcement trends? For example, has OSHA indicated that it might more closely assess specific lifting activities?
A: OSHA 29 CFR 192…
March-April 2026 Q&A
Q: Why does an EPZ pole connection need to be close to the worker’s feet?
A: In an equipotential arrangement, if the bus is inadvertently energized, the length of the bonding cable from the grounded conductors to the structure will affect the voltage across the worker. The worker is only exposed if they contact the phases and the structure at the same time. This is also the case with neutrals…