Game-Planning for Safety

Given a relatively equal amount of talent on both sides, the sports TEAM (Together Everyone Accomplishes More) with the best game plan will likely win. Examining what champions – especially those that create dynasties – do well provides us with insight into achieving excellence in safety.

Job and Task Hazard Analyses
Most champions excel at scouting. They understand the strengths, weaknesses and tendencies of their opponents so well that they can predict what they will do in certain situations. This is fantastic news for us because our opponents – hazards and risks – are quantifiable and predictable. Apart from hazards like animals, we know exactly how they will behave, which makes it simple to game-plan for success.

We do this by developing a library of job and task hazard analyses to reference in developing our safety plans. This is accomplished by identifying hazards as sources of energy and identifying risk as how much energy there is or could be, along with how long workers will be exposed to the energy source. From there, we seek to eliminate and reduce hazards and risk as much as possible and then create multiple layers of protection through engineered and administrative controls and PPE.

Task and Work-Site Previews
Based on their scouting, sports TEAMs develop a game plan that includes plays to run and preferred matchups. For us, task and work-site previews create a project-specific or site-specific safety plan that dictates task-specific worker training and qualification, communication protocols, equipment and tool requirements, supervision and safety support, and work methods to be used.

Pre-Job Briefings
Coaches share the game plan with their players before the game starts and adapt the plan as necessary throughout the contest. It is during pre-job briefings that we share our game plan and explain how it will be implemented with specific role assignments. We should discuss hazards associated with the job, work procedures involved, special precautions, energy source controls, PPE requirements and emergency plans. In addition, we should anticipate what could go wrong and how to ensure things go right, especially during critical tasks. And do not discount the value of using the TWIN Model of Error Precursors from human performance to identify and mitigate people as hazards due to risk tolerance, perception and behavior. Successful pre-job briefings involve and empower everyone on the crew and focus more on mutual understanding than completing forms correctly.

Two-Minute Drills
No matter how well-thought-out and detailed a game plan is, it will need to be modified. That’s why sports TEAMs huddle before football plays and free throws in basketball. And that’s exactly why we should huddle and have two-minute drills at each change in location and after short delays and minor changes. We do this to discuss what’s going to happen at an exact work location for a defined time. This allows our work planning to be hazard and task specific. Two-minute drills are of critical importance and must be used frequently to supplement pre-job briefings. That’s because no 10-minute job briefing at the start of the day can anticipate and account for everything that will happen for the next eight or 10 hours.

Post-Job Briefings
Really successful TEAMs and players watch a lot of game film, and they don’t do it for entertainment. They critique their performance to determine what they missed in game-planning, what they could have done better, and what they did well that needs repeating. Similarly, militaries call these after-action reviews and use them effectively. But unfortunately, most of us don’t use this valuable learning tool. If you aren’t already, I strongly encourage you to begin conducting post-job briefings at the end of projects and at the end of each workday or the beginning of the next. Use them to discuss what went wrong, to generate ideas for improvement, and to positively reinforce what went right and behaviors that should be repeated.

Conclusion
To our detriment and with good intentions, the utility industry has done a fantastic job of making sure everyone completes a pre-job briefing each day and gets the documentation correct. Pre-job briefings are important, but they are a small part of a winning formula. If nothing else, I hope this article inspires you to combine pre-job briefings, two-minute drills and post-job briefings to make job briefings an ongoing process rather than singular events each morning. I’ll close with this reminder: Documents, paper and forms don’t save lives. Effectively communicated and executed game plans do.

You can learn more about each of the tools mentioned in this article by reading my book, “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle: Innovative and Practical Insights on the Art of Safety.” I also hope you’ll join me for the free webinar on March 6 at 11 a.m. Eastern, during which we’ll discuss how to game-plan for and achieve exceptional safety.

About the Author: David McPeak, CUSP, CIT, CHST, CSP, CSSM, is the director of professional development for Utility Business Media’s Incident Prevention Institute (https://ip-institute.com) and the author of “Frontline Leadership – The Hurdle” and “Frontline Incident Prevention – The Hurdle.” He has extensive experience and expertise in leadership, human performance, safety and operations. McPeak is passionate about personal and professional development and believes that intrapersonal and interpersonal skills are key to success. He also is an advanced certified practitioner in DISC, emotional intelligence, the Hartman Value Profile, learning styles and motivators.

About Frontline Fundamentals: Frontline Fundamentals topics are derived from the Incident Prevention Institute’s popular Frontline training program (https://frontlineutilityleader.com). Frontline covers critical knowledge, skills and abilities for utility leaders and aligns with the Certified Utility Safety Professional exam blueprint.

Webinar: Game-Planning for Safety
March 6, 2024, at 11 a.m. Eastern
Visit https://ip-institute.com/frontline-webinars/ for more information.