The Silver Needle Flash Fire Coverall is engineered for maximum protection during confined-space, short-duration thermal events. Its DuPont Nomex IIIA outer shell and Nomex/Lenzing quilted liner create a dual-barrier defense against extreme heat.

Unlike traditional gear, our patented integrated harness system is sewn directly into the garment. This design eliminates external compression, maintaining a loose fit that leverages airflow as a critical insulating layer. Because laboratory tests show that burn injuries increase every second a wearer remains in a garment after a thermal event, our integrated harness and fire-resistant closures are designed for rapid removal of the garment, reducing injury.

The suit features rugged hardware, including heavy-duty Nomex zippers with storm flaps and Nomex Velcro seals at the neck, wrists and ankles. For added utility, an optional Kevlar lanyard stores conveniently in a built-in shoulder pouch. With an ATPV of 60 cal/cm², this coverall exceeds NFPA 2112 standards and is UL certified. https://silverneedle.net

Designed for heavy-duty construction sites and oily workshop floors, the Ground Control provides all-day comfort to keep you focused on the task at hand. This 6-inch boot is constructed with Danner’s time-tested full-grain leather and 100% waterproof Danner Dry liner, allowing moisture to escape without letting water in.

Other key features include the Danner DuraGrip Outsole – made of durable TPU with a tread pattern that bolsters traction for slippery surfaces – and a Direct Attach Midsole, which bonds the outsole to the upper with machine-injected, thick polyurethane bonds that prevent delamination and deliver substantial cushioning. The Ground Control is also electrical hazard certified. www.danner.com

Hastings Fiber Glass Products has released a new Reciprocating Insulated Saw Extension (R.I.S.E.) designed to give lineworkers added reach, control and pruning versatility in the field.

Available as product 4006, the R.I.S.E. features a 6-foot insulated extension designed for use with a Milwaukee Hackzall (part 2719-20). The 4006 measures 81 inches overall and weighs 9 pounds.

Built with lineworkers in mind, the R.I.S.E. is designed to cut wood, aluminum and steel when using the appropriate blade. It can achieve approximately 120 cuts on 1-inch-diameter branches when used with a Milwaukee Hackzall and new 5-Ah battery.

Inner and outer poles can be disassembled for easy cleaning and testing. The fiberglass is rated at 100 kV per foot to meet ASTM F711. www.hfgp.com/reciprocating-insulated-saw-extension

Designed to increase user awareness when working around live electrical sources, Milwaukee Tool’s new BOLT Personal Voltage Detector delivers consistent alerts, easy operation and secure integration within the BOLT System.

This detector features a wide detection field and clearer alerts to help users quickly identify the presence of voltage. Its single‑mode operation eliminates sensitivity‑setting mistakes, ensuring reliable performance every time. For seamless integration, the Personal Voltage Detector mounts securely to the BOLT Front Mount and remains compatible with all Milwaukee BOLT safety helmets and hard hats, allowing users to secure multiple accessories simultaneously. It is powered by a USB‑C rechargeable internal battery and provides up to 32 hours of runtime. www.milwaukeetool.com

Warmer days demand smarter layers, and Tyndale delivers with the Workwear Hi-Vis Sun Shield Shirt (M074T), designed to keep workers cool, covered, compliant and visible, without compromising performance.

Made with a 6-ounce FRMC micro-pique knit fabric, this inherently flame-resistant shirt is lightweight, breathable and moisture-wicking for all-day comfort. It features reflective striping and ANSI 107 Class 3 compliance for high-visibility worksites while also providing PPE Category 2 arc flash protection and NFPA 2112-compliant flash fire protection. Built-in UPF 35+ sun protection adds another layer of defense against the elements. Functional details, including a three-piece hood and thumbholes, enhance coverage and ease of wear on the job. https://tyndalefrc.com

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 how you think, react and perform under pressure. And in Part 3, we explored spiritual health; that’s the internal code that guides your behavior when the right choice is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

This article addresses physiological health, which is the bedrock of the previous three factors. While many of us think of risk as external – voltage, heights, equipment – you must also consider your physical condition. No matter how well-trained or well-intentioned you are, your ability to think clearly, make good decisions and execute safely depends on your body’s well-being.

When Performance Breaks Down
Most incidents don’t originate at the jobsite. They begin to coalesce hours earlier due to poor sleep, missed meals, unmanaged stress and/or physical fatigue. By the time workers must make a critical field decision, the conditions shaping it are already in place. This means you must manage your biological risk in addition to any job risks.

Consider this scenario that plays out every day across our industry: A crew heads out early. One worker hardly slept, another skipped breakfast, and the third has elevated blood pressure that they haven’t checked or treated in years. By midmorning, the job becomes more complex than expected, and the crew members must quickly make a consequential choice. Yet their attention has waned, their reaction times have slowed, and their judgment isn’t as accurate as it could be. Often, slight differences like these are all that’s needed to prompt an incident.

We tend to attribute incidents to systems, procedures and hazards. These factors matter; however, there is another factor that is just as real yet far less discussed: the condition of the human being doing the work.

This is why OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health introduced the Total Worker Health framework (www.cdc.gov/niosh/twh/), which recognizes that safety cannot be separated from overall health and well-being. The framework expands our conversation from “How do we prevent accidents?” to “What is the condition of our employees when they face risk?”

Physiology Matters
At some point, every safety system relies on someone to recognize a hazard, interpret what they see and make a decision – capabilities that depend on cognitive performance: memory, concentration, information processing and motor function. According to a document published by Stanford Lifestyle Medicine (see https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BvbUpKErJLgeVuGHfy0RGSG6I_6XVkBe/view?pli=1), these capabilities are directly influenced by movement, nutrition, sleep and other lifestyle factors. One great resource I recommend is the book “Eat Move Sleep” by Tom Rath. You can check out a summary at https://app.philosophersnotes.com/note/eat-move-sleep-tom-rath.

The takeaway here is that good physiological health is a prerequisite for safe performance. While we have spent decades refining our organizational systems, the persistence of serious injuries and fatalities indicates that our systems are necessary but not sufficient (see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/when-the-system-isnt-enough-how-to-create-personal-motivation-that-saves-lives/).

Stanford’s Lifestyle Pillars
Stanford has identified seven pillars of lifestyle medicine that shape how we think, decide and perform: movement; nutrition; sleep; stress management; social engagement; cognitive health; and purpose. Not all of these are purely physiological. You’ll note that we addressed cognitive health and mental performance in Part 2 of this series (https://incident-prevention.com/blog/mental-preparation-for-safer-work/); Part 3 covered gratitude, purpose and meaning (https://incident-prevention.com/blog/spiritual-preparation-for-safer-work/). Social engagement supports stress regulation and behavioral consistency, reinforcing those earlier themes.

For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the Stanford pillars that most directly influence your physical readiness and safe performance in the field.

Movement and Exercise: Physical Capacity Under Load
Strength, balance and endurance determine how stable you are on structures, how well you handle equipment and how effectively you respond when something unexpectedly shifts. Many of us assume we are physically active enough, but research suggests that only a small percentage of individuals meet the recommended level.

I recently did two things to obtain an accurate assessment of my own physical status. First, I began tracking the frequency and length of my workouts using a fitness app on my watch. Then I asked a physical therapist to measure my movement capacity relative to my age. While not alarming, the results were not where I wanted them to be, which led to some personal changes: I bought some new fitness equipment, began to seriously schedule my workouts and set measurable goals. Simply put, once I could see where I stood, the responsibility to improve became mine.

Healthful Nutrition: Sustaining Focus and Energy
Nutrition is often discussed in the context of long-term health, but it has an equally important impact on daily performance. Poor dietary habits lead to fluctuations in energy, reduced concentration and slower cognitive processing, all of which affect job performance.

According to the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine document, more than 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, increasing the risk of conditions that degrade both health and performance. Stanford emphasizes a diet of nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods in appropriate portions.

To gain an accurate picture of my personal nutritional status, I took four steps. First, I completed a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan (see www.dexafit.com/blog2/dexafit-dexa-scan-netflix-documentary), which provided the most accurate possible measurements of my weight, lean muscle mass, body fat percentage and bone mineral content. Next, I completed a comprehensive blood panel through Function Health (www.functionhealth.com). The third thing I did was dig out earlier results from MyFitnessPal (www.myfitnesspal.com), an app that helps you track your macronutrient intake (i.e., protein, fat and carbohydrates). Lastly, I shared my results with Natalie Barriball, NMD, an Arizona-based naturopathic physician (www.drnataliebarriball.com).

Dr. Barriball took the time to carefully comb through all my test results and put them into perspective, an essential step that yielded clarity far beyond what I expected. My results were clear, though some were not what I expected, providing an objective picture of where I stood. That clarity directly influenced my decision to adjust my dietary habits, including essential supplements.

Restorative Sleep: Protecting Judgment and Reaction Time
Sleep is one of the most influential yet underestimated human performance factors. An inadequate amount impairs cognitive function, emotional regulation and resilience, which are critical to safety in high-risk environments. This can show up in subtle ways. For instance, a well-rested worker is more likely to pause and reassess a situation when something doesn’t feel right, while a fatigued worker is more likely to push forward, even as conditions change.

I have struggled with sleep for years. Consistent with my new focus on accurate measurement, I recently began using the sleep tracker on my watch (https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/track-your-sleep-apd830528336/watchos), making small adjustments such as limiting screen time close to bedtime, avoiding late meals and reading only paper-based materials to fall asleep. Each tweak has improved my results, though it remains an ongoing effort.

Stress Management: Maintaining Control Under Pressure
Stress has direct physiological effects that influence your attention, decision-making and emotional control. When stress is unmanaged, thinking narrows and reactions become less deliberate. That loss of control can be consequential in our line of work. Managing stress does not mean eliminating it; rather, proper management helps you regulate your response so that you remain composed when conditions deteriorate.

Closing the Gap
These pillars are not mandates, nor are they about perfection. They are areas in which honest assessment can reveal gaps between where you are and where you must be to perform at your best. Once those gaps are clear, the next step – as always – is yours to decide.

Data that directly links reduced incident rates to improvements across these pillars is still emerging. What we know for sure is that human performance plays a role in most serious injuries and fatalities. Further, physical factors directly influence how we think, react and make choices under pressure. This is one of the gaps our industry has been working to close: how to better account for the human factors that influence performance in the field.

What I’ve described in this article is not a departure from traditional safety but an expansion of it. As noted earlier, the Total Worker Health framework was developed with the understanding that (1) safety cannot be separated from the condition of the worker and (2) performance is shaped by more than rules, procedures and equipment.

Approaches like motivational interviewing reinforce a principle introduced at the beginning of this series: Lasting progress is not a product of being told what to do. It derives from clearly understanding your current condition and deciding for yourself what needs to change. The process is straightforward but not easy. You must self-assess honestly, realize where you stand and determine what you want to do differently, if anything. No one can make the choice for you.

Full Circle
That brings us back to where we started. Assuming total responsibility for your safety means more than following procedures and wearing the proper protective equipment. It also includes taking ownership of the condition you bring to work each day. How you sleep, eat, move and manage stress influence safety. They are not separate from it.

Professionals in other high-risk fields understand this well. Surgeons, pilots, professional athletes and special operations personnel do not leave their performance to chance, preparing deliberately and consistently because they know what is at stake. Given the daily risks in our line of work, every aspect of our preparation matters for our continued safety, health and wellness.

About the Author: Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC, is a recognized safety expert and principal of Applied Learning Science (https://appliedlearningscience.com). With deep academic and operational experience as a U.S. Navy veteran, substation chief and former utility executive, he blends real-world insight with evidence-based research to deliver practical, impactful safety solutions.

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 have taught me that when we search for an event’s root cause, we typically get what we aim at. By that, I mean humans can easily fall victim to confirmation bias, choosing to believe seemingly logical but erroneous theories rather than wrestle with uncertainty. But unless we use objective facts to determine what prompted an event, we risk making poorly informed decisions in its aftermath.

Cultivating Tomatoes
Let’s say we decide to develop controls and defenses to prevent recurrence of a catastrophic event. That is a good idea, right? But what if we focused instead on improving the conditions that contributed to the event? Doing so would likely eliminate our need for those initial controls and defenses. Seeking out and improving what I call “root conditions” surfaces different problems that demand alternative controls and barriers – and it tends to improve safety outcomes.

We can think about this in terms of planting tomato seeds. We don’t actually grow tomatoes, do we? Each seed already contains nearly everything a plant needs to flourish. Our job is to manipulate the environmental conditions that enable the seeds to germinate. Healthy plants will emerge given sufficient soil, water and sunlight. What happens when we recognize an unhealthy plant? It is generally understood that we must improve its conditions. We do not yell at the plant or tell it to fix itself. Why? Because we know that will not produce better tomatoes.

Creating and sustaining a healthy workforce culture demands a similar approach. Each employee is a proverbial tomato. For crews to grow and thrive, leaders must establish psychologically safe working conditions in which questions and candid conversations are encouraged. Curiosity is essential to lowering SIF statistics; dismissing or ignoring concerns is toxic to mitigation efforts.

Yet even equipped with this knowledge, we are still inclined to try fixing an employee’s behavior when we are unhappy with their performance, rather than fixing the conditions that prompted it. We must realize and regularly remind ourselves that every individual is the product of a lifetime of conditioning. Thus, performance improvements will require more than error reductions and additional controls. Management has a responsibility to help employees continue their professional development, which includes designing working conditions that allow them to succeed.

Regulatory Blind Spot
To shift our focus, we must spend time looking upstream to find the conditions that have produced unwanted events. This requires assessing both environmental and human factors, although industry regulatory standards have not caught up just yet. For example, per OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269(a)(3), “Information transfer,” a host employer must provide contract employers with the following prior to the start of work:

• Characteristics and conditions of the host employer’s installation related to the safety of the work to be performed.
• Information about the design and operation of the host employer’s installation that the contract employer needs to make required assessments.
• Any other information about the design and operation of the host employer’s installation that is known by the host, requested by the contract employer and is related to the protection of the contractor’s employees.

You will notice that these rules reference various installation conditions, but OSHA does not mention anything about the condition of the people performing the installations, who are naturally prone to distractions and errors.

Under the Microscope
To better understand how human behavior can impact working conditions and employee safety, review the image at the top of this page. Two petri dishes are filled with bacteria; notably, the scientific community calls each one a “culture.” Given the proper conditions, these bacteria will thrive, as you see on the left. On the right, an antibiotic hinders bacterial growth. Did you notice the tiny specks in the dark area around the pill? Those are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – commonly known as MRSA – which have been conditioned to resist the antibiotic.

The lesson here is that when we allow a toxin to persist, it can condition others to become toxins, too. Left unchecked, difficult employees will spread their toxicity to those around them. But this also means that other employees will form connections and achieve synchronicity through positive interactions, setting up conditions for improved safety outcomes.

Looking Farther Upstream
If you have ever helped a child use a swing, you understand that energy exists in the arc of their movement. We must be in sync with that energy to make the swing go higher and faster. Out of sync, however, all forward momentum will collapse, and we could absorb the existing energy. Likewise, management pushing frontline workers harder when the two groups are not in sync could produce harmful results.

Conducting a root cause analysis will rarely reveal all the conditions that existed leading up to an event. Yelling at the tomato plant or pushing the swing out of sync does not typically show up anywhere in a final investigation report. While these actions may be intended to increase employee compliance and conformity – which, incidentally, represent the lowest level of human potential – they can create toxic conditions that will not garner better results nor sustain a healthy workforce.

The most effective course of action when we are dissatisfied with a specific outcome is to look upstream (i.e., out of our immediate view) to determine the source of the problem. Too often, we allow unhealthy components of our organizational culture to persist for years. When I was a line foreman working for a large utility, for instance, I applied for a line supervisor position at one of the company’s remote outposts. During my third interview, the lead interviewer told me, “We are probably going to give you this job, but be warned. This garage was on the company radar as a bad place for nine years. We fired the guy who was the problem. If you put this place back on the radar, you will be looking for another job.”

I told the interviewers that it appeared I had it made. When they questioned my response, I replied, “It took you nine years to figure out that guy was no good – and I only have eight years left until retirement.”

In all seriousness, consider what kind of impact the “guy who was the problem” had on the employees at that outpost. Do you think he valued and prioritized their health and safety?

Our Job as Leaders
All of us should expect industry SIF statistics to remain largely unchanged until we (1) identify the conditions necessary for organizational cultures to thrive and (2) apply them at scale. Creating conditions that solely foster employee compliance and conformity robs individuals of their agency. A well-established correlation exists between loss of agency and poor mental health.

But what exactly is agency? At the end of each workshop I facilitate, I ask attendees to complete a three-question evaluation form. The final question asks, “OK, your turn, it matters: What do you think?” Everyone is given a half-page to write their answers. To date, I have received better than a 95% attendee response rate, with feedback ranging from a sentence or two to several paragraphs filling the entire half-page. I partially attribute this to the question being “clean” or unbiased; it does not ask for a response specific to the workshop. Posing simple questions to other people gives them permission to share their answers. That is agency.

As leaders, our job is to ask the workforce what they think, then listen and adjust to their feedback, creating conditions that foster employee success. Culture, performance and profits are lagging indicators of the conditions that produce them. By aiming upstream at condition design, we will also influence downstream outcomes.

Conclusion
In her book “Strong Ground,” Brene Brown wisely counsels readers to “resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist.” From a safety standpoint, this means it is no longer enough for us to identify an event’s root cause; we must also actively search for and improve the conditions that contributed to the event. This is a challenging task, particularly given that unhealthy conditions are frequently nearly invisible. Nevertheless, now is the time to begin. Employee lives are counting on it.

About the Author: William N. Martin, CUSP, NRP, RN, DIMM, is president and CEO of Think Tank Project LLC (www.thinkprojectllc.com) and SAFR LLC. A third-generation electric utility worker and medical professional with extensive experience in high-risk operations and emergency medicine, he served nearly 20 years in lineman, line supervisor and safety director roles. Additionally, Martin spent 23 years as a critical care flight paramedic and registered nurse with cardiology and orthopedic experience. He earned a Diploma in Mountain Medicine and was an instructor/trainer for the National Ski Patrol. Currently, Martin writes and speaks nationally about safety and human performance, with a special focus on unleashing human potential.

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. Because they also present some of the most hazardous conditions that utility workers regularly encounter, conducting thorough manhole and vault inspections is foundational to employee safety, system integrity and operational reliability.

Manholes and vaults are typically classified as confined spaces. Per OSHA 29 CFR 1910.146(b), a confined space is “large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work; and has limited or restricted means for entry or exit; and is not designed for continuous employee occupancy.” The utility industry also has an “enclosed space” classification, defined at 1910.269(x) as a “working space, such as a manhole, vault, tunnel, or shaft, that has a limited means of egress or entry, that is designed for periodic employee entry under normal operating conditions, and that, under normal conditions, does not contain a hazardous atmosphere, but may contain a hazardous atmosphere under abnormal conditions” (for more on confined and enclosed spaces, see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/the-skinny-on-confined-spaces/). These spaces can quickly become dangerous due to atmospheric hazards, energized equipment and structural instability. Without a proper inspection, workers who enter them could be incapacitated or even killed within seconds.

Understanding the Hazards
Manhole and vault inspections serve three essential functions: identifying hazards prior to personnel exposure; uncovering equipment damage and deterioration; and preventing failures that could lead to outages or costly repairs. Note that even newly installed vaults can harbor risks, reinforcing the need for disciplined inspections.

Atmospheric hazards – including oxygen deficiency, flammable gases and toxic contaminants – are among the greatest risks crews face when working in underground electrical spaces. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than half of annual confined space fatalities are linked to hazardous atmospheres.

Electrical risks are equally threatening. Energized cables, arc flash events, switch and cable failures, and stray voltage can cause severe injury or death. Physical hazards – think slips, trips and restricted movement – are amplified by poor lighting and uneven surfaces. Water intrusion may introduce additional dangers, such as energized conductive paths and insulation failure. In combination with limited entry and exit points, these issues can make rescue operations difficult and time sensitive.

A few procedural items must be addressed before an employee is authorized to enter and inspect a confined space. Manhole and vault entry must follow established confined space entry standards, including OSHA 1910.146 and other industry guidance (e.g., IEEE enclosed space procedures), which require employers to evaluate hazards, establish safe entry conditions and implement protective measures prior to worker entry.

Permit-Required Confined Spaces
The first step toward safe manhole or vault entry is to determine whether the space requires a permit.  A confined space qualifies if it contains or could contain hazardous atmospheres, engulfment risks or other serious threats. Once identified, the permit-required entry process must be followed. Employees will ideally be able to mitigate any hazards and remove the permit prior to beginning work, alleviating its constraints.

A structured three-person approach is essential to safe underground work. The authorized entrant performs work inside the space; an attendant remains outside, monitoring conditions and maintaining communication; and an entry supervisor verifies that all procedures are followed and conditions are safe. This layered responsibility system aids in mitigating risk and ensuring rapid response should conditions change.

Entry procedures begin with pre-job planning and a hazard assessment. The site must be secured, covers must be safely removed, and pedestrian barriers must be installed. In addition, atmospheric testing must be conducted before entry and continuously during the operation. Use ventilation to establish and maintain safe conditions, with rescue equipment in place prior to entry. These actions are mandatory, not optional, serving as critical safeguards against the unique dangers of confined spaces.

Gas Monitors
The modern gas monitor is a lifesaving device that provides real-time status of atmospheric conditions. It is the worker’s first line of defense against invisible confined space hazards.

A standard four-gas monitor measures oxygen content, flammable gases and vapors, and toxic air contaminants. To ensure accurate test readings, OSHA requires oxygen to be measured first, gases and vapors second, followed by toxic contaminants (see 1910.146(c)(5)(ii)(C)). Acceptable oxygen levels range from 19.5% to 23.5%; any flammable gases must remain at or below 10% of their lower flammable limit.

Proper gas monitor use involves capturing more than a single reading. Because gases can maintain different layers within a confined space, testing must occur at multiple levels (i.e., top, middle and bottom) prior to entry. Continuous monitoring is nonnegotiable as atmospheric conditions can rapidly change due to leaks, work activities and environmental factors. Outfit workers with personal monitors within their breathing zone to ensure immediate hazard detection. In addition, be sure to hang a gas monitor from the manhole rescue cage, dropping the hose into the hole just above the employee’s head.

5 Key Inspection Tasks
Once authorized to enter a confined space, workers must conduct a thorough, sequential inspection that includes these five critical steps.

1. Assess the site and identify all hazards. These activities begin at the surface with the crew evaluating the physical condition of the manhole or vault inside and out. Look for signs of damage, such as sunken covers, broken ladders and doors, cracks along the walls, water seepage and duct issues. Then confirm the location against system records and identify nearby utilities that could introduce additional hazards.

2. Evaluate equipment conditions. Once safe entry is established, shift attention to electrical infrastructure conditions. Equipment assessment is an essential component of the inspection process as it directly impacts safety and system reliability. Examine cables and terminations for signs of thermal damage, discoloration and deformation. Oil seepage, corrosion and physical stress can indicate underlying failures. Check splices, elbows and bushings for evidence of overheating or arcing. Verify the accuracy of cable identification tags.

Any unintended electrical presence inside a confined space can pose a serious hazard, so this step must also include stray voltage testing. Even minor abnormalities should be treated with caution as they could signify larger systemic issues. Early detection allows for corrective action before failures occur, protecting workers and equipment and reducing the risk of outages.

3. Remove water and debris. Common in underground spaces, water and debris must be cleared from the manhole or vault before an inspection or work begins. Standing water can compromise insulation, create conductive paths, obscure hazards, and increase the risk of electrical faults and equipment damage.

Prioritize pumping water out of the space, then remove dirt, trash, construction materials and any other debris. Doing so improves visibility, reduces trip hazards, allows inspectors to fully assess equipment conditions, and ensures that cables and terminations are not partially covered or submerged.

4. Confirm structural integrity. Evaluate the physical structure of the space to confirm that it can safely support workers and equipment. Any deficiencies must be reported to supervisors and/or engineering personnel and rectified before any work begins. Look for cracks, spalling and water intrusion in walls and ceilings, which could indicate deterioration or impending failure. Check ladders, covers and all other access points for stability and proper fit. Examine cable supports, pulling eyes and racking systems for wear and corrosion.

5. Document and report findings. Every observation, measurement and anomaly must be recorded in detail. This means completing inspection checklists, recording atmospheric readings and capturing photographs of unusual conditions. Documentation is a critical tool, providing a historical record that demonstrates regulatory compliance and informs future inspections as well as maintenance and engineering decisions.

Conclusion
Manhole and vault work presents a complex mix of physical risks, demanding careful pre-job planning, thorough analysis and strict adherence to established safe procedures. From atmospheric testing and monitoring to equipment assessment, structural evaluation and debris removal, each step of the inspection process plays a vital role in protecting workers and maintaining system reliability. Qualified professionals who approach every inspection with discipline and attention to detail have the power to transform these hazardous environments into controlled workspaces.

About the Author: Mark Savage is the owner of DeadBreak, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing underground distribution and transmission training, consulting and field services. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with over 25 years of experience in underground construction and emergency response, Savage is a credentialed journeyman cable splicer/lineman and qualified medium-voltage splicing trainer. Reach him at msavage@deadbreak.us.

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 these persistent events – often accompanied by executive attention, new metrics and a sense of urgency – yet many struggle to deliver meaningful harm reduction. This is rarely due to apathy or lack of effort, more commonly stemming from foundational assumptions that do not align with how serious incidents truly develop.

Failure Mode 1: Overreliance on Low-Severity and Lagging Data
Some SIF prevention programs are developed with the implicit assumption that reducing minor injuries will reduce serious ones as well. This intuitively appealing belief is rooted in traditional safety pyramid thinking. Historical operational data, however, consistently demonstrates that the causal pathways that lead to first-aid injuries are often unrelated to those that result in life-altering harm. When leadership attention is captured by frequent, low-consequence events, rare but severe risks may be left unmanaged, with potentially catastrophic consequences. In this way, prevention programs can deliver a false sense of control over SIF exposures.

Failure Mode 2: Vague Definitions
A second weakness lies in poor or inconsistent definitions of SIFs and high-potential events. Throughout industry organizations, it is not uncommon for classification criteria to be vague, subjective or inconsistently applied across business units. A high-potential event by one department’s standards may be categorized as routine by another department. Over time, classification decisions can be influenced by concerns about metrics, reputation or escalation requirements. Where definitions lack clarity and stability, data produced by the SIF prevention program becomes unreliable, inevitably eroding trust. The program cannot function as a learning system if those involved do not believe that events are categorized honestly and consistently.

Failure Mode 3: Focusing on Outcomes vs. Exposures
SIF prevention programs sometimes fail because leaders focus on injury outcomes rather than exposures. Serious injuries occur rarely, but exposure to high-risk conditions is often routine for frontline workers in the utility sector. Because many programs only analyze events after an employee has been harmed or narrowly avoided harm, leaders can miss opportunities to learn from everyday work with the same hazards. Effective SIF prevention requires visibility into where risk – including uncontrolled energy, weak barriers and degraded systems – lives day to day, not only where it manifests as injury. Without that shift, organizational learning remains reactive and incomplete.

Failure Mode 4: Assuming Effectiveness of Controls
Another common failure point of SIF prevention programs is the assumption that critical controls are effective simply because they exist. Programs often identify controls on paper but stop short of verifying how they perform under real operating conditions. While audits may confirm that a guard is installed, a procedure is written, or a training record is complete, they can fail to assess whether the control functions as intended when time pressure, fatigue, adverse environmental conditions or production demands are introduced. Over time, systems drift, workarounds emerge and barriers degrade. SIF prevention programs that do not demand active testing and verification of a control’s effectiveness in the field create overconfidence in protection that could fail when it is needed most.

Failure Mode 5: Fear and Blame
Fear and blame undermine a program’s effectiveness. Identifying an event as a SIF or a high-potential incident often triggers intense organizational scrutiny, formal investigations and disciplinary consequences. Leaders may react emotionally, driven by concern, accountability pressures and regulatory anxiety. Supervisors and workers quickly learn that labeling an occurrence as a high-potential event can bring personal risk. In turn, events may be softened, reclassified or not reported at all, resulting in the loss of valuable learning signals – those that reveal how close the system came to serious harm. A SIF prevention program cannot succeed in environments where silence feels safer than transparency.

Failure Mode 6: Fixating on Rule Violations vs. Decision-Making
Serious incidents rarely occur due to a single reckless act, typically emerging from a series of decisions that made sense to employees at the time given the information they had and the constraints and pressures they faced. Unfortunately, many SIF prevention programs fixate on rule violations rather than understanding decision-making. Programs that focus on rule compliance often ask who failed to follow a procedure rather than why the procedure was difficult or impossible to follow in context, an approach that overlooks production pressures, resource limitations, conflicting goals and normalization of risk. By simplifying complex failures into individual errors, organizations miss the opportunity to address systemic conditions that shape behavior and allow recurrence of serious harm.

Conclusion
SIF prevention programs fail when they manage indicators rather than exposure, learning and controls, prioritizing measurement over understanding and compliance over adaptability. Preventing serious harm requires leaders to confront how work is truly performed, how systems drift over time and how people make trade-offs in imperfect conditions. Organizations that succeed in reducing SIF risk shift their focus from counting injuries to understanding where risk accumulates, verifying that controls work as intended and creating environments in which learning is valued more than blame. A SIF prevention program not designed around these realities may appear robust on paper but leaves the most consequential risks largely untouched.

About the Author: Gina Vanderlin, CSP, CHMM, CIT, CUSP, is the customer operations health and safety program manager at PSEG Long Island. With over 15 years of experience leading EHS initiatives in high-reliability industries, she remains passionate about elevating safety from a compliance function to a strategic driver of culture, engagement and operational excellence. Reach Vanderlin at gina.vanderlin@psegliny.com.

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 employers are legally required to have a plan in place to protect all heat-exposed workers. It’s as simple as that. Confusion usually stems from the difference between state OSHA plans and federal rules. After reviewing state plans that include detailed heat illness prevention protocols, some industry professionals question why federal OSHA is silent on the issue.

But the agency has not been silent. While it’s true that they haven’t yet been able to establish a workable standard, their expectations are clear. States generally have an easier time establishing heat illness prevention rules because their smaller relative size simplifies the development and implementation of rules that address region-specific risks. Federal OSHA, on the other hand, must consider the wide-ranging exposures that exist throughout the United States, including in overseas territories.

To help Incident Prevention readers prepare their organizations for compliance, we’re now going to review some relevant history followed by an exploration of OSHA’s more recent heat illness prevention work. Specific rules haven’t arrived just yet, but that doesn’t change your safety obligations to your employees.

OSHA’s General Duty Clause
It was 1972 when the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first recommended development of an OSHA heat standard. Their suggestion was based on a critical review of scientific and technical data. OSHA responded by appointing the Standards Advisory Committee on Heat Stress in 1973; in 1974, committee members presented their recommendations for an occupational heat stress standard.

Throughout the decades, OSHA has issued heat-related guidance to employers, ultimately relying on the core expectations of the General Duty Clause as incentive. Located at Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the clause states that each employer “shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” Enforcement data reveals that federal OSHA used it as grounds to issue at least 348 heat-related citations between 1986 and 2023, but the agency cannot require employer abatement until they prove the hazardous nature of a specific workplace condition during an enforcement proceeding. In short, the General Duty Clause’s real teeth are reserved for post-incident enforcement.

Promulgating a written heat illness prevention standard would establish the hazard’s existence at the rulemaking stage, thus allowing OSHA to identify and require specific abatement measures. Currently, the General Duty Clause makes it difficult for the agency to ensure abatement before employees’ lives are unnecessarily endangered. The clause also largely forces OSHA to rely on expert witness testimony as proof that (1) a hazard exists and (2) feasible abatement measures will reduce or eliminate the hazard.

Per OSHA 29 CFR 1926.21, “Safety training and education,” employers must train employees in the recognition, avoidance and prevention of unsafe workplace conditions. The agency’s PPE standards require employers to conduct hazard assessments when determining the protective gear that exposed workers must wear. Yet heat is not specifically identified as a hazard in any OSHA standard, complicating the application of these rules.

Emphasis Program and Proposed Rulemaking
OSHA launched a national emphasis program on heat in April 2022, which was updated earlier this year (see www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/directives/CPL_03-00-024_0.pdf). Intended to encourage early employer intervention, the program targets specific industries whose workers are exposed to high-heat hazards.

Around the same time, the agency also issued Temporary Worker Initiative Bulletin No. 12 (see www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA4185.pdf), which addresses the rising number of heat illness and fatal heat exposures among temporary workers in the U.S.

Finally, on August 30, 2024, OSHA published a notice of proposed rulemaking for a standard titled “Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings” (see www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-08-30/pdf/2024-14824.pdf), taking a significant step toward federal heat protection for workers. The proposed standard would require employers in general industry, construction, maritime and agriculture to create plans to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplaces. Further, it would clarify employer obligations and the actions necessary to effectively protect employees.

The agency’s ultimate goal is to eliminate occupational injuries, illnesses and fatalities caused by heat exposure. Proactive employers should assume that most of OSHA’s proposal will eventually become standardized. In any case, the document contains solid guidance regarding the establishment of effective worker protection programs.

Preventive Activities
Heat illness prevention programs reflected in state OSHA plans often include the information and activities listed below. As you read, please note that anyone who uses this data is responsible for confirming its accuracy and ensuring the safety of any implementation efforts.

Watch Coworkers for These Symptoms

• Heat exhaustion: weakness, blurred vision, vomiting, dizziness, headache. Move the victim to a cool environment, loosen their clothing, provide fluids and call 911.
• Heat stroke: red face/skin; no perspiration when there should be; elevated body temperature; mental disorientation; convulsions; unconsciousness. Call 911; move the injured worker to a cool environment; elevate their feet; and apply cold packs to the back and sides of their neck, under their arms and between their thighs.
• Heat stress and heat cramps: thirst, stomachache, rash, soreness or weakness in the muscles, especially the arms and legs. Move the victim to a cool environment, encourage them to drink liquids and ensure they rest. Seek medical attention if their symptoms worsen or fail to subside.

Eat Well, Stay Hydrated

• Talk to your doctor(s) about dietary recommendations for heat stress prevention.
• Eat foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids to help your body regulate heat stress.
• Watermelon, cucumber, celery, kiwi and banana are just a few good sources of electrolytes, vitamins, fiber and water/hydration. Eat them to protect against and repair from heat stress.
• Avoid drinking excessive amounts of coffee. It is a diuretic, meaning it increases urine excretion.
• Drink at least one pint of water and one glass of fruit juice before beginning the workday.
• Sip water every 15 minutes throughout the day.
• Energy drink consumption is strongly discouraged (see the section below titled “Energy Drinks: What Employers Should Know” for more on this topic).
• Consume sports drinks like Gatorade to maintain healthy electrolyte levels. For optimal hydration, drink a ratio of three parts water to one part sports drink.
• Continue hydrating into the evening. Yes, technically beer is made with water, but as with coffee, alcohol also has diuretic effects.

Other Tips

• Maintain awareness of the jobsite’s heat conditions. Explore widely available weather apps that deliver timely heat risk warnings to your mobile device.
• Seek relevant reference materials from the American Red Cross, OSHA and NIOSH.
• Begin heat illness protocols when the jobsite temperature reaches over 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Adjust job scheduling or provide frequent breaks for exposed workers.
• Provide shade where practical. Make hard hat shades available; workers can use them to shield their head and neck from direct sunlight.
• During pre-job briefings, discuss the day’s potential for heat-related illnesses. Assess crew members for symptoms throughout your shift.
• Seek help as soon as you begin to feel heat stress effects.
• Consider contacting a local hospital to find out whether any of their doctors provide consulting services or deliver presentations on heat illness prevention.

Energy Drinks: What Employers Should Know
As I alluded to earlier, energy drinks can be dangerous, particularly when workers use them to cope with physical stress in hot environments. A 2015 report (see https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-study-one-energy-drink-may-increase-heart-disease-risk-in-young-adults) confirmed what hospitals had already been reporting for several years: that energy drinks – especially when consumed throughout the day as a means of coping with high levels of physical stress – can have detrimental health effects, including heart stress that has led to the death of otherwise healthy young adults. Today, numerous other studies cite similar concerns. Safety and health professionals should be reading this literature.

Energy drinks are widely available, largely unregulated and typically marketed to consumers as a quick way to increase productivity, metabolism, stamina, physical endurance and/or mental acuity. Commonly available brands include Rockstar; Red Bull; 5-Hour Energy; Monster; NOS; Full Throttle; and AMP. These beverages can contain caffeine; sugar; niacinamide; carnitine; amino acids; herbal and natural extracts; taurine; guarana; ginseng; vitamin B3, B6, B9 and B12; sucrose; glucose; inositol; and various preservatives.

Sports drinks are usually advertised as an option for rehydration and electrolyte replacement during periods of strenuous exercise. They typically contain sodium, potassium, chloride, and glucose or sucrose. Common brands include Gatorade, Powerade, Sqwincher and All Sport.

Drink Policies
Industry employers should consider developing policies regarding energy and sports drinks. Do your research and roll out effective training so that employees understand the organization’s obligation to ensure their safety.

Given that energy drinks present a recognized health and safety risk, an employer may choose to fully prohibit their storage and consumption on company premises. Sports drinks, on the other hand, should be recommended and made readily available to employees for electrolyte replacement purposes during times of heat stress. While generally recognized as safe, be sure to note that sports drinks can be overused as hydration therapy, posing a health risk to some individuals. For this reason, it is wise to limit their consumption. Hydration is best achieved by drinking water, and eating a nutritious diet will successfully replace electrolytes.

About the Author: After 25 years as a transmission-distribution lineman and foreman, Jim Vaughn, CUSP, has devoted the last 28 years to safety and training. A noted author, trainer and lecturer, he is a senior consultant for the Institute for Safety in Powerline Construction. He can be reached at jim@ispconline.com.

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 incidents.

I know I am not alone in asking why catastrophic industry events continue to occur, especially since most were preventable. It is also curious that while lineworkers are often trained in leadership and human performance early in their career, they rarely receive any refresher training. These are not one-and-done subjects. Continued training, I believe, will help to meaningfully lower SIFs rates among frontline workers. Employees must also be willing to speak up if they have any doubts about worksite or worker safety.

However, refresher training can be viewed as little more than an employer obligation. Complete the bare minimum and all is well for another year, right? Yet here is what I have learned: In all my years of investigating SIFs, far too many stemmed from inadequate cover-up and/or improper grounding – not because crews were not technically proficient but because of leadership and human performance issues.

I will tell you a brief story to explain what I mean. In June 1973, I experienced a serious flash that remains seared into my memory. There were various contributing factors, including a human performance failure on my part. After successfully installing a set of 1200-amp gang switches in an energized 12-kV circuit without issue, I lost focus and became a bit complacent. So, when our crew moved on to the next task (taking a little slack out of an improperly sagged primary), it seemed easy in comparison – until I failed to properly install a split blanket on a dead-end and nearly burned up myself and my pole buddy. Other crew members who had watched me working never said anything about the blanket. Were they paying attention?

People sometimes say that industry accidents occur because line work is a dangerous occupation. Forbes consistently points to construction work and electrical power-line installation/repair as two of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America (see www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/workers-comp/most-dangerous-jobs-america for one example). What I can tell you from decades of experience is that the tasks lineworkers perform are almost always hazardous, yes, but most employees who have been hurt or killed on the job also deviated from accepted safe work practices. Noncompliance with OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269(l), (m) and (n) – particularly regarding minimum approach distances and cover-up – continues to be a major contributing factor to SIF events. Other factors include switching and tagging errors and failing to test and verify whether equipment is de-energized.

What Comes Next?
Several years ago on a Thursday, four industry workers were killed on four different jobsites in four different states. Each death was the result of deviating from one or more of the regulations I just mentioned. Employee noncompliance with industry regulations reflects failed leadership at nearly every level.

Here is a question to think about: Once an employer has provided employees with the training required by 1910.269(a)(2), what should come next? What more can we do to reinforce training and help crews level up? The next time you investigate an incident or near miss, consider how many employees were present when it happened. Was a dedicated observer in place? Who and where was the person in charge when the event happened? Was a job briefing conducted prior to the start of work? Briefings are an OSHA requirement and a critical tool, providing time for crews to clarify the who, what, where, when, why and how of the job.

Crew leadership skills are essential as well because the foreman or person in charge is not always the one who spots a problem – it is often the individual performing the work or a nearby crew member. A lineworker’s technical skills and field experience are enormous assets provided they have been trained in the safest work methods and consistently comply with regulatory standards, which are minimum safe work practices. It is up to foremen and other members of management to encourage employee use of stop-work authority when they notice an issue. This is key to preventing incidents and near misses.

Model the Way
If you are an experienced journeyman, you are an instructor and a trainer whether you like it or not. Junior lineworkers and apprentices observe you regularly. Ask yourself, do you consistently demonstrate the safest approach to your work? If an apprentice witnessed you engage in an unsafe practice but nothing bad happened, is it possible they might try that approach in the future? By using the safest method every time, you will never have to worry about who is watching.

Here is one last piece of advice I would like to share: Rubber gloves are a lineworker’s best friend. I say that because I have never investigated the death of a lineworker who was wearing their gloves. Remember to always test and verify that equipment is de-energized before beginning work. As you may have noticed, OSHA never uses the word “dead” in their regulations; only “energized” or “de-energized.” Keep that fact in mind and wear your gloves whenever necessary.

About the Author: Danny Raines, CUSP, is an author, an OSHA-authorized trainer, and a transmission and distribution safety consultant who retired from Georgia Power after 40 years of service and now operates Raines Utility Safety Solutions LLC.

Learn more from Danny Raines on the Utility Safety Podcast series. Listen now at https://utilitysafety.podbean.com!

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 1926 Subpart CC, “Cranes and Derricks in Construction” – as its title suggests – applies only to construction activities. Subpart CC covers a contractor’s crane operators when they are performing upgrades, such as change-outs to taller poles or new equipment. Like-for-like infrastructure replacements are considered maintenance work, which is covered by 1910.269.

The cranes and derricks standard includes one notable exemption: Although a digger derrick operator must be qualified to set poles, pole-related hardware and pole-fed transformers, the operator is not required to be licensed.

We have not heard about any issues regarding OSHA and storm work, which is considered new construction. Still, in order to provide the right answers to an OSHA representative, contractors must maintain heightened awareness of regulatory rules.

We are aware of a couple of lawsuits pertaining to construction incidents during digger derrick operations. One incident resulted in a hospital stay, the other in a death. Although they requested employer records documenting each operator’s training, neither the OSHA Certified Safety and Health Officials (CSHOs) involved nor their attorneys have formally inquired about the operators’ licensing.

OSHA’s Office of Construction Services reads Incident Prevention magazine, which we know because they send us acknowledgements from time to time. For instance, when we published information about the digger derrick exemption in 2024, someone from the office reached out to confirm its accuracy. They have also said no special enforcement is planned but relayed that since Subpart CC went into effect, the agency has been educating CSHOs via CPL 02-01-057, a compliance directive whose stated purpose is to provide “guidelines for enforcement procedures and inspection guidance conducted for equipment covered by Subpart CC” (see www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/directives/CPL_02-01-057.pdf).

Today, all utility safety and operations professionals need to understand the rules. On more than one occasion, bucket operations have caught the attention of passing CSHOs who noticed an immediate danger to life or health. We should count on the same issue with digger derricks; OSHA compliance officers might get curious if they drive by a derrick with its boom in the air.

Due to the lack of a basket test, however, truck cranes also rated as manlifts will likely be the bigger issue. Employers could run into trouble defending themselves if OSHA can’t decide whether a piece of equipment is a manlift or a crane with a basket attached to it. Incident Prevention recommends that all employees be trained to understand the differences between the two.

We are familiar with an instance in which crew members did not use their remote controls; instead, an operator in the cab ran the basket. The crew members explained that they preferred radio contact with the crane operator because the remote controls weren’t fully reliable. OSHA refused to accept that the machine had been used as a manlift due to the operator’s location. They eventually decided that the crew had been using a crane with a basket and cited the contractor for failure to perform required basket proof tests.

Q: Our mechanics just showed us an advertisement for Altec’s EZ-Egress. Since it’s an insulating aerial platform with a door, how does that square with the ANSI A92.2 gloving bucket rule that prohibits access doors?

A: We’ve been exchanging emails with Altec regarding the numerous questions we’ve received about their new EZ-Egress system. We will likely continue speaking with them as system adoption grows across the industry. Current and prospective Altec customers are also free to reach out to the company directly with their questions.

If the EZ-Egress buckets are a success, you can bet other bucket truck manufacturers will follow suit. But there is one issue: Per the ANSI A92.2 standard, Class B buckets are not permitted to have access doors or drainage holes because those items can contribute to contamination and increase flashover risk. Note that ANSI requires high-resistance covers over all metal components around the basket, such as controls and winches.

The A92.2 standard further states that as with material-handling jibs and winches, fiberglass buckets are not insulating unless they are periodically tested just as liners are. The boom is the bucket’s only insulating section. Tested rubber gloves or hot sticks must serve as the worker’s primary means of protection.

To confirm its electrical integrity, Altec tests a bucket like a liner, first ensuring that all conductive components are adequately covered. A foil test using electrodes inside and outside the bucket is then conducted on its entire circumference, including the substantial door. This will require employers to rewrite their protocols for bucket use and the work the trucks can perform.

Lastly, we confirmed with Altec that the company’s rollout advertisements do not mention bucket categories or insulating values, but our understanding is that Category B gloving buckets featuring the EZ-Egress system will eventually be available.

Q: When working in your hooks, what is the correct method for grounding on a single wood transmission pole?

A: Verify that the pole bond is continuous from the static to earth. As you work your way up the pole, check for absence of voltage on the nearest phase conductor. Attach one end of the first ground to the pole bond/bracket. With a shotgun, attach the first ground to the nearest phase. Continue up the pole, attaching the grounded phase to the next closest phase. At the top, connect the last grounded phase to the static.

Q: When working from an insulated bucket, what’s the best grounding method on a single wood pole?

A: The grounding method should be the same whether the worker is in hooks or a bucket, especially if the bucket worker could find themselves between a grounded phase and a pole/arm/string at a different potential, which is possible where clearances are close (e.g., 69 kV and below). Pole bonds usually prevent that but cannot be fully trusted. For the best result, make an intentional connection.

Q: What’s the best way to ground on a single steel pole while working from an insulated bucket?

A: A single steel pole presents the same hazard as a single wood pole. The bond connection can be made using welded brackets, dead-end vangs or grounding bracket clamps. You can use threaded inserts if they are tight to the steel structure.

Q: What’s the best practice for grounding from the pole when the ground electrode is the static at the pole-top?

A: Every employer must address their construction standards and practical requirements for bonding in a worker. Many transmission poles are down-grounded with a three-strand #7 or #2 copper pole bond down to a ground rod cluster, butt wrap or plate all the way up to the static.

We do not recommend climbing to the top of the pole. The most practical approach is to use the pole bond for the initial ground connection. Then, move to the closest phase after testing for the absence of voltage and work upward to ground the next-closest phase. The top phase is often grounded to the static, which may prompt you to ask whether circulating current has formed. “Not if you are bracket grounded” is the closest answer we can provide. Figures 4 and 5 at IEEE 1048 4.2.2 illustrate voltage collapse with a single set of grounds. Brackets will close a completed circuit when they are on the grounded conductor and the nearby induction source supports magnetic coupling, setting up magnetic current circulation in the grounds.

A static involved in any work must be well-bonded to the pole-top. Lineworkers could be shocked (capacitive coupling) or electrocuted (magnetic coupling) if they are located between the static and pole where bonding is compromised or, in some cases, where the static is purposely insulated from the pole without bonding (yes, some utilities are doing that).

Do you have a question regarding best practices, work procedures or other utility safety-related topics? If so, please send your inquiries directly to kwade@utilitybusinessmedia.com. Questions submitted are reviewed and answered by the iP editorial advisory board and other subject matter experts.

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 give you some options during our free July 8 webinar.

Now, let’s go a step further and imagine a world in which we regularly incorporate music into safety-related training, making sessions more interesting, fun and engaging. Maybe an apprentice plays a song during a job briefing, then leads a discussion about how its lyrics relate to worksite safety. Or perhaps a crew leader shares a favorite song at the start of a monthly safety meeting, explaining its connection to hazard mitigation.

Setting the Stage for Synchrony
Several years ago, during a session at the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo, William Martin, CUSP, explained that playing music as trainees enter a room creates synchrony among the group. Typically, he said, this results in greater audience participation and more impactful training. At the same conference, Brent Jeffries brilliantly played Journey’s song “Wheel in the Sky” at the start of his session on “The Energy Wheel Reinvented.”

We decided to try this tactic with a group that we were meeting with twice weekly for two months. For the first two meetings, we played a strategically chosen song as people entered the room, which was followed by conversation about the song’s relevance to the training content. We were pleasantly surprised when some group members began suggesting songs and volunteering to lead future meetings.

Because that experiment created so much engagement, we developed a full playlist for the Frontline training program. We’ll share the list during the July webinar; in the meantime, you can check out a handful of the songs below. As you review them, consider how often you find yourself humming a tune. Then think about which of these training approaches you would find more effective as a trainee: (1) an instructor delivering a lecture about the first principle of human performance improvement (i.e., people are fallible and even the best make mistakes) straight from the U.S. Department of Energy’s HPI handbook or (2) a group discussion about song lyrics that reflect our flawed humanity. In our experience, there isn’t a high likelihood that a worker will speak up because they memorized a human performance principle, but they just might speak up to recite some of these memorable song lyrics.

“Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins
Key lyrics: “Out along the edges, always where I burn to be. The further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.”

Suggested use: During training sessions on risk tolerance. These lyrics are a great way to remember that we must identify hazards as specific energy sources and quantify risk as the amount of energy. Mitigating hazards keeps crews off the highway to the danger zone.

“Thunderstruck” by AC/DC
Key lyrics: “I was caught in the middle of a railroad track. I looked ’round and I knew there was no turnin’ back.”

Suggested use: As a reminder that every job task includes a critical step. Without an above-the-line work plan – one that’s confirmed safe before work begins – you could be thunderstruck.

“Superstition” by Stevie Wonder
Key lyrics: “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.”

Suggested use: Prompting employees to verify assumptions. For instance, ask yourself and your TEAM (Together Everyone Accomplishes More), “Are we good at what we do or have we been lucky? How do we make our lucky good and our good great?”

“I’m the Problem” by Morgan Wallen
Key lyrics: “You hate that when you look at me, you halfway see yourself.”

Suggested use: When discussing circles of control, influence and concern. Good or bad, attitudes are contagious. This line from Wallen’s song is an excellent cue to look in the mirror the next time you don’t like what someone else is saying or doing. Are they the problem, or are you?

“Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” by Mel McDaniel
Key lyrics: “Down on the corner by the traffic light, everybody’s looking as she walks by. They turn their heads and they watch her till she’s gone.”

Suggested use: Helping workers focus on their tasks. Interruptions and other distractions are error precursors that negatively impact decision-making and overall safety.

“Human” by The Human League
Key lyrics: “Human, born to make mistakes.”

Suggested use: As a reminder that safety plans must be designed to manage controls and reduce errors. Plans that rely solely on people working perfectly will ultimately fail, no matter how skilled those people are or how hard they try.

Conclusion
Our objective in writing this article is to challenge readers to find ways to boost interest and participation in workforce training. The two of us don’t have all the answers, but we believe this approach is worth testing across the industry. Try it out, then join us for the July webinar to ask questions and share what you’ve learned. We look forward to seeing you there.

About the Authors: 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.

Doug Hill, CUSP, is a retired lineworker and safety culture champion with nearly 40 years of utility industry experience. He currently delivers training through the Incident Prevention Institute.

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

Legal Disclaimer: The music and playlists mentioned in this article are intended solely as conceptual examples for training and educational purposes. Using music in a commercial, corporate or public business setting — including training sessions and workplace environments — typically requires specific public performance licenses (e.g., from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or GMR) or a commercial streaming subscription. Standard personal streaming accounts (such as personal Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube accounts) do not permit commercial or public use. Readers are solely responsible for ensuring compliance with all applicable copyright laws and licensing requirements before playing music in their own business operations.

Webinar: Our Frontline Playlist
July 8, 2026, at 11 a.m. Eastern
Visit https://ip-institute.com/frontline-webinars/ for more information.

In this episode, Danny Raines discusses the “100 Days of Summer,” a critical period spanning roughly from May 20th to September 10th. During this timeframe, approximately 60% of all major accidents and fatalities occur. The conversation covers the severe dangers of distracted driving , the catastrophic risks of head-on collisions and intersection accidents , and the life-saving importance of using seatbelts. For utility workers facing heightened workloads, the episode highlights the necessity of proper work zone setups , strategies to mitigate heat exhaustion while wearing PPE , and the critical requirement to adhere to the 2024 ASTM updates for testing insulated gloves.

Key Takeaways

• The period between May 20th and September 10th accounts for roughly 60% of all major accidents and fatalities for the entire year.

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injuries in the country.

• Approximately 40% of all vehicle crashes occur at intersections.

• While head-on collisions make up only 3% to 9% of crashes, they account for around 33% of traffic-related deaths.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently introduced a new program focused on preventing heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

• Due to the 2024 ASTM update, electrical gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is the “100 Days of Summer” and why is it a significant time of year?

A: The “100 Days of Summer” refers to the time frame between approximately May 20th and September 10th. It is highly significant because roughly 60% of all severe accidents, vehicle crashes, and workplace fatalities throughout the entire year happen during this specific window.

Q: What are the specific risks and statistics associated with not wearing seatbelts?

A: In fatal highway crashes, half of the victims are not wearing safety belts. When individuals are unbelted, they often become projectiles inside the car, making the risk of injury three times higher for passengers in the back seat and two times higher for the driver.

Q: What precautions must utility workers take regarding PPE and heat during the summer months?

A: Utility workers must stay hydrated by drinking water and electrolytes instead of energy drinks. Even when it is hot and uncomfortable, workers must never remove necessary cover-up equipment. Furthermore, workers must strictly track their PPE testing, as the 2024 ASTM update mandates that insulated gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

#100DaysOfSummer #UtilitySafety #IncidentPrevention #DistractedDriving #LinemanSafety #PPETesting #Lineman #Linemen #Lineworkers

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Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Pantelides and Gary Percy from Telesteps to discuss the next evolution of climbing safety. While traditional fiberglass ladders have been the industry standard for decades, Telesteps is disrupting the market with their patented, DuPont Kevlar non-conductive telescoping ladders. Engineered for use near energized electrical systems, these ladders are 25–30 lbs lighter than traditional models and compact enough to fit in the back of a small van.

We dive into the history of the company—from manufacturing aircraft-grade aluminum tools for the U.S. Military to using the same ballistic materials found in NASA’s Artemis II shield. Learn how these precision tools are improving ergonomics for fleet professionals and why “big when you need it, small when you don’t” is the future of utility safety.

Learn more about their full range of products at: https://telestepsladders.com

Key Takeaways

• The Kevlar Advantage: Unlike fiberglass, which can dry out and fracture over time, Telesteps’ DuPont Kevlar ladders are ballistic-grade, non-conductive, and built to withstand extreme weather and heavy use.

• Revolutionary Portability: These ladders retract to under 30 inches, allowing utility crews to downsize their vehicles and save on fuel costs without sacrificing reach.

• Safety First Engineering: Equipped with safety indicator windows that show when the rungs are locked, a “One-Touch” slow-close release to prevent pinched fingers, and pivoting silicone feet for a sure grip on any surface.

• High Load Capacity: The Kevlar A-frame model holds a Type 1AA duty rating of 375 lbs, while the extension models meet Type 1A (300 lbs) standards, surpassing OSHA requirements.

• Built for Longevity: With a claim rate of only 0.01%, these ladders are designed to be “the last ladder a company buys” if maintained properly.

#UtilitySafety #ElectricalSafety #Telesteps #KevlarLadder #JobsiteSafety

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Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

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 fee. But instead of returning it to my pocket afterward, I set the wallet down elsewhere in the vehicle. Later, after we stopped at a rest area to use the facilities, I was heading toward the vending machine to purchase a soft drink when I realized my wallet was missing from my pocket. I hurried back to the truck as panic set in. My dad and I searched the floorboards, the seats and the ground around the parking spot. Nothing. My wallet was gone.

Almost immediately, my mind began jumping to conclusions. Maybe I’d left the wallet on my lap, I thought, and it fell as I exited the truck. But who had picked it up? I remembered a woman emptying a trash can near our truck. Then I considered the two men we held the door for on the way inside the rest area. Suddenly, I had constructed a whole story in my head: The woman found the wallet, the men noticed, and together they split the contents. I didn’t have any evidence or facts, just a story that felt true. So, I canceled my debit and credit cards and resigned myself to relying on my dad to fund the rest of the trip.

During the ride home, I was digging through the deep center console of my dad’s truck to find a phone charger when suddenly, there it was: my wallet, wedged into a corner where I hadn’t thought to look. Almost just as suddenly, all of my suspicions evaporated.

Confirmation Bias
Throughout the remainder of the drive, I could not stop thinking about how quickly my brain had determined blame and spun a supporting story. I truly believed my wallet was gone, but my certainty wasn’t grounded in reality. That’s an issue that can also arise during incident investigations.

After an event occurs, we want fast answers to our questions. What happened? How did it happen? Who’s responsible? In our rush to make sense of things, we risk filling in the blanks with our assumptions, potentially creating false narratives that validate our suspicions. This is confirmation bias at work. Essentially, once we’ve told ourselves a story that makes sense to us, our brains are hardwired to seek evidence that supports it while ignoring what doesn’t. But an investigation that confirms unsubstantiated ideas merely closes the case. It doesn’t lead to real learning.

A Different Approach
Traditional approaches to safety investigations often focus on determining who failed, which rarely paints the full picture. People seldom head into their workday hoping to make mistakes or cause harm. Their choices seem logical to them in the moment given their environmental conditions, job pressures and available tools. When we skip straight to blame, we miss opportunities to uncover and address systemic weaknesses, pressures and blind spots. We create neatly packaged explanations that feel right but omit the truth – just as I did with my “missing” wallet.

Over time, I’ve loved having conversations with William “Billy” Martin, CUSP, because he emphasizes the value of learning and context over accusations and blame. Billy will tell you that when something goes wrong, the most important question we must ask is not who made a mistake but how the choices preceding the incident seemed logical to those who made them. That shift in perspective helps us move beyond stories into reality, enabling deeper management insight into the complexities of frontline work.

My Challenge to Utility Safety Professionals
Incident investigations are intended to uncover facts, not prove someone’s theory. The process can be slow; it requires curiosity, humility and patience. With that said, here’s a three-pronged challenge I’d like to pose to all safety leaders reading this:

1. Resist the urge to close an investigation using the first story that makes sense.
2. Ask questions that reveal conditions at the time of the incident.
3. Guard against confirmation bias by actively questioning your assumptions.

Conclusion
I laughed when I found my wallet inside the truck’s center console, but I also felt the sting of painting strangers in the worst possible light simply because I wanted a quick explanation.

In our line of work, the cost of creating stories is far greater than any minor personal embarrassment. We potentially miss learning opportunities that could ultimately enhance employee safety. So, the next time something goes wrong on the job, keep in mind that the first story we tell ourselves after an event occurs is rarely wholly accurate. Push yourself to look deeper. Challenge your assumptions. Doing so could make the difference between a recurring incident and a breakthrough in prevention efforts.

About the Author: Jamie Conn, CLCP, is a safety professional with over 20 years of experience working as a lineman for Blue Grass Energy Electric Cooperative. He earned a theology degree and is passionate about people, purpose and driving cultural change rooted in real-world experience.

CM Labs Simulations recently announced its Bucket Truck Simulation Curriculum, the industry’s first and only simulation-based training offering of its kind.

Developed in collaboration with Altec and delivered through the Intellia Workforce Training System, the curriculum is now available to utility companies, contractors, unions and training institutions preparing operators for work at height.

The Bucket Truck Simulation Curriculum gives operators a progressive training path that moves from basic controls through outrigger positioning, bucket navigation in tight spaces and jib-assisted lifts. Developed with authentic Altec ISO-Grip controls, the curriculum helps trainees build familiarity with the same control interface they will use on the truck. https://cm-labs.com

Versatility is built into the blueprint of this new Transformer Reversible Vest, which is designed to adapt to changing job conditions without slowing you down. One side delivers an ANSI 107 Class 2 hi-vis yellow shell with segmented reflective striping. Flip it, and you’ve got a warm, low-profile navy fleece that traps heat and cuts the bite of shifting weather. This two-in-one design means fewer layers to haul, less downtime spent swapping gear, and more control over your comfort and appearance. Built with inherently FR/AR materials, the vest provides dual hazard protection regardless of which side faces out. It also features mirrored handwarmer pockets, zippered chest storage and a drop-tail hem for added coverage. https://bit.ly/41R4mz2

Texas811, the nonprofit organization that manages the state’s call-before-you-dig system, has launched Texas811 Guardian. The innovative technology uses distributed fiber-optic sensing to turn existing fiber-optic lines into real-time monitoring systems that detect excavation activity, preventing damage before it occurs.

To identify urgent issues, the patent-pending Guardian program directly integrates fiber-optic sensing alerts for excavations into the active Texas811 ticket database. An alert is sent to Texas811 when an excavation is detected. Guardian then immediately queries the system to check for an active 811 ticket. If “yes,” the system remains silent; if “no,” Guardian’s technology promptly notifies utility operators of an unauthorized excavation that could pose a significant threat. They are given an exact location and excavation type (mechanical or manual), enabling appropriate resource deployment to protect their underground lines. https://texas811.org/guardian

Seraphina Safety Apparel delivers advanced arc flash-protective base layers engineered specifically for women and men, combining uncompromising safety with exceptional comfort. Designed to be worn next to skin, Seraphina garments provide superior protection while remaining lightweight, breathable and remarkably soft.

Seraphina products are built with innovative, nontoxic materials that actively wickmoisture away from the body, resulting in a cooling, quick-drying base layer that keeps workers comfortable and focused throughout long shifts in high-risk settings. Seraphina is also committed to inclusive design, offering thoughtfully tailored fits that meet the unique needs of women without compromising performance or protection.

Made from fabric that exceeds industry standards, Seraphina garments ensure reliable defense against arc flash hazards while enhancing wearability and compliance. www.seraphinasafety.com

TRUCE Software recently announced full availability of its next-generation connected employee and driver safety platform. Six integrated modules deliver a comprehensive approach to managing mobile devices, driver behavior, performance, vehicle health and field team safety.

At the heart of the platform is ENFORCE, TRUCE’s patented engineering control that automatically eliminates device distraction behind the wheel. When a vehicle reaches driving speed, ENFORCE automatically restricts access to distracting apps, calls, texts and notifications. There is no opt-in, override or reliance on employee discipline. ENFORCE operates seamlessly in the background on both iOS and Android devices and restores full device functionality as soon as the vehicle stops. https://trucesoftware.com/road

Read the article: https://incident-prevention.com/blog/confronting-data-bias-to-improve-safety-outcomes/

Effective mitigation requires leaders to regularly audit data, standardize definitions and measurement practices, and create psychologically safe reporting environments.

This podcast episode features Gina Vanderlin, CUSP, CSP, CHMM, CIT, Health and Safety Program Manager at PSEG Long Island and a self-professed “Safety Alchemist”. In a deep dive with host Kate Wade, Gina explores how safety professionals can transform raw data and standard procedures into meaningful organizational change. The conversation focuses on her Applied Alchemy article series for Incident Prevention magazine, specifically highlighting the hidden dangers of data bias and the evolving safety risks associated with new energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries.

Key Takeaways

• The Concept of Safety Alchemy: Rather than just following compliance-based checklists, a “safety alchemist” blends diverse disciplines—such as behavioral science, decision science, and engineering—to transform information into actionable insight.
• The Evolution of Battery Hazards: As utilities integrate EVs and grid storage, employers must reconsider hazard communication. Batteries often bypass traditional scrutiny because they are classified as “articles,” but damaged or failing batteries introduce significant chemical and fire risks.
• Data Bias in Safety Management: Bias is a natural human trait, but in safety data, it can lead to “ghost” weaknesses. Gina identifies five key biases—survivorship, selection, measurement, historical, and algorithmic—that can cause a safety system to drift away from reality.
• The “Geographic Presumption”: Under a new OSHA letter of interpretation (Jan 2026), injuries caused by personal devices (like e-cigarettes or personal chargers) in the workplace are generally considered work-related and recordable.
• Improving Decision Quality: The common thread across all safety domains is decision quality. Improving how workers interpret information and how leaders prioritize resources is the most effective way to address the plateau in Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) rates

Questions & Answers

Q1: How does Gina Vanderlin define “Decision Quality” in the context of utility safety?

A: Gina defines it as the core issue connecting diverse safety topics. It involves how individuals and organizations interpret information to make choices. If decisions are made based on flawed assumptions or biased data, the entire safety system can fail to address real-world risks.

Q2: What is a specific example of how data bias has physically impacted safety training?

A: Gina points to CPR training, noting that 95% of mannequins are anatomically male. This lack of representative data creates a “modesty deterrent” and technical discomfort, resulting in women being 14% less likely to receive CPR during a public medical event.

Q3: What does Gina suggest is the biggest pitfall for organizations rebranding their programs as “SIF-focused”?

A: The pitfall is rebranding on paper without actually improving the quality of investigations or examining the decision-making conditions that led to the exposure. Simply changing the name of a near-miss program doesn’t change the safety outcome if the underlying system remains the same.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#UtilitySafety #SafetyAlchemy #DataBias #OccupationalHealth #IncidentPrevention #EHSLeadership

In this hard-hitting and deeply personal session, industry veteran Danny Raines, CUSP, challenges the “normalization of deviation” in the electrical utility industry. Drawing from decades of experience in the field, as well as his perspective as a pilot, Danny explores why skilled professionals continue to bypass safety regulations despite having better equipment and training than ever before.

Through a series of real-world case studies and sobering accident investigations, this program dissects the thin line between “operating by the rules” and true operational excellence. Danny reminds us that while we can work in an unacceptable manner for years without incident, we are simply increasing the odds of a catastrophic failure. It is a call to action for every employee to become their “brother’s keeper” and refuse to let the unacceptable become the standard.

Part 1: The Illusion of Experience and the Cost of Compromise

In the first half, Danny discusses the origins of the “Accepting the Unacceptable” program and the alarming statistics of human error.

• The Risk of “It Ain’t My Job”: How a lack of ownership leads to system unreliability and hazardous conditions for the next crew.
• The Experience Trap: Why veteran linemen often fall victim to complacency while newer workers suffer from a lack of quality mentorship.
• Minimum vs. Excellent: A breakdown of why following OSHA regulations is merely the “legal minimum” and not the same as operating at an excellent safety level.

Part 2: Leadership, Human Performance, and the Art of the Craft

In the second half, Danny delves into the psychology of human performance and the heavy burden of leadership.

• The Pilot’s Perspective: Comparing “Cockpit Resource Management” to the teamwork required in a bucket truck to prevent fatal mistakes.
• Non-Verbal Endorsements: The dangerous message sent when a leader watches an unsafe act and says nothing, essentially “signing off” on the risk.
• The Artist in the Field: A final reflection on moving from being a laborer to a “craftperson” and ultimately an “artist” who works with hand, brain, and soul.

Question & Answer

1. What is Danny Raines’ definition of “Accepting the Unacceptable”? It is defined as accidents or close calls caused by human performance failures or leadership accepting less than what is required by standards and regulations.

2. Why does Danny believe that following regulations is not enough? He argues that regulations and industry standards represent the minimum precautions required to be “legal,” but they do not equate to operational excellence or the highest level of safety.

3. What is a “non-verbal endorsement” in a safety context? It is when a leader or peer witnesses an unsafe act and remains silent. This silence sends a message to the rest of the crew—especially inexperienced members—that the behavior is acceptable.

4. According to the transcript, who is ultimately responsible for safety on the job site? While the employer is legally responsible and accountable to OSHA, the transcript emphasizes that the employee is the only one who can identify and correct unacceptability the moment it happens on-site.

#LinemanSafety #OperationalExcellence #UtilityIndustry #HumanPerformance #SafetyLeadership #DannyRainesCUSP

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/04PvuEyn

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 than a core operational risk. That framing is the issue. Risk management is a system capacity question, and too many organizations are answering it poorly.

Simply put, the need for urgent action is already here. The cost of pretending otherwise will continue to escalate. Companies wisely navigating this reality have already begun treating extreme weather as a design constraint, not an exception, with a focus on four key areas of concern.

1. Physical safety risks. Rising temperatures are a problem, with heat exhaustion and heatstroke becoming statistically inevitable when exposure thresholds are ignored. Heavy rainfall is creating flood conditions that construction and emergency response teams were never intended to work in. Wildfires are pushing smoke and ash into environments where respiratory protection typically is not top of mind. Utility organizations must acknowledge and address these new operating conditions.

2. Infrastructure and equipment damage. Buildings become compromised, roads fail, and equipment malfunctions under conditions it was not built to handle. An organization that discovers one of these issues during an event likely never practiced for the real-world scenario. But proactive infrastructure assessment is not overhead – it is how businesses retain operational control when conditions deteriorate. The alternative is improvising under pressure, which increases accident and injury risks.

3. Heightened employee stress and anxiety. Workers who are distracted, anxious or carrying lingering stress from recent events do not perform at their best. Psychological strain reduces situational awareness, degrades judgment and erodes discretionary effort that resilient organizations depend on. Employers who treat mental health as a personal issue rather than a business concern misread the risk entirely.

4. Regulatory changes and economic implications. OSHA’s proposed heat injury and illness prevention rule (see www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/rulemaking) is a preview of what is coming. Regulations tend to follow reality, and reality is accelerating. Insurance premiums will rise, downtime costs will compound, and compliance requirements will tighten. Leaders who wait for a final rule before investing in organizational capability accumulate exposure, often while believing they are adequately managing it.

A Different Approach
More of the same will not suffice. Utility organizations should actively build capacity in the following seven areas.

1. Emergency preparedness. True preparedness demands regularly revisiting evacuation routes, communication protocols and access to emergency supplies specific to the area’s weather risks. Generic plans produce generic responses. Gaps must be identified before a storm arrives.

2. Injury prevention and safety training. Employees need rehearsed responses. Training on severe weather protocols, evacuation procedures, sheltering decisions and communication tools should be a recurring discipline.

3. Hazard identification and assessment. Most businesses have not performed a serious weather-specific hazard assessment. Infrastructure vulnerabilities, power outage scenarios, flood impact analyses, vegetation management, defensible spaces for physical assets and backup water supplies are scenarios that must be worked through before they become urgent.

4. High-quality communication systems. Communication is often the first thing that fails when conditions deteriorate. Mass notification systems, redundant alert mechanisms and clear protocols for reaching every employee in real time serve as connective tissue between a prepared organization and a panicked one.

5. Remote work policies. During severe weather events, the ability to move employees to safer locations while maintaining operational continuity is a genuine risk management tool. Organizations without remote work infrastructure are not merely inconvenienced during an event; they are exposed.

6. Community engagement. Isolation during a crisis is a compounding risk. Businesses that have built good relationships with local authorities, emergency response teams and other community resources do not start from zero, with communication channels and shared protocols often already in place.

7. Psychological safety. By providing access to mental health support, creating space for honest conversations and treating employee well-being as a leadership responsibility, utilities position themselves for faster event recovery and greater employee retention.

Continuous Improvement Through Feedback
Every weather event is data, and every near miss is an opportunity to close a gap before it becomes a serious injury or fatality. Utility organizations must actively solicit feedback from their employees before and after events, not as a formality but as a genuine mechanism for sharpening awareness and improving protocols. The people doing the work know where plans break down. Will leadership listen to them?

Companies set to perform best in today’s evolving industry landscape are not those with the most detailed response plans. Rather, they are the ones that have built the capacity to respond before anyone told them they had to. That distinction is worth considering in your organization.

About the Author: Shawn M. Galloway is CEO of ProAct Safety (https://proactsafety.com) and a globally recognized adviser on safety strategy, leadership and organizational performance. For nearly three decades, he has helped executive teams build the capacity to prevent harm, recover from disruptions and integrate safety as a key driver of business value. Galloway has also written multiple bestselling books and hosts the Safety Culture Excellence podcast.

Magid, a leading manufacturer and distributor of personal protective equipment, has launched its M-Defense FR Arc & Flash Fire Resistant Apparel line, engineered to deliver dependable protection without sacrificing comfort. The new line includes the ARP450GN Long Sleeve Shirt and ARH650GN Balaclava.

Designed for demanding work environments where arc flash and flash fire hazards are present, M-Defense FR apparel combines certified protection with advanced comfort features to support worker performance throughout the day.

Constructed from an inherently flame-resistant proprietary blend of Lenzing FR Viscose and Nomex, the lightweight, breathable fabric offers a soft, premium feel while maintaining durable protection. Advanced moisture-wicking and quick-dry technology helps keep workers cool and comfortable, even in high-heat conditions.

M-Defense FR apparel is UL certified to NFPA 2112 and compliant with NFPA 70E and ASTM F1506 standards, ensuring trusted protection against flash fire and arc flash hazards. The line also provides UPF 50+ sun protection, offering an added layer of defense for outdoor work environments. www.magidglove.com

MSA Safety’s Temporary Horizontal Lifeline (THLL) is a versatile fall protection solution engineered for fast, efficient and compliant jobsite safety. It’s designed with intuitive, toolless installation features that can significantly reduce setup time, up to 75% faster than traditional lifeline systems. Its integrated locking and tensioning mechanism – conveniently located on the handle – eliminates the need for nuts, bolts and wrenches, allowing a single worker to install the system quickly and with minimal effort.

Lightweight and flexible, this THLL is easy to handle while maintaining durability in demanding environments. With locking and tensioning mechanisms positioned on the same side, users can complete installation without unnecessary back-and-forth movement, helping to improve efficiency and reduce downtime. Clear red and green visual tension indicators help to simplify compliance by providing confirmation that the system is properly tensioned, increasing confidence in setup, with availability in both cable and rope configurations. Designed to enhance mobility without compromising safety, patented bypass shuttles enable multiple users to maintain 100% tie-off while passing each other on the same line. This combination of speed, simplicity and dependable performance makes the MSA Safety THLL an ideal solution for dynamic work environments requiring reliable temporary fall protection. www.msasafety.com

One kit. One worker. All their tools. Trade-specific tethering kits from Ergodyne include everything a worker needs to tether the most common tools of their trade, complete with simplified step-by-step instructions. Tool tethering is an important aspect of an overall fall protection plan, helping to reduce the risk of falling objects. In addition to making dropped-objects prevention easier for workers, it simplifies a notoriously complex specification and ordering process for safety managers. www.ergodyne.com/dropped-objects

To assist EHS professionals in reducing risk and simplifying environmental compliance, J. J. Keller has launched Environmental Compliance Management, a set of new online tools.

The new environmental tools are part of the J. J. Keller Safety Management Suite, the company’s integrated solution for EHS professionals, offering written safety plans, audits and inspections, training, incident tracking, chemical management and more.

Combining expert content with powerful program tracking features, Environmental Compliance Management was designed around what EHS professionals told J. J. Keller researchers they needed most. The company’s solution features a regulatory applicability wizard; an EHS compliance calendar; state environmental regulation resources; environmental incident reporting; tank management; hazardous waste tracking; easy-to-understand compliance resources for 15 EPA topics; and TRI and Tier II reporting support. www.jjkeller.com

A pioneering Type II safety helmet, the STUDSON Type II Full Brim Dual-Certified SHK-1 Class E has achieved dual certification under ANSI/ISEA Z89.1 and CSA Z94.1 standards, ensuring seamless compliance for North American utility crews. The heart of the helmet is KOROYD technology, which crumples upon impact to absorb significantly more energy than traditional materials. KOROYD protects workers from life-altering injuries caused by both direct and angled impacts, critical factors in fall-related accidents.

This nonconductive Class E version is purpose-built for high-voltage environments, featuring a secure four-point chin strap with a Fidlock magnetic buckle for easy, one-handed operation even while wearing work gloves. Additionally, integrated Twiceme technology provides first responders with instant access to critical medical data in emergencies. It also arms safety managers with data to track helmet inventory and worker certifications, simplifying regulatory compliance. https://studson.com/pages/dual-certification

“Field Team Safety: Connected Protection for Isolated and Remote Workers“

WEBINAR RECORDING

MEET YOUR SPEAKERS

Peoplesafe expanded to North America in 2023, bringing our expertise and experience of protecting more than 350,000 people to a worldwide customer base under the OK Alone brand.

This move brings new leading-edge workforce safety technology to a North American market experiencing a surge in workplace violence, increased legislation, and a higher focus on wellbeing. These trends are creating a demand for technology driven safety solutions as organizations invest in their workforces, making it the right time to serve this growing market.

A key need of the market is adaptability, with organisations of different sizes and in different geographies having a vast range of needs. To meet this requirement, the OK Alone technology platform is founded on flexibility, with full integration into some of the largest tech companies in the world, such as Geotab™, and the ability to integrate with any HR or workforce management systems.

Using these integrations and Peoplesafe’s established ability to successfully onboard organizations of all sizes, we are successfully expanding our safety coverage to quickly get emergency help to those who need it.

Read the article written by Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC: https://incident-prevention.com/blog/spiritual-preparation-for-safer-work/

The provided text explores the concept of spiritual preparation as a vital component of occupational safety, particularly within high-stakes utility work. It argues that while rules and training are necessary, they often fail when workers face stress or fatigue, leading them to take calculated risks. To bridge this gap, the author advocates for the development of a personal moral code that provides workers with a sense of purpose and identity during adversity. Drawing on philosophical excellence, military discipline, and psychological connection, the source suggests that internalizing values like “being a brother’s keeper” ensures consistent behavior when shortcuts seem tempting. Ultimately, this approach aims to reduce serious injuries and fatalities by anchoring professional decisions to deep-seated convictions rather than temporary convenience. This defensive working mindset encourages employees to clarify their standards before entering high-pressure situations to ensure they return home safely.

Key Takeaways

• The Risk Gap Phenomenon: Serious injuries often occur not because workers are ignorant of rules, but because they consciously decide to bypass them due to “perceived risk”—subjective feelings that a shortcut is safe because “it will only take a second”.
• Neurological Failure Under Stress: Under high pressure, the logical prefrontal cortex “powers down,” and the amygdala (emotional center) takes over, causing people to prioritize immediate values like speed or convenience over abstract safety protocols.
• Redefining “Spiritual” Preparation: In a safety context, “spiritual” refers to an individual’s internal collection of commitments and moral code—the standard they refuse to drop below even when exhausted or unmonitored.
• The Power of Premeditation: Using the concept of Arete (excellence of character) and Premeditatio Malorum (premeditation of evils), workers can mentally “micro-dose” stress by visualizing hazards in advance, ensuring their response is deliberate rather than panicked when a crisis occurs.
• Shared Duty as a Shield: Strong internal commitments, such as the US Army’s model of spiritual fitness or a shared sense of duty, can override biological self-preservation instincts to ensure team safety during chao

Questions & Answers

1. Why is traditional safety training often insufficient during a high-pressure crisis? Traditional training targets the rational, rule-following brain. However, during extreme stress, the brain’s logical centers may “lock away” the rulebook, leaving unconscious drivers and immediate values to dictate behavior.

2. What is “Premeditatio Malorum,” and how does it improve safety? It is a classical philosophy practice of visualizing potential problems (like equipment failure or storms) before they happen. This “practices the panic” while the rational brain is still online, so that if the event occurs, the nervous system recognizes it as a familiar situation rather than a novel threat, preventing a blinding spike of cortisol.

3. What happens when an individual’s personal moral code clashes with a toxic company culture? The transcript poses this as a critical conflict: when a worker’s internal commitment to safety meets an “unspoken culture” that demands speed or profit at all costs, the worker’s “armor” may eventually crack, or they may be forced to leave the organization entirely to protect their integrity.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#WorkplaceSafety #IncidentPrevention #SafetyLeadership #OperationalExcellence #HumanFactors

Join host Doug Hill and guest Jeff “Odie” Espenship—former USAF fighter pilot and founder of Target Leadership—for a deep dive into the heart of high-performance safety culture. In this episode, we move beyond “bolt-on” safety programs to explore how true safety must be built into the daily DNA of an organization. Odie shares powerful lessons from his time in the cockpit, revealing how “the little things” like miscommunication and complacency are the true leading indicators of tragedy. Whether you are a frontline “fighter pilot” or a corporate leader, this conversation offers actionable insights on setting high expectations, fostering open communication, and pursuing excellence to save lives.

Key Takeaways

• “Built In, Not Bolted On”: Safety should not be a secondary add-on; it must be a core, everyday component of how work is performed.
• Focus on Leading Indicators: Accidents often snowball from “little things” like snap decisions, shortcuts, or a lack of attention to detail.
• Leadership at All Levels: Every employee is a “fighter pilot” on the tip of the spear; leadership is an attitude of influence, not just a title.
• The Pursuit of Perfection: While perfection may be unattainable, pursuing it is the only way to consistently achieve the operational excellence required in high-risk industries.
• Overcoming Complacency: Experience can lead to routine, which breeds the “silent killer” of complacency; constant refocusing is necessary to maintain safety.

Questions and Answers

Q: What does Jeff “Odie” Espenship mean by “the little things”? A: He refers to minor errors—such as skipping a step in a lockout/tagout procedure, using the wrong tool, or miscommunicating a detail—that often go unnoticed but can snowball into major accidents.

Q: How can a “culture of blame” be avoided in safety management? A: Leaders must encourage employees to speak openly about “close calls” and leading indicators without fear of retribution, focusing on learning from mistakes to prevent future tragedies.

Q: Why does Odie compare workplace employees to “fighter pilots”? A: He views frontline workers as the “tip of the spear” who are most at risk and whose precision and decision-making are critical to the organization’s success and safety.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#SafetyLeadership #OperationalExcellence #WorkplaceSafety #TargetLeadership #LeadingIndicators #DougHill #Leadership

In this hard-hitting and deeply personal session, industry veteran Danny Raines, CUSP, challenges the “normalization of deviation” in the electrical utility industry. Drawing from decades of experience in the field, as well as his perspective as a pilot, Danny explores why skilled professionals continue to bypass safety regulations despite having better equipment and training than ever before.

Through a series of real-world case studies and sobering accident investigations, this program dissects the thin line between “operating by the rules” and true operational excellence. Danny reminds us that while we can work in an unacceptable manner for years without incident, we are simply increasing the odds of a catastrophic failure. It is a call to action for every employee to become their “brother’s keeper” and refuse to let the unacceptable become the standard.

Part 1: The Illusion of Experience and the Cost of Compromise

In the first half, Danny discusses the origins of the “Accepting the Unacceptable” program and the alarming statistics of human error.

• The Risk of “It Ain’t My Job”: How a lack of ownership leads to system unreliability and hazardous conditions for the next crew.
• The Experience Trap: Why veteran linemen often fall victim to complacency while newer workers suffer from a lack of quality mentorship.
• Minimum vs. Excellent: A breakdown of why following OSHA regulations is merely the “legal minimum” and not the same as operating at an excellent safety level.

Part 2: Leadership, Human Performance, and the Art of the Craft

In the second half, Danny delves into the psychology of human performance and the heavy burden of leadership.

• The Pilot’s Perspective: Comparing “Cockpit Resource Management” to the teamwork required in a bucket truck to prevent fatal mistakes.
• Non-Verbal Endorsements: The dangerous message sent when a leader watches an unsafe act and says nothing, essentially “signing off” on the risk.
• The Artist in the Field: A final reflection on moving from being a laborer to a “craftperson” and ultimately an “artist” who works with hand, brain, and soul.

Question & Answer

1. What is Danny Raines’ definition of “Accepting the Unacceptable”? It is defined as accidents or close calls caused by human performance failures or leadership accepting less than what is required by standards and regulations.

2. Why does Danny believe that following regulations is not enough? He argues that regulations and industry standards represent the minimum precautions required to be “legal,” but they do not equate to operational excellence or the highest level of safety.

3. What is a “non-verbal endorsement” in a safety context? It is when a leader or peer witnesses an unsafe act and remains silent. This silence sends a message to the rest of the crew—especially inexperienced members—that the behavior is acceptable.

4. According to the transcript, who is ultimately responsible for safety on the job site? While the employer is legally responsible and accountable to OSHA, the transcript emphasizes that the employee is the only one who can identify and correct unacceptability the moment it happens on-site.

#LinemanSafety #OperationalExcellence #UtilityIndustry #HumanPerformance #SafetyLeadership #DannyRainesCUSP

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The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

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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, which can make some workdays feel like a rote checklist to slog through. But each procedural step exists to help ensure precision electrical devices are competently dismantled and rebuilt. Reliable execution is more likely when splicers understand the logic at the root of each step. This article explores that logic in greater detail.

Examining the Layers
A modern medium-voltage cable, whether insulated with cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) or ethylene propylene rubber (EPR), is built in layers from the inside out. The conductor is at the center. A semiconductive strand shield (conductor shield) sits around it, covered by a thick layer of insulation. Atop that insulation is a second semiconductive layer (insulation shield), followed by a metallic shield or concentric neutral, and finally a protective jacket.

During manufacturing, each cable layer is extruded and assembled in controlled factory conditions to create a smooth, predictable electric field from the conductor to ground. Cutting into the cable interrupts its field control system, designed by the manufacturer to last decades. Industry professionals use splice and termination kits to reconstruct these systems.

Reconstruction work begins with the conductor, which could be copper or aluminum, concentric or compact stranded. Splicers must confirm correct installation of connectors. Ideally, conductor and connector metals will be the same; copper-aluminum connections risk corrosion. Note that an under-crimped connector or a connector with the wrong die marks is a built-in hot spot. Adequate crimping squeezes the metal to create a low-resistance, mechanically strong joint that will not loosen, shift or change shape under thermal cycling or fault current. Inadequate crimping means extra heat during normal operation that stresses insulation from the inside out.

Smoothing the Electric Field
Surrounding the conductor is the inner semiconductive layer, also called the conductor shield. Its job is to smooth the electric field at the conductor’s surface. A stranded conductor is full of sharp edges and tiny gaps. If we directly apply insulation over those strands, the electric field will concentrate at each strand tip and across each tiny air pocket. Those spots can ionize under medium-voltage stress, prompting partial discharge that erodes insulation. The conductor shield fills the voids, bonds to the insulation, and presents a smooth, nearly cylindrical surface at the same potential as the conductor. When stripping this layer during a splice, use specialized tools and correct depth settings to ensure a clean finish with no ridges or gouges. These are not cosmetic efforts; a single nick in the insulation or jagged edge left on the conductor shield is a future stress point that could lead to breakdown.

The main insulation layer, either XLPE or EPR, blocks system voltage from ground. It is more than thick rubber or plastic, polarizing when voltage is applied. The electric field sets up radially from the conductor to the insulation shield. Stress is highest at the inner surface, near the conductor; it is lowest at the outer surface. Cable manufacturers spec materials and thicknesses to ensure maximum stress does not exceed insulation breakdown strength or the level at which partial discharges will begin. Stress is best handled by smooth, uniform insulation.

Employers and trainers take note: Because weak points typically result from scratches, inadvertent cuts, contaminants and moisture on insulation surfaces, splicers must be qualified to use specialized tools, strip cable in a controlled fashion, and competently clean tools, cable and equipment.

Weak points are the reason insulation levels exist. Clearly, the wall of a 15-kV cable with 133% insulation is thicker than one with 100% insulation. Thick insulation is intended for systems in which ground faults could take up to an hour to clear. Thinner, 100% insulation is not designed for those conditions (clears a fault in 60 seconds or less). Critically, as we choose cables and accessories, we also choose our dielectric margins should something go wrong.

Uniform Ground Potential
A cable’s outer semiconductive layer is functionally similar to the conductor shield, managing the electric field at the insulation’s outer surface. This layer bonds to the insulation, keeping its surface at a uniform ground potential. During normal operation, the electric field is almost entirely located between the conductor and this shield; little of it exists in the jacket or surrounding soil and air, which explains why a qualified person can safely touch a grounded shielded cable that contains thousands of volts.

Splicers must cut back this outer semicon layer to the exact length specified by the splice or termination kit’s instructions. The cutback distance, the straightness and smoothness of its edge, and the exposed insulation’s cleanliness are nonnegotiable details, determining how electrical stress will behave once the splice or termination is energized. A crooked or ragged semicon edge elevates local stress. Dirt and moisture encourage tracking. When we take time to perfectly dress the edge, we are shaping the future electric field.

Metallic Shield and Outer Jacket Functionality
Depending on the cable, the metallic shield located outside the insulation shield could consist of helically wrapped concentric copper neutrals, flat copper straps, copper tape with overlap, or a corrugated metal sheath. This shield performs critical functions: providing a low-impedance path for fault current; allowing protective devices to clear faults quickly; carrying the small charging current that flows through the insulation during normal operation; and confining the electric field, limiting stress exposure. In many distribution designs, the metallic shield also serves as the return path for unbalanced load current.

Any cuts to the cable also cut the metallic shield. If we do not restore continuity using properly sized and installed bonds, braids and spring clamps, we change how future faults will travel and where voltage will rise during abnormal conditions. Floating and poorly bonded shields are associated with dangerous potentials, delayed fault clearings and changes in electric field behavior near splices. Bonds are rebuilt by gathering every neutral wire and reattaching them according to the company’s approved reshielding process, restoring the safety system surrounding the insulation.

A cable’s outer jacket prevents water penetration, defends neutrals against corrosion, and safeguards shields and insulation from physical damage. When we strip the jacket to make a splice, we create a potential path for water entry. Modern cable manufacturers use water-swellable tapes and powders to address this reality, but they also rely on good seals. Some splice and termination kits call for use of specific mastics and sealant wraps and instruct users to add rejacketing sleeves over their splices; these actions greatly assist in protecting a cable’s contents. Moisture, corrosion and thermal cycling undermine splices that are electrically perfect but poorly sealed, leading to their eventual failure.

Geometric Stress Control
The cable layers described above work together to control electrical stress. The stress present in an intact section of cable is purely radial and behaviorally predictable. Trouble begins with the introduction of a shield cutback, termination or other discontinuity point where the electric field must bend. In those cases, the field no longer runs straight out from the conductor, instead curling along the insulation’s surface and into the surrounding air, causing longitudinal stress and creating areas in which the field can potentially bunch up. If the outer shield ends abruptly, with bare insulation continuing, the electric field crowds around that sharp edge. Concentrated stress under operating voltage produces corona and tracking, especially in humid and contaminated conditions, eroding materials and potentially leading to a flashover or failure.

Geometric stress control (i.e., the use of shape to spread out the electric field) solves the problem. The stress cones and internal contours of premolded and cold-shrink terminations and taped splices are designed to extend a conductive or semiconductive surface beyond the shield edge so that potential drops gradually over a longer path. Capacitive and resistive stress grading using tapes and mastics with special electrical properties takes this idea one step further. Applied in precise patterns at the shield cutback, the materials pull some of the electric field into themselves, distributing the voltage drop over their length. Pattern instructions that call for an exact number of half-lapped layers, starting precisely at the semicon edge and ending at a specified distance, are the result of laboratory design and testing.

Conclusion
A medium-voltage splice is a field-built extension of a cable’s original design. The conductor must be solid and correctly installed. Its surrounding conductor shield and insulation must be uniform and clean. The semiconductive layer must reestablish smooth electric field boundaries. The metallic shield must be continuous and grounded. The jacket must seal and prevent water and other physical damage.

When medium-voltage splicers understand why each cable layer exists, a splice or termination kit’s instructions begin to look less like suggestions and more like what they truly are: a roadmap to restoring a cable’s safe, factory-quality performance. Well-made splices disappear into lines, quietly doing their work during storms and faults without drawing attention. Achieving that level of reliability is a direct result of qualified splicers who understand cable contents and construction, how electrical stress behaves inside cable, and the significance of each cut, crimp and wrap.

About the Author: Mark Savage is the owner of DeadBreak, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing underground distribution and transmission training, consulting and field services. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with over 25 years of experience in underground construction and emergency response, Savage is a credentialed journeyman cable splicer/lineman and qualified medium-voltage splicing trainer. Reach him at msavage@deadbreak.us.

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 fatigued. Deploying drones to conduct post-storm inspections, for instance, keeps workers safely distanced from hazardous areas while potentially speeding up triage efforts. Digital pre-job briefing forms that incorporate AI-driven alerts offer crews enhanced, real-time understanding of worksite risks before they arrive.

But successfully rolling out newly adopted safety technologies is no small feat. Frontline buy-in depends on an organization’s cultural readiness. How can readiness be achieved? A sustainable strategy begins with people. It is then enforced via process and enhanced by technology. In that order.

Safety Lives in the Field
Safety starts at the top, but it lives in the field. Frontline workers will notice if senior leaders only speak about safety during budget meetings. By incorporating it into daily tailboards, performance metrics, public commitments and organizational strategy, leaders demonstrate that safety is a nonnegotiable organizational value.

Critically, leaders must be good listeners, consulting frontline workers for their firsthand insights into the organization’s operational risks and inefficiencies. Feedback loops assist decision-makers in determining the merits of new safety solutions. These loops are especially helpful when piloting AI-driven systems, whose accuracy is shaped through human oversight.

Technology buy-in often expands as workers witness the impact of their feedback. For example, one utility that uses an AI tool to enhance infrastructure inspections noted a boost in tool adoption when crews began gathering for post-shift debriefings. The time crew members spent analyzing AI images of their jobsites, flagging errors and feeding that data into the model increased its future reliability and relevance.

Change Management
Workers will commonly shelve new technology tools that are poorly rolled out. Leaders have various options to mitigate this risk, including appointing organizational safety champions as liaisons between field crews and technology/innovation teams; hosting cross-functional workshops during which information technology, operations and safety personnel collaborate to address adoption barriers; and celebrating quick wins that underscore new technology’s advantages.

Dominion Energy offers a good example. As part of a drone and AI implementation project, the utility designated safety liaisons to facilitate communication between leadership and field teams, which played a significant role in building early momentum for the broader rollout.

Employee Training
Technology can only be as effective as its users. Thus, employers must ensure their employees are trained to best leverage its value. Some utility organizations are using other technologies to assist with training, such as virtual- and augmented-reality applications that simulate real-world scenarios, reducing risk to trainees.

Peer mentoring, which combines relational and procedural learning, often complements formal industry training. Pairing seasoned lineworkers with younger, less experienced employees can be mutually beneficial, enhancing technology skills transfer and reinforcing institutional and industry wisdom.

Safety Accelerants
With the right people and processes in place, utilities can use new technologies to accelerate safer field operations. Consider the following three examples.

1. Drones
Drone adoption has become increasingly common within industry organizations. For instance, in 2023, New York Power Authority invested $37.2 million in its drone program. Integrated into these unmanned aerial systems are high-resolution cameras, light detection and ranging (lidar), and thermal sensors that enhance fault and damage detection capabilities while limiting worker hazard exposure and bucket truck deployments.

Frontline buy-in becomes more likely when crews feel confident that the data collected by company drones will be accurate, easily accessible and fully integrated into their workflows. Some utilities have addressed this by implementing joint flight validation sessions during which pilots and field technicians collaborate to review drone inspection footage. These sessions can uncover technological and procedural blind spots and reinforce to personnel that drones are considered tools, not worker replacements.

2. Artificial and Visual Intelligence
AI accelerates the identification of infrastructure corrosion, vegetation risks and structural faults at a scale that humans alone can’t match. Beyond speed and scale, human-in-the-loop AI models incorporate experienced inspectors to validate and refine model outputs, helping to reduce errors, build user trust and strengthen organizational learning.

Field safety can be dramatically enhanced when AI learns from humans and humans trust its support. During Hurricane Harvey, for example, one utility used AI-powered drone data to safely route repair crews away from flooded roads and damaged assets, improving response times while minimizing crew hazard exposure.

3. Substation Monitoring
Substations are sometimes inspected just once a year by a single technician. Today, AI-enabled monitoring systems offer 24/7 surveillance that alerts users to overheating, smoke, fire, unauthorized access incidents and PPE violations in real time. Some monitoring systems also act as a second set of eyes for lone workers, detecting falls and prolonged inactivity and triggering alerts.

Moving the Needle
As the U.S. electrical grid grows more complex, frontline employee safety and system resilience increasingly depend on the power and influence of strong, healthy organizational cultures. New technologies alone won’t improve safety or other outcomes. Utilities begin to move the needle when leadership sets clear intentions, builds and refines processes that reinforce cultural values, and rolls out new technologies with ample training and respect for workers.

About the Author: Kaitlyn Albertoli is co-founder and CEO of Buzz Solutions (www.buzzsolutions.co), a California-based provider of visual intelligence solutions to inspect, maintain and secure energy infrastructure.

Editor’s Note: Learn more from Kaitlyn in a recent podcast interview with iP’s Kate Wade, available at https://utilitysafety.podbean.com/e/utility-safety-podcast-using-visual-intelligence-to-strengthen-utility-infrastructure/.

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 article builds on those concepts by addressing spiritual preparation, a third factor not nearly as commonly discussed that nevertheless plays a critical role in how people behave on the job.

Spiritual preparedness is not necessarily about religion (although it could be) or belief systems imposed by organizations. Rather, it is an individual’s collection of commitments, fueled by an internal source of strength that provides identity, purpose and meaning during adversity.

Taking Risks When We Know Better
In safety-critical lines of work, clarifying and honoring one’s source of strength and associated commitments often helps employees follow the rules they know are right instead of taking shortcuts that feel easier in the moment.

Many serious injuries have occurred because people knew better and broke the rules anyway – not because they weren’t aware of the rules. Every day, lineworkers and other employees make tradeoffs because they think, “The odds are low that this will go wrong,” “I’ve done this a hundred times,” or “This will only take a second.”

These decisions feel completely rational in the moment, like jaywalking when traffic seems light. No one wants to be hurt or killed, naturally, but people don’t always experience risk in a consistent manner.

In a nutshell, safety professionals strive toward zero risk. Frontline workers manage perceived risk.

When a worker’s task appears routine with little probability of harm, rules can feel like inconveniences whose costs outweigh the benefits. It is in that gap – the one between how organizations think about risk and how frontline workers experience it – where people get hurt.

So, how do we bridge the gap? What can we do to help people further lower their injury risk even when it doesn’t feel necessary to them? The answer isn’t more rules. It’s spiritual preparation: strengthening the internal commitments that guide human behavior when risk feels acceptable.

The Limits of Policies and Procedures
Organizational policies and procedures are developed under the assumption that employees will act rationally and consistently in all conditions. Realistically, stress and fatigue affect human decision-making. When those influences are strong, even well-designed rules can lose their power. This is why incident investigators so often discover that the individuals involved understood the hazards and knew the correct procedures yet still made different choices.

Such behavior is not primarily driven by training or policy but by what the individuals valued most in the moment (e.g., speed, group acceptance, avoiding hassle, simply getting the job done). That behavioral shift is exactly why spiritual preparation matters; it is when a person’s moral code enters the picture.

Lineworkers rely on pole partners near energized conductors because a second set of eyes can catch things a lone worker might miss. Professional divers operate the same way underwater. However, these systems only work when both people genuinely believe they are responsible for each other’s safety, not just their own.

Written rules are not the source of that belief. It is a deeply held internal standard, a personal moral code that firmly states, “I don’t look the other way when someone next to me is at risk.”

The U.S. military provides a clear example of how powerful this can be. When a fellow soldier is injured in combat, our self-preservation instinct tells us to seek cover. Yet soldiers stay put because they are anchored to the commitment that they will not leave anyone behind despite their own fear. The strength of their personal and collective moral codes is what enables them to act against their instincts.

Civilian work is different, but the mechanism is the same. Employees who have clarified their own moral code – those values and commitments they refuse to violate – are far less likely to drift into unsafe behavior under difficult conditions.

Spiritual Preparation and Safety Performance
Again, spiritual preparation is the work of identifying and strengthening that code. It addresses a segment of safety performance that exists below conscious human awareness, influencing what happens when someone knows the right thing to do but feels pressure to do something else. Without making clear commitments, people are more susceptible to fatigue, rushing, overconfidence and unspoken group norms. Moral clarity makes those pressures easier to resist because decisions are anchored to something deeper than convenience or habit.

In practical terms, spiritual preparation helps turn ideas like “I am my brother’s keeper” into consistent behavior, not merely situational intent.

Building a Spiritual Foundation
Developing a personal moral code doesn’t happen by accident. Employees in high-risk professions have long relied on proven approaches to clarify their values and strengthen their ability to act consistently under pressure. Three of these proven approaches are described below for the reader’s consideration.

1. Arete: Excellence of Character
Rooted in classical philosophy, “arete” (ah–reh–tay) means excellence of character. It’s the idea that under pressure, people fall back on who they believe they are rather than what they intend to do.

Arete focuses on aligning one’s identity, habits and behavior so that internal standards remain steady even when shortcuts appear tempting. From a safety perspective, this strengthens the internal voice that says, “This risky choice does not align with who I am or how I want to be known.”

“Premeditatio malorum” – Latin for “premeditation of evils” – is one concept I’ve found particularly helpful. The phrase is inscribed on a small coin I keep with me, an unwavering reminder to think through likely problems before they occur. While the coin’s wording reflects ancient hardships, I’ve adapted the idea to modern work situations, including winter storms, incorrect circuit maps, missing equipment and poor planning. Taking time to think through these scenarios in advance makes it easier to respond calmly, deliberately and safely if they do occur.

I also recommend reviewing Brian Johnson’s Philosopher’s Notes (see www.philosophersnotes.com), which combine ancient wisdom and modern psychology in short, easy-to-read installments. They are inspiring to read and directly applicable to our work.

2. The U.S. Army: Spiritual Fitness Under Adversity
Spiritually fit individuals possess an internal source of strength that provides them with identity, purpose and meaning during adversity, according to the U.S. Army. That source could be faith, duty, service, loyalty or promises made to others. In the Army, spiritual fitness is supported by both the chain of command and the storied Chaplain Corps.

Our deeply held beliefs help us sustain disciplined behavior when stress, fear and exhaustion take over. Law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency responders rely on similar internal moral codes every day, often supported by chaplains, because the codes help them function reliably in high-consequence situations.

I witnessed this firsthand while working as a switching center supervisor during a period of civil unrest in Los Angeles. Several of us stayed on duty for days. First the U.S. Marines secured the intersection outside the station, and then the National Guard moved directly into the facility while we continued to operate the system citywide. It was a tragic situation, but the team drew on a shared sense of duty to restore and maintain service. No one questioned staying or doing what needed to be done.

That kind of reliability under pressure is a product of clear internal commitments – not rules – the same foundation the Army refers to as spiritual fitness.

3. Fuller Seminary: Meaning and Connection
Fuller Seminary’s Thrive model (see https://thethrivecenter.org/explore) suggests that people find meaning when they feel a sense of connection to something larger than themselves. Judgment improves when work is clearly tied to contribution and responsibility to others. Unsafe behavior becomes harder to self-justify.

The Thrive model focuses on preparation rather than control. Since it is impossible to prevent every challenge we will face on the job, it makes sense to concentrate on fortifying ourselves in advance so that we respond well when conditions inevitably deteriorate. In this sense, spiritual health works like physical conditioning, improving how we perform under stress.

What does this require from a practical standpoint? You must clarify what matters most to you; build daily habits that support safe decision-making; stay connected to those you work and live with; and periodically assess whether your actions still match the kind of worker and teammate you want to be.

I found the Fuller concepts invaluable during periods of organizational upheaval, including layoffs, station closures, involuntary reassignments, and in the aftermath of serious injuries and fatalities. Those experiences pushed me to reconsider the broader arc of my life and take comfort in what exists beyond work.

Why This Matters
The persistence of serious injuries and fatalities in the utility industry indicates that safety efforts must continue to evolve. Spiritual preparation is designed to help us better control our behavior. It is much like defensive driving on a larger scale; think of it as defensive working.

This preparation helps people clarify what they stand for before they find themselves under pressure. A worker armed with a clear personal moral code has something solid to rely on when their instincts and emotions could lead to poor choices. Professionals who operate in exceedingly high-risk environments (U.S. Army soldiers, for example) have learned that distinct moral commitments are essential to reliable performance.

There is no reason the same principles cannot apply to us.

Human behavior is often based on unconscious drivers. Spiritual preparation matters because it improves our behavioral consistency when conditions are at their worst. That consistency under pressure is one of the strongest predictors of whether a worker goes home safely at the end of each day.

About the Author: Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC, is a recognized safety expert and principal of Applied Learning Science (https://appliedlearningscience.com). With deep academic and operational experience as a U.S. Navy veteran, substation chief and former utility executive, he blends real-world insight with evidence-based research to deliver practical, impactful safety solutions.

In safety management, data is often treated as objective truth. Leaders use incident rates, near-miss reports, injury trends and predictive models to guide them as they prioritize risk and allocate organizational resources.

Yet data can quietly mislead us, particularly when bias is embedded in what we collect and our measurement and interpretation methods. Effective, ethical safety leaders continuously work to recognize and address these distortions.

Exploring Various Biases
A widely cited World War II-era example illustrates the dangers of biased data. During the war, Allied forces studied returning aircraft to determine where additional armor was needed. Analysts initially recommended reinforcing areas with the most visible bullet holes. Statistician Abraham Wald challenged this reasoning, highlighting what is now known as survivorship bias. He observed that the only aircraft analyzed were those that survived their missions. Aircraft that failed to return home had likely sustained catastrophic damage to areas where no bullet holes were observed on the surviving planes. Wald’s insight suggested that undamaged areas required reinforcement, not the visibly damaged ones.

Survivorship bias remains a powerful warning for leaders whose safety programs rely on incomplete or filtered data. However, it is only one source of potential distortion.

Selection bias occurs when data is drawn from an unrepresentative sample. In a utility environment, this could happen when organizations heavily rely on information from crews or regions with strong reporting cultures while underestimating risk in areas where incidents and near misses are less likely to be reported. Leaders may inadvertently prioritize the wrong hazards when the dataset does not reflect the entire population.

Even when data is broadly collected, confirmation bias can still emerge (i.e., leaders subconsciously favor data that supports their existing beliefs or assumptions). For example, if management believes a particular work practice is safe, near-miss data that challenges their belief may be discounted or dismissed as anomalous. Over time, selective interpretation reinforces blind spots and weakens organizational learning.

Measurement bias can be introduced at the point of data capture, resulting in inconsistently defined or poorly standardized safety data. Metrics that depend on subjective judgment – such as what qualifies as a safety observation or near miss – can vary widely among supervisors, crews and contractors. When measurement practices differ, trends become unreliable and comparisons across departments or time periods lose meaning.

Historical bias arises when data reflects outdated assumptions, norms or exclusions that no longer align with today’s workforce or operating environments. Caroline Criado Perez’s book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” highlights how systems built on incomplete data can overlook entire populations. In safety-critical industries, this could appear in PPE design, equipment ergonomics or training materials developed for a narrow segment of the workforce, leaving others at elevated risk.

More recently, algorithmic bias has emerged as organizations increasingly adopt predictive analytics and other safety tools driven by artificial intelligence, which can inherit and amplify patterns embedded in historical data. Any algorithms trained using past incident data that underrepresents certain hazards, job roles or worker groups may consistently underestimate risk in those areas. Since algorithmic outputs often appear objective, this bias can be difficult to detect and challenge without deliberate oversight.

Overcoming Vulnerabilities
Embedded bias distorts safety intelligence and can create organizational vulnerabilities. Resources may be misdirected. Early warning signs could be missed. Emerging hazards might remain invisible until a serious incident occurs. Overreliance on lagging indicators like recordable injury rates could create a false sense of security, especially in high-risk utility operations.

Biased data can also further erode trust. Reporting declines when frontline workers witness leadership decisions that conflict with their lived experiences, deepening the data gap.

Despite these risks, high-quality data remains indispensable to effective safety management, enabling organizations to identify trends, prioritize controls, evaluate interventions, and shift from reactive responses to proactive prevention. Decisions made without data are often driven by anecdotes and intuition.

The challenge, therefore, is not whether to use data but how to use it thoughtfully and with full awareness of its limitations.

Recognizing bias is the first step. Leaders should routinely ask, who is missing from this dataset? What assumptions shaped these metrics? What risks could be hidden? A questioning approach encourages more accurate, proactive, ethical decision-making. Leaders who understand bias are more likely to consult multiple data sources, blending quantitative indicators with qualitative insights from job observations, worker feedback and learning teams. Most importantly, confronting data bias helps to ensure that safety systems are designed to protect all workers, not just those most visible in the data.

Intentional effort is required to turn awareness into action. Organizations must routinely audit safety data for gaps and inconsistencies, standardize definitions and measurement practices, and foster psychologically safe reporting environments. As use of predictive analytics and other AI tools expands, transparency and human oversight are essential. Leaders must treat model outputs as decision aids – not decision-makers – and be accountable for how data-driven insights are applied in the field.

Conclusion
Numbers carry authority, shaping organizational budgets, priorities and narratives. However, as Abraham Wald demonstrated decades ago, some of our greatest threats may never appear in the data we see. Safety leaders who understand and deliberately question, test and correct for biases ultimately position their organizations to more effectively mitigate risk.

About the Author: Gina Vanderlin, CSP, CHMM, CIT, CUSP, is the customer operations health and safety program manager at PSEG Long Island. With over 15 years of experience leading EHS initiatives in high-reliability industries, she remains passionate about elevating safety from a compliance function to a strategic driver of culture, engagement and operational excellence. Reach Vanderlin at gina.vanderlin@psegliny.com.

I’m not sure how I became an analyst. It wasn’t something I planned for. Various types of analyst roles exist, but I primarily analyze incidents, breaking down and studying the elements of events to identify causes and effects. Incident analysis, done well, ultimately helps prevent undesired future outcomes.

Over the last 15 years, I have analyzed a half-dozen apprentice training yard accidents and watched two videos of apprentice-involved incidents. These events are reminders that lineworkers frequently learn their lessons the hard way. I continue striving to change that fact because – far too often – the hard way becomes the final act to what could have been a great life.

I was once asked to write an opinion about a root cause analysis (RCA) conducted by OSHA and a utility. The analysis focused on a singular event that put three apprentices in the hospital. OSHA performs RCAs only to identify whether employers are at fault. The analysis I was asked to write about stated that the incident’s cause was various physical conditions and procedural mistakes. But while the conditions and mistakes were causally related, none was the true root cause.

That concerning realization is the reason I wrote this article: to clarify what a good RCA entails and explore its relationship with lessons learned from training accidents.

A Peculiar Art Form
RCA is a peculiar art form that requires analysts to be knowledgeable about safety standards and human performance principles. Numerous utilities use RCA software applications, mostly algorithm-based methodologies designed to help investigators determine the most likely root cause. The applications were developed to standardize RCAs, offering guided protocols to prevent investigator errors. However, the human element can still impact results. A persistent issue with RCA application use is listing, evaluating and interpreting the causal factors that preceded an incident.

Causal factors contribute to the incident under investigation, but they are not the root cause. The root cause is the singular event that prompted the incident; if it had not occurred, the incident would not have occurred either.

I recently reviewed two incidents so similar in nature that the same investigation report could have been written for both. In these cases, which took place a few years apart, investigators used RCA software to determine a root cause. The only difference between the two final RCA reports? You guessed it: the identified root cause. Two entirely different RCA conclusions resulted from the very same causal factors. My point here is that an RCA application is only effective when users complete the software training and stick to its process. Root causes are not always easy to determine, and they are not always what we initially believe they are – which brings us back to training.

Introducing Thom and Goob
To demonstrate rodeo-style hurt man rescue, an apprentice named Thom climbed to the top of a distribution pole. He successfully reached the mannequin only because of his portable fall protection device. Thom then fumbled with the rigging, desperately trying to get the mannequin down in four minutes. He could hear encouragement from the ground, shouts of “Go, go, go,” “Wrap this,” “Pull that,” “Reach around that.” Finally rigged, Thom reached around the mannequin and, using the hawkbill knife that he had sharpened to a razor’s edge for the demonstration, cut his own fall protection. He fell 38 feet, right into life in a wheelchair.

In another rescue incident (see https://youtu.be/gaH7pK-6n84), a worker nicknamed Goob also inadvertently cut his fall protection. I don’t know how that worked out for him, but for lineworkers reading this, the lesson is found in Goob’s now-infamous rescue fail.

We have an industry training shortcoming that is exacerbated by our need to get lineworkers trained and in the air (or in the ditch). The problem lies in the difference between objective and subjective training goals. Earlier, I stated that Thom’s portable fall protection device was the sole reason he reached the mannequin. Neither Thom nor Goob was subjectively competent enough to successfully complete their tasks. The difference between subjectivity and objectivity plays a considerable role in training, particularly when training trainers.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity
Objective evaluation is rooted only in facts and goals. Subjective evaluation is influenced by the evaluator’s personal experience, feelings and opinions. In this context, “personal experience” is legitimate hands-on utility industry experience.

Note: To be clear, I believe that good instructors possess a great amount of career experience and industry knowledge. This is not an indictment of on-the-job (OTJ) training using lineworker mentors. I am a product of the OTJ process and have great respect for those who taught me. Negligence and incompetence are not the issues I am addressing here. The problem is generic in nature and perhaps even a hidden organizational defect.

Thom, the apprentice who made it to the mannequin, fell victim to two objective influences that resulted in his fall. First, he was not a competent climber. It is unlikely that Thom would have climbed a 40-foot pole had he not been wearing a personal fall arrest system (PFAS). He was allowed to do so because he had trained in a PFAS that everyone believed would prevent his fall. Using the system, Thom got to the top of the pole, but his hook sets were tentative. His body was off-center and uncomfortably oriented because he did not periodically adjust his PFAS during ascent.

The “git-r-done” mentality was the second objective influence. Although I love 1990s-era Larry the Cable Guy, he didn’t do us any favors, but it’s not really his fault. Git-r-done was a comedy phenomenon that made light of simple men using unsophisticated methods to complete manly tasks, resulting in their unrestrained celebration. I am in favor of all those things, especially the unrestrained celebration, but the industry may have taken git-r-done too far.

Encouragement from people on the ground was an additional event precursor in both Thom’s case and Goob’s case. Objectively, both apprentices were working hard to succeed; it is human nature to seek approval from others. But the level of problem-solving Thom and Goob displayed demonstrated that the two men did not possess the competence needed. Goob’s pole strap was too far out, and he displayed poor foot positioning and poor rigging management skills. Thom’s circumstances were the same. He explained to me that he had not felt confident in his climbing skills while on the pole but believed his PFAS would protect him. When Thom reached the top, his problem-solving skills were compromised by his lack of experience and the pressure of well-intentioned coworkers shouting encouragement from below.

Competence is the first goal of industry training. Next, trainees are coached to both competently and efficiently complete their tasks. Until an apprentice demonstrates adequate problem-solving and skill competency independent of trainer instruction, the process must be unrushed and orderly. An apprentice simply climbing to the top of a pole is an objective measurement of quality. Climbing to the top with demonstrated skill is a subjective measurement.

Where Do RCAs Fit In?
Trainer competency was the root cause of Thom’s incident, Goob’s incident and the other training yard incidents I referenced earlier. But that is not because the trainers were incompetent. Rather, they had not been sufficiently trained to train other workers. I hate making that statement without first preparing readers because these incidents truly were not the fault of industry trainers. They did not lack lineworker skills or knowledge; they lacked understanding of the individuals who they were training. An effective trainer understands the nature of the trainee and recognizes subjective indicators of their competence to safely perform learned skills. Those trainers with effective technology transfer skills understand the nature of the learning and the learner, training modalities, subjective indicators of training success and objective competency measures.

Falls accounted for two of the previously referenced training yard incidents. In both instances, the instructors bowed to trainee pressure, deviating from their planned training methodologies to instead oversee speed-climbing events. One apprentice climbed off the top of a pole. The other gaffed himself and almost bled to death. Neither had climbing skill characterized by good hook sets, technique, hand position and body orientation. In fact, neither even looked up while ascending.

In yet another case, apprentices used trial and error to learn how to compress sleeves with a 60-ton press. Blown hydraulic hoses hospitalized two individuals. The utility’s investigation blamed a failed hose that “should have been capable of containing the hydraulic pressure.” But the RCA revealed that the hose had been plugged into a universal pump open-center system, which prematurely forced pressure into the hose of the closed center head, preventing operation of the spring-loaded quick coupling. The apprentices forced the coupling and broke the hose. So, the problem wasn’t a faulty hose but an objective-based training issue: “Squeeze the sleeve without bending it.” That initial introduction to the task and the training methodology lacked requisite preparation and instruction elements, which should have been audited by observing the steps via an orderly process.

The Bottom Line
I am now going to use RCA to lobby for a comprehensive review of the nature of our industry’s training. We have too many examples of trainees pushed beyond their skill level, and they are not limited to climbing in 100% fall protection. Let’s audit our training processes, including how we train our trainers, ensuring that we provide them with the technology transfer skills they need to successfully pass on their experience, craft skills and other knowledge.

A utility manager once challenged me about the cost of training the organization’s trainers. He said it was frustrating to spend the time and money just for them to eventually leave. His attitude is one more example of mistakenly relying on objective concerns. His subjective concern should have been, what if we don’t train our trainers and they stay?

About the Author: After 25 years as a transmission-distribution lineman and foreman, Jim Vaughn, CUSP, has devoted the last 28 years to safety and training. A noted author, trainer and lecturer, he is a senior consultant for the Institute for Safety in Powerline Construction. He can be reached at jim@ispconline.com.

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 of Experience” addresses important points about lineworker leadership transitions learned through my decades of professional experience.

What Prompts Worker Promotions?
Lineworkers are not necessarily promoted based on their years of field experience or company seniority. Often, the move is both recognition and reward for an employee’s current technical skill set. That is understandable. Utility organizations in the past sometimes promoted employees for reasons other than technical merit; reorganizations in particular could be highly problematic. Employees with little to no construction or maintenance work experience were appointed to foreman and even area supervisor positions. They were at a severe disadvantage, and their crews knew it, rightfully feeling that such inexperienced leadership was unsafe and inappropriate. Supervisors without the technical acumen to lead crews will almost certainly fail to earn credibility or respect.

During my 40-year tenure with an investor-owned utility, I spent over 15 years as a journeyman before the company named me a crew supervisor. Now, some journeymen are promoted to similar roles in just two to four years. Simple math tells us that supervisors of the past often had considerably more real-world frontline experience than many of today’s supervisors do.

Even with all my years as a journeyman and the wholehearted belief that I was prepared to be a great supervisor, I quickly realized that overseeing employees is far more challenging than building a job. Management skills training and a transition period are essential to success; without them, new leaders are much more likely to struggle.

Supervisor Development Program
Fortunately, not long after I was promoted, the utility launched a supervisor development program. Management identified future supervisors and enrolled them in the program’s multiweek classes, which they completed while still working as journeymen. This turned out to be a wise company investment.

At the time, I was chosen to be a program adviser. I worked with several other relatively new supervisors to identify the topics that most needed to be addressed before or during a journeyman’s transition to leadership. The development program prioritized team communication, with an overarching goal of helping new supervisors effectively establish themselves in their roles. Supervisor trainees typically had a great deal of field experience, but some lacked the skill to effectively transfer their knowledge to others. The program’s interpersonal communications class was extremely helpful in that regard.

Readers should note that supervisors who are knowledgeable about and easily adapt to generational and personality differences tend to have an easier time establishing rapport with their crews. Every human being communicates and receives information a bit differently. Supervisors who don’t willingly adjust to their employees will experience related challenges.

But we’re not finished yet. Electric utility leadership also demands that supervisors be fair and trustworthy, with excellent time management skills and proficiency in human performance principles and industry regulatory rules. In my opinion, too many of today’s recently promoted supervisors do not recognize the full scope of their responsibilities. It is imperative that they understand the potential impact of their role, including tort liability exposures.

Highly Skilled Journeymen
A former co-worker and I used to talk about how a top-notch journeyman could reconductor a mile of three-phase line with single pots, three-phase banks, and riser and junction poles without any customer being the wiser (unless they looked out a window). I still truly believe that a highly skilled journeyman can reconductor a line and keep everything hot without any intentional outages.

Our industry’s supervisors – each and every one – should be able to illustrate reconductoring and other relevant work processes to crews as needed throughout job planning and execution. They should be equally skilled at anticipating possible challenges and offering solutions.

One of my mentors told me long ago that good supervisors are where the rubber meets the road. Their technical expertise combined with their management authority means they can take ownership of job-related issues until they are successfully resolved. My mentor also memorably explained that a supervisor can tell they have arrived when crew members begin asking them for their honest opinions. Those wise words remain true today.

A Word of Thanks
In closing, I want to thank each of the diligent industry supervisors currently working in the field. I deeply appreciate what you do, and I’m always here to share a word of support or advice should you need it.

About the Author: Danny Raines, CUSP, is an author, an OSHA-authorized trainer, and a transmission and distribution safety consultant who retired from Georgia Power after 40 years of service and now operates Raines Utility Safety Solutions LLC.

Learn more from Danny Raines on the Utility Safety Podcast series. Listen now at https://utilitysafety.podbean.com!

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 floating at a distribution pole and a static on an insulator or swinging clevis at the top of a transmission structure. If they are not electrically bonded to the pole or structure, lethal potential can exist between conductor and structure.

The bonding jumper has the same role when we mach out a system neutral. Two purposes are served by installing a mechanical jumper across the system neutral and then cutting the neutral. First, the system neutral’s current-carrying capability is continued through the mechanical jumper. Second, this creates a bond across the open in the cut neutral conductor, ensuring that no voltage appears in the open that could put the worker at risk.

Total resistance of the bonding jumper across its length will result in a measurable voltage drop across that length. Resistance is determined by conductor size and length and the amount of current flowing across the jumper. Since the bonding jumper is there to equalize potential across the open, the potential that exists across the open neutral will also be the potential across the mechanical jumper.

The same condition applies to the worker on the pole. The voltage that occurs across the length of the bonding jumper between the grounded conductors and the structure is the same voltage that the worker will be exposed to. This is why keeping the jumper as short as possible affects the total voltage that the worker can be exposed to.

Cable-length effect is one of two reasons why most procedures specify keeping the structure bond connection close to the work area. Length produces the resistance that determines the voltage drop across the cable and the worker. Cable whipping is the second reason. If a clamp located 10 feet down the pole is connected to a 20-foot cable, the cable will whip violently during the first few cycles of a fault. This can produce enough energy to pull apart connections and present just as much of a hazard to a nearby worker as poor grounding practices. It is good practice to tie down extra-long cable if you find it in your work area.

Q: Does the configuration matter when grounding three-phase?

A: Yes, but the extent to which it matters depends on the variables that could occur when a grounded circuit is unexpectedly energized. Review this comment published in Appendix C to OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269: “… if employees are working on a three-phase system, the grounding method must short circuit all three phases. Short circuiting all phases will ensure faster clearing and lower the current through the grounding cable connecting the deenergized line to ground, thereby lowering the voltage across that cable.”

Normal or fault current in a three-phase system is still electricity that behaves the same way normally operating three-phase currents do. In a three-phase grounded wye system, the current on the grounded neutral will be the imbalance between the conductor currents in the system. That is what the Appendix C statement above refers to. If we short circuit the three-phase system and it is suddenly hit by a current, the current will circulate within the three-phase system, causing the relay system to trip and open the feed. As with any three-phase system, while the current circulates within it, the imbalance will go to ground in that Y connection. In our case, that’s our ground connection, with – as per the Appendix C statement above – most of the current staying in the three-phase system, thereby limiting the current flowing into ground at the work area. This is an excellent reason to prioritize making the three-phase ground to the system neutral and the bonding connection to the pole between the neutral and pole. The current on the ground connection is distributed across the very low-resistance system neutral and every interconnected pole bond nearby.

Here, the ground cable three-phase current principle applies. The lower the current across the cable, the lower the voltage drop across the cable. Remember, the voltage drop across the cable is the voltage that the worker will be exposed to.

Phase to ground three times is the alternative configuration. A fault in that configuration is still short circuited but in a much longer pathway across the ground connection. The difference is that the short jumper short circuit limits the current to ground in the work area, while the phase-to-ground-three-times configuration passes the available fault current through the work area ground connections.

Q: I’ve noticed that some manual operators stand on grids when throwing substation gang switches while others do not. Are there any regulatory rules about this? 

A: Switching grids are discussed as an additional protective method in Part 9.1.3 of IEEE 80, “IEEE Guide for Safety in AC Substation Grounding.” The grid below the surface of a substation creates an equipotential mat for workers. The switch handle is bonded to the structure, and the structure is bonded to the substation grid. Two modes of worker protection are available here. One is the layer of rock under the worker’s feet that creates an insulating buffer above the substation’s equipotential mat grid. For us, in terms of incidental versus intentional protection, there is a big difference between the grid below the substation rock and the visible grid that an operator stands on. The operator is incidentally protected by the substation grid and rock bed, but we can’t see the condition of the grid or the grid connections buried beneath our feet. Alternatively, we can install a conductive grid that is visibly bonded to the structure and handle.

Q: When working in substations, are we required to bond conductive lifts to grounded bus work?

A: Yes. Workers have been killed due to potential differences between bus work and unbonded lifts. OSHA addresses this in 1910.269(n)(3), “Equipotential zone,” which states the following: “Temporary protective grounds shall be placed at such locations and arranged in such a manner that the employer can demonstrate will prevent each employee from being exposed to hazardous differences in electric potential.”

There is almost always current flowing or circulating in a substation’s grounded bus. Raising a conductive lift to the bus extends a path to ground from the bus, down through the lift and into the earth. Insulating barriers to the pathway do exist, such as rubber tires and the substation rock layer, but their efficacy is not guaranteed. With current in the grounded bus and a ground path through the lift, there will be a potential difference between the bus and lift. If the potential is great enough to penetrate the worker’s skin, the circulating current will divide and flow through the worker into the lift. A bonding jumper connection between the grounded bus and the lift will bond out the potential difference, protecting the worker. The same rule applies to conductive lifts used in line construction, particularly where nearby energized lines present induction hazards. Bonding the lift to the new circuit conductors bonds out the potential difference between the bus and the lift path to ground.

Q: Can you explain the rule that requires utilities to install “High Voltage” signs on their jointly owned wood poles?

A: Utilities are required to post warning signs where unqualified individuals could access their facilities. Signage is mandatory where access points are located at or near ground level and could easily be breached (e.g., substations, vault doors, aerial banks on ground-level pads).

The ANSI Z535 standards don’t specifically call out when signs are required, but they do state that where a fenced-in facility contains exposed electrical equipment, signage must be legible at a safe distance from the hazard. So, no standard spacing exists. Compliant installation is based on an observer’s most likely angle as they approach the fence. For instance, signs every 50 feet would be noticeable where an observer approaches from an alley with a broad view of the fence. However, if the observer approaches through an ornamental hedge located 5 feet from the fence, there is a good chance they would not see the signs.

Section 110 of the National Electrical Code contains requirements for conspicuous signage on entrances to guarded rooms and other locations. The signage must warn unqualified individuals against entry. Part C of NEC Section 110 states the same criteria for high-voltage enclosures. The National Electrical Safety Code requires safety signs at substation gates and entrances and on the exterior lengths of substation fences and walls. NESC Part 217 addresses “readily climbable” structures, which include lattice with braces that can be used as steps and climbed by almost anyone. These structures require barriers, plus safety signs above the barriers that indicate the electrocution hazard.

Unless a utility pole has steps installed at ground level, it cannot be readily accessed by anyone other than individuals who have been trained to recognize the hazards noted above. For that reason, warning signs are not typically required on poles and similar structures. It is the owner’s responsibility to determine whether untrained individuals can access their facilities.

Do you have a question regarding best practices, work procedures or other utility safety-related topics? If so, please send your inquiries directly to kwade@utilitybusinessmedia.com. Questions submitted are reviewed and answered by the iP editorial advisory board and other subject matter experts.

In this episode, Danny Raines discusses the “100 Days of Summer,” a critical period spanning roughly from May 20th to September 10th. During this timeframe, approximately 60% of all major accidents and fatalities occur. The conversation covers the severe dangers of distracted driving , the catastrophic risks of head-on collisions and intersection accidents , and the life-saving importance of using seatbelts. For utility workers facing heightened workloads, the episode highlights the necessity of proper work zone setups , strategies to mitigate heat exhaustion while wearing PPE , and the critical requirement to adhere to the 2024 ASTM updates for testing insulated gloves.

Key Takeaways

• The period between May 20th and September 10th accounts for roughly 60% of all major accidents and fatalities for the entire year.

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injuries in the country.

• Approximately 40% of all vehicle crashes occur at intersections.

• While head-on collisions make up only 3% to 9% of crashes, they account for around 33% of traffic-related deaths.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently introduced a new program focused on preventing heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

• Due to the 2024 ASTM update, electrical gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is the “100 Days of Summer” and why is it a significant time of year?

A: The “100 Days of Summer” refers to the time frame between approximately May 20th and September 10th. It is highly significant because roughly 60% of all severe accidents, vehicle crashes, and workplace fatalities throughout the entire year happen during this specific window.

Q: What are the specific risks and statistics associated with not wearing seatbelts?

A: In fatal highway crashes, half of the victims are not wearing safety belts. When individuals are unbelted, they often become projectiles inside the car, making the risk of injury three times higher for passengers in the back seat and two times higher for the driver.

Q: What precautions must utility workers take regarding PPE and heat during the summer months?

A: Utility workers must stay hydrated by drinking water and electrolytes instead of energy drinks. Even when it is hot and uncomfortable, workers must never remove necessary cover-up equipment. Furthermore, workers must strictly track their PPE testing, as the 2024 ASTM update mandates that insulated gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

#100DaysOfSummer #UtilitySafety #IncidentPrevention #DistractedDriving #LinemanSafety #PPETesting #Lineman #Linemen #Lineworkers

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

In this hard-hitting and deeply personal session, industry veteran Danny Raines, CUSP, challenges the “normalization of deviation” in the electrical utility industry. Drawing from decades of experience in the field, as well as his perspective as a pilot, Danny explores why skilled professionals continue to bypass safety regulations despite having better equipment and training than ever before.

Through a series of real-world case studies and sobering accident investigations, this program dissects the thin line between “operating by the rules” and true operational excellence. Danny reminds us that while we can work in an unacceptable manner for years without incident, we are simply increasing the odds of a catastrophic failure. It is a call to action for every employee to become their “brother’s keeper” and refuse to let the unacceptable become the standard.

Part 1: The Illusion of Experience and the Cost of Compromise

In the first half, Danny discusses the origins of the “Accepting the Unacceptable” program and the alarming statistics of human error.

• The Risk of “It Ain’t My Job”: How a lack of ownership leads to system unreliability and hazardous conditions for the next crew.
• The Experience Trap: Why veteran linemen often fall victim to complacency while newer workers suffer from a lack of quality mentorship.
• Minimum vs. Excellent: A breakdown of why following OSHA regulations is merely the “legal minimum” and not the same as operating at an excellent safety level.

Part 2: Leadership, Human Performance, and the Art of the Craft

In the second half, Danny delves into the psychology of human performance and the heavy burden of leadership.

• The Pilot’s Perspective: Comparing “Cockpit Resource Management” to the teamwork required in a bucket truck to prevent fatal mistakes.
• Non-Verbal Endorsements: The dangerous message sent when a leader watches an unsafe act and says nothing, essentially “signing off” on the risk.
• The Artist in the Field: A final reflection on moving from being a laborer to a “craftperson” and ultimately an “artist” who works with hand, brain, and soul.

Question & Answer

1. What is Danny Raines’ definition of “Accepting the Unacceptable”? It is defined as accidents or close calls caused by human performance failures or leadership accepting less than what is required by standards and regulations.

2. Why does Danny believe that following regulations is not enough? He argues that regulations and industry standards represent the minimum precautions required to be “legal,” but they do not equate to operational excellence or the highest level of safety.

3. What is a “non-verbal endorsement” in a safety context? It is when a leader or peer witnesses an unsafe act and remains silent. This silence sends a message to the rest of the crew—especially inexperienced members—that the behavior is acceptable.

4. According to the transcript, who is ultimately responsible for safety on the job site? While the employer is legally responsible and accountable to OSHA, the transcript emphasizes that the employee is the only one who can identify and correct unacceptability the moment it happens on-site.

#LinemanSafety #OperationalExcellence #UtilityIndustry #HumanPerformance #SafetyLeadership #DannyRainesCUSP

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/04PvuEyn

In this hard-hitting and deeply personal session, industry veteran Danny Raines, CUSP, challenges the “normalization of deviation” in the electrical utility industry. Drawing from decades of experience in the field, as well as his perspective as a pilot, Danny explores why skilled professionals continue to bypass safety regulations despite having better equipment and training than ever before.

Through a series of real-world case studies and sobering accident investigations, this program dissects the thin line between “operating by the rules” and true operational excellence. Danny reminds us that while we can work in an unacceptable manner for years without incident, we are simply increasing the odds of a catastrophic failure. It is a call to action for every employee to become their “brother’s keeper” and refuse to let the unacceptable become the standard.

Part 1: The Illusion of Experience and the Cost of Compromise

In the first half, Danny discusses the origins of the “Accepting the Unacceptable” program and the alarming statistics of human error.

• The Risk of “It Ain’t My Job”: How a lack of ownership leads to system unreliability and hazardous conditions for the next crew.
• The Experience Trap: Why veteran linemen often fall victim to complacency while newer workers suffer from a lack of quality mentorship.
• Minimum vs. Excellent: A breakdown of why following OSHA regulations is merely the “legal minimum” and not the same as operating at an excellent safety level.

Part 2: Leadership, Human Performance, and the Art of the Craft

In the second half, Danny delves into the psychology of human performance and the heavy burden of leadership.

• The Pilot’s Perspective: Comparing “Cockpit Resource Management” to the teamwork required in a bucket truck to prevent fatal mistakes.
• Non-Verbal Endorsements: The dangerous message sent when a leader watches an unsafe act and says nothing, essentially “signing off” on the risk.
• The Artist in the Field: A final reflection on moving from being a laborer to a “craftperson” and ultimately an “artist” who works with hand, brain, and soul.

Question & Answer

1. What is Danny Raines’ definition of “Accepting the Unacceptable”? It is defined as accidents or close calls caused by human performance failures or leadership accepting less than what is required by standards and regulations.

2. Why does Danny believe that following regulations is not enough? He argues that regulations and industry standards represent the minimum precautions required to be “legal,” but they do not equate to operational excellence or the highest level of safety.

3. What is a “non-verbal endorsement” in a safety context? It is when a leader or peer witnesses an unsafe act and remains silent. This silence sends a message to the rest of the crew—especially inexperienced members—that the behavior is acceptable.

4. According to the transcript, who is ultimately responsible for safety on the job site? While the employer is legally responsible and accountable to OSHA, the transcript emphasizes that the employee is the only one who can identify and correct unacceptability the moment it happens on-site.

#LinemanSafety #OperationalExcellence #UtilityIndustry #HumanPerformance #SafetyLeadership #DannyRainesCUSP

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/04PvuEyn

In this episode, Danny Raines, CUSP, joins the show to discuss the critical transition from being a crew member to a leader in the utility industry. Drawing from his extensive career—from journeyman lineman to safety consultant—Danny explores the challenges of supervision, such as navigating generational differences and the importance of communication skills. The conversation delves into the “glass house” effect, highlighting how a leader’s actions on and off the job, including on social media, influence safety culture. Danny also breaks down different leadership styles, advocating for servant leadership as the most effective approach for modern crews.

Buy Danny’s Book – https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Ole-Lineman-learning-Journeyman-ebook/dp/B0FXN6G7V8/ref

Key Takeaways:

• The Difficulty of Transition: Moving from a “doer” to a leader is a long road because it is often easier to do the job yourself than to get others to do it according to expectations.
• The “Glass House” Effect: Leaders must realize they are always being watched by their crew and peers. This extends to social media, where liking or interacting with unsafe content can undermine a leader’s credibility and influence new apprentices negatively.
• Servant Leadership: The most successful leadership style is “servant leadership,” defined by Danny as never asking a crew member to do something the leader hasn’t done or isn’t willing to help with.
• Admitting Knowledge Gaps: Leaders should never “blow smoke” or pretend to know everything. If a leader doesn’t know the answer, they should admit it, pause the work, and find the correct information to maintain trust.
• Generational Awareness: Effective leadership requires understanding generational differences (e.g., Baby Boomers vs. Millennials) and adapting communication styles to different personality profiles.
• Succession Planning: A vital first step for any new supervisor is to identify and mentor the person who will eventually replace them.

Questions & Answers

1. What inspired Danny Raines to write his recent article on leadership? Danny was inspired by reflecting on his own career progression from a crew member to various leadership roles, as well as a book written by his pastor titled Yes, I Can, which resonated with his experiences of rising to new challenges.

2. How does Danny define the “Glass House” concept in leadership? The “Glass House” means that a leader is constantly under observation. Everything they do, whether on the job site or on social media, is seen by others, and mistakes or endorsements of unsafe behavior (even online) can negatively influence the workforce.

3. What are the four main leadership styles discussed in the podcast? Danny identifies four primary styles: Autocratic (authority-based), Democratic (voting/consensus-based), Bureaucratic (rule-governed), and Servant Leadership (leading by example and support).

4. Why is “Servant Leadership” preferred over the “Autocratic” style in today’s workforce? While autocratic leadership (“my way or the highway”) was common in the past, it creates friction, especially with younger generations. Servant leadership fosters better buy-in because the leader reasons with the crew, explains the “why,” and proves they are willing to do the work themselves.

5. What should a leader do if they encounter a situation they don’t understand? They should immediately stop and admit they aren’t sure, rather than acting like they know. Danny advises saying, “I’m not real sure about this, but let me check and I’ll get right back with you,” to avoid breaking trust or causing safety issues.

6. What is Danny’s “one piece of advice” for new leaders? His advice is “Don’t rush it.” Leadership takes time and experience to build. He urges new leaders to be humble, learn as they go, and seek advice rather than expecting to know everything immediately.

#UtilitySafety #LeadershipDevelopment #LinemanLife #ServantLeadership #SafetyCulture #CUSP

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

As the grid transitions to green energy, battery energy storage systems (BESS) are popping up everywhere—from utility substations to residential neighborhoods. But what happens when lithium-ion technology fails? In this episode of The Voice of Experience, host Danny Raines and Fire Test Specialist Josh Dinaburg from the CSA Group dive deep into the reality of battery fire safety.

Josh brings nearly 20 years of lab experience to explain why the “let it burn” strategy is often the safest choice for first responders and the environment. We dispel common myths about toxic runoff, explore how AI is revolutionizing failure detection, and discuss the rigorous testing standards keeping our communities safe. If you work in utilities, safety operations, or fire protection, this is the essential guide to understanding the risks and remedies of modern energy storage.

Learn More: https://www.csagroup.org/

Contact Josh: josh.dinaburg@csagroup.org

Danny Raines, CUSP Book – Legendas of an Ole’ Lineman: Order Here

Key Takeaways

• The “Let It Burn” Strategy is Intentional: Contrary to public perception, the safest tactic for large-scale battery fires is often isolation rather than active suppression. Attempting to extinguish the fire can leave “stranded energy” in damaged cells, creating a “ticking time bomb” for secondary events, whereas letting it consume itself renders the waste safer for disposal.
• Manufacturing Quality is Improving Rapidly: While cell counts in storage facilities are increasing, the failure rate has dropped significantly—now estimated in the “one out of millions” range rather than hundreds.
• Environmental Impact is Manageable: Extensive testing indicates that water and air quality impacts from these fires are generally comparable to standard structure fires. Runoff has not been demonstrated to cause immediate “forever chemical” threats to groundwater, provided the site is managed correctly.
• AI is the Future of Prevention: The industry is moving toward advanced Battery Management Systems (BMS) that use AI to analyze temperature and voltage trends, allowing operators to identify and isolate failing cells months before a thermal runaway event occurs.
• Firefighter Safety is Paramount: The primary risk to first responders is not just the fire, but the potential for explosion and high-voltage hazards. The current standard emphasizes life safety and evacuation over asset protection.

Q&A: Addressing Common Concerns

1. What is the biggest myth about battery storage fires?

Answer: The biggest myth is that if fire departments aren’t spraying water, they don’t know what they are doing. In reality, standing back and monitoring is a calculated containment strategy. Active firefighting can waste water and endanger responders without effectively stopping the thermal runaway, so isolation is often the professional standard.

2. Does a battery fire pose a unique toxic threat to the local community?

Answer: While lithium-ion electrolytes contain fluorinated compounds, the combustion products are remarkably similar to a typical house fire involving polyurethane furniture or cleaning chemicals under a sink. The smoke should be avoided like any other fire, but it does not generally require unique HazMat protocols beyond standard breathing protection and evacuation.

3. Can technology stop a fire once it starts?

Answer: Once thermal runaway begins in a specific cell, the chemical and electrical energy makes it nearly impossible to stop that specific event. However, engineering controls—such as insulation barriers and novel injection systems—are designed to prevent that single-cell failure from propagating to the rest of the battery bank, turning a potential catastrophe into a minor, contained incident.

#BatteryStorage #FireSafety #RenewableEnergy #UtilitySafety #LithiumIon #CSAGroup

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Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

It’s not just downed lines and high voltage you need to watch out for during storm restoration. In the mud and floodwaters lies a hidden, deadly threat: flesh-eating bacteria. In this critical episode, we’re talking about Necrotizing Fasciitis, a rare but devastating infection that can start from a tiny cut or scrape exposed to contaminated water. We break down what every line worker and utility professional needs to know—how to identify the risks on a storm-ravaged site, the crucial first-aid steps that can save your life, and the early warning signs you can’t afford to ignore. Don’t let a small nick turn into a career-ending injury. This is a must-listen for anyone working in the aftermath of a hurricane, flood, or major storm.

Key Takeaways

• The Threat is Real: Necrotizing Fasciitis is caused by bacteria (like Group A Strep or Vibrio vulnificus) found in contaminated water, mud, and debris common after storms. It enters the body through any break in the skin, including minor cuts, scrapes, or even insect bites.
• Prevention is Proactive Wound Care: Standard PPE is your first defense, but it’s not foolproof. The most critical step is to immediately and thoroughly clean any wound—no matter how small—with soap and clean water. Follow up with an antiseptic and a waterproof bandage.
• Know the Early Warning Signs: The infection progresses with terrifying speed. Watch for pain that is far more severe than the injury looks, rapidly spreading redness or swelling, fever, chills, and flu-like symptoms. Do not “wait and see.”
• Time is Tissue: If you suspect an infection, seek immediate medical attention. Go to an emergency room and explicitly state your concern about a severe skin infection from exposure to storm water. Early and aggressive treatment is the key to survival and recovery.

Q&A Session

1. I’m always covered in PPE. Isn’t that enough protection?

While waterproof gear and gloves are essential, they can be punctured or torn. Bacteria can also enter the body if you touch a contaminated surface and then inadvertently touch a small, existing cut. The real defense is vigilant personal hygiene and immediate wound care. Think of your first-aid kit as being just as important as your climbing gear.

2. How can I tell the difference between a regular infection and flesh-eating bacteria?

The two key indicators are pain and speed. A typical localized infection might be sore, red, and develop over a few days. Necrotizing Fasciitis is characterized by excruciating pain that seems completely out of proportion to the minor wound. The redness and swelling will also spread incredibly fast, sometimes visibly changing within a single hour. If the pain is the worst you’ve ever felt, it’s a major red flag.

3. What if I get a cut but I’m in the middle of a 16-hour shift?

Don’t tough it out. Stop what you’re doing immediately. At a minimum, douse the wound with clean water from your water bottle and apply antiseptic from your personal or truck first-aid kit. Cover it securely. As soon as you are able, clean it more thoroughly with soap and water. Report the injury to your supervisor, no matter how minor, so there’s a record. This ensures you’re covered and encourages a culture of safety.

iPi Forum – https://ip-institute.com/ipi-forum/

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvzc

#LineWorkerSafety #StormRestoration #UtilityWorker #NecrotizingFasciitis #Lineman #SafetyFirst #LineLife #WorkplaceSafety #CUSP #FleshEatingBacteria

In this powerful episode of the Utility Safety Podcast: Voice of Experience, veteran lineman and safety consultant Danny Raines, CUSP, shares hard-earned lessons from decades of storm response—from Hurricane Katrina to ice storms in Georgia. With hurricane season in full swing, Danny offers real-world guidance on preparing for storm duty, understanding system hazards, and staying mentally and physically resilient in the face of chaos. Whether you’re a new lineworker heading out on your first storm or a seasoned pro, this episode delivers critical insights to keep you safe, sharp, and storm-ready.

Key Takeaways:

1. Preparation is Everything: Danny emphasizes the importance of personal checklists, including meds, hygiene, and weather-appropriate gear.

2. Test and Verify: Don’t assume equipment is de-energized—especially with the increase in generators, solar, and battery backups.

3. Mental & Physical Fatigue is Real: After 14–18 days, exhaustion sets in, increasing the chance of errors. Know your limits.

4. Find a Mentor: For new linemen, a trusted mentor can be a lifeline during complex storm work.

5. Storm Hazards Go Beyond Electricity: Environmental dangers like snakes, alligators, and aggressive customers add to the challenge.

3 Questions & Answers:

Q1: What’s one of the most overlooked parts of storm prep?

A: Personal medications. Many new crew members forget that pharmacies may be closed or destroyed post-storm, making it impossible to refill critical prescriptions.

Q2: Why is it so important to “test and verify”?

A: With so many modern power sources—from Honda generators to solar panels and battery storage—assumptions can be fatal. Always check for voltage, even on lines you think are isolated.

Q3: How long can a lineworker realistically stay sharp on storm duty?

A: According to Danny, the magic number is around 14–18 days. After that, physical fatigue and mental exhaustion dramatically increase the risk of mistakes and injuries.

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvzc

#UtilitySafety #StormResponse #LinemanLife #HurricanePrep #ElectricalSafety #DannyRaines #CUSP #Lineworkers #StormWork

In this episode of Voice of Experience, Danny Raines, CUSP discusses the critical importance of mental awareness and focus in utility work. Using real-life accident investigations, he explores why experienced professionals sometimes repeat dangerous mistakes and how a “checkup from the neck up” can prevent incidents. From miscommunication in substations to lack of hazard recognition, this episode is packed with insights to improve safety culture and accountability in the field.

Key Takeaways:

• The Importance of Mental Awareness: How small lapses in judgment can lead to catastrophic accidents.
• The Role of Dedicated Observers: Why having a second set of eyes can prevent mistakes.
• Lessons from Incident Investigations: Real-world case studies of preventable accidents.
• Following Procedures & Training: Why workers revert to unsafe practices despite training.
• Taking Accountability: Leadership’s role in enforcing safety and stopping unsafe work.

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvz

#UtilitySafety #LinemanLife #WorkplaceSafety #IncidentPrevention #ElectricalSafety #SafetyCulture

Join Danny Raines, CUSP, as he shares critical lessons learned from the field in this episode of The Voice of Experience. Danny dives into real-world incidents, including a tragic fatality and a near-miss, emphasizing the importance of testing and verifying in the utility safety industry. With decades of experience, Danny provides actionable insights to prevent accidents, improve safety protocols, and foster a culture of vigilance among utility professionals.

Key Takeaways:

1.Testing and Verifying Saves Lives: Never assume safety; always verify conditions to prevent catastrophic incidents.

2.Human Error Is Inevitable: Acknowledge that mistakes happen and take proactive steps to minimize risks.

3.The Power of Speaking Up: Encourage crews to challenge unsafe practices and prioritize safety over production.

4.Importance of Job Briefings: Thorough planning and hazard identification are critical to mitigating risks on-site.

4 Questions to learn from this podcast with Answers:

Q1: What is the primary cause of unsafe practices in the field?

A1: Assumptions and rushing to complete tasks often lead to neglecting crucial safety checks, like testing and verifying.

Q2: Why is “speaking up” vital in utility safety?

A2: It prevents potential accidents by addressing hazards early. Crew members should challenge unsafe practices without fear of backlash.

Q3: How can utility workers improve safety culture?

A3: By consistently practicing thorough job briefings, hazard identification, and compliance with safety regulations.

Q4: What role does leadership play in utility safety?

A4: Leaders must ensure oversight, provide proper training, and foster a culture where safety is prioritized over production.

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvzc

#UtilitySafety #WorkSafe #CUSP #LinemanSafety #IncidentPrevention #SafetyLeadership

In this episode, safety consultant Danny Raines, CUSP, reflects on critical issues facing the utility industry, including safety practices, training gaps, and the persistent challenges of electrical fatalities. Danny delves into the importance of adhering to safety protocols, fostering a culture of accountability, and embracing innovation in personal protective equipment (PPE). Through stories from his career, Danny emphasizes the life-saving significance of vigilance and teamwork in high-risk environments.

Key Takeaways:

1.Window vs. Mirror Perspective: Evaluate whether you are self-reflective (mirror) or outward-focused (window) in safety practices.

2.“Learn-It-All” Mindset: Embrace a continuous learning approach over the “know-it-all” attitude.

3.The Numbers Don’t Lie: Despite advancements in PPE and training, electrical fatalities remain stagnant, demanding deeper industry introspection.

4.Accountability Saves Lives: The role of dedicated observers and adherence to safety protocols cannot be overstated.

5.A Culture of Safety: Building relationships and fostering open communication among crews enhance workplace safety.

6.Personal Responsibility: Safety isn’t just about individual choices—it impacts families and communities.

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvz

#UtilitySafety #ElectricalSafety #PPEInnovation #LinemanLife #SafetyCulture #DannyRaines

In this episode of The Voice of Experience, Danny Raines, CUSP, shares his invaluable insights from decades of storm work as a lineman and utility safety expert. From the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to modern-day storm recovery challenges, Danny takes us through the physical and mental toll of responding to natural disasters. He explains the dangers of backfeeds, the rise of alternative energy sources, and the importance of verifying safety before restoring power. Learn from his firsthand stories, safety lessons, and how the landscape of utility work has evolved over the years. Whether you’re in the utility industry or just curious about storm response, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge from one of the most respected professionals in the field.

Key Takeaways:

1. The dangers of storm work: Power restoration involves more than meets the eye, especially with evolving technology like solar panels and generators creating backfeed hazards.
2. Mental and physical challenges: Long hours, dangerous conditions, and the emotional impact of storm recovery can lead to severe fatigue and stress.
3. Importance of testing and verifying: Danny stresses the importance of safety procedures, especially when dealing with energized systems after a storm.
4. Stories from the field: Real-life experiences from Hurricane Katrina and other storms demonstrate the unpredictable nature of storm recovery.
5. Utility evolution: Changes in technology, regulations, and community expectations are reshaping the utility industry’s response to natural disasters.

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny’s regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at rainesafety@gmail.com

Purchase Danny’s Book on Amazon – https://a.co/d/556LDvz

#UtilitySafety #StormWork #HurricaneKatrina #LinemanLife #BackfeedDangers #MentalHealthMatters #TestAndVerify #PowerRestoration #StormRecovery #AlternativeEnergy #UtilityIndustry #SafetyFirst #DannyRaines #CUSP #ElectricGrid #DisasterResponse

Read the article: https://incident-prevention.com/blog/confronting-data-bias-to-improve-safety-outcomes/

Effective mitigation requires leaders to regularly audit data, standardize definitions and measurement practices, and create psychologically safe reporting environments.

This podcast episode features Gina Vanderlin, CUSP, CSP, CHMM, CIT, Health and Safety Program Manager at PSEG Long Island and a self-professed “Safety Alchemist”. In a deep dive with host Kate Wade, Gina explores how safety professionals can transform raw data and standard procedures into meaningful organizational change. The conversation focuses on her Applied Alchemy article series for Incident Prevention magazine, specifically highlighting the hidden dangers of data bias and the evolving safety risks associated with new energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries.

Key Takeaways

• The Concept of Safety Alchemy: Rather than just following compliance-based checklists, a “safety alchemist” blends diverse disciplines—such as behavioral science, decision science, and engineering—to transform information into actionable insight.
• The Evolution of Battery Hazards: As utilities integrate EVs and grid storage, employers must reconsider hazard communication. Batteries often bypass traditional scrutiny because they are classified as “articles,” but damaged or failing batteries introduce significant chemical and fire risks.
• Data Bias in Safety Management: Bias is a natural human trait, but in safety data, it can lead to “ghost” weaknesses. Gina identifies five key biases—survivorship, selection, measurement, historical, and algorithmic—that can cause a safety system to drift away from reality.
• The “Geographic Presumption”: Under a new OSHA letter of interpretation (Jan 2026), injuries caused by personal devices (like e-cigarettes or personal chargers) in the workplace are generally considered work-related and recordable.
• Improving Decision Quality: The common thread across all safety domains is decision quality. Improving how workers interpret information and how leaders prioritize resources is the most effective way to address the plateau in Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) rates

Questions & Answers

Q1: How does Gina Vanderlin define “Decision Quality” in the context of utility safety?

A: Gina defines it as the core issue connecting diverse safety topics. It involves how individuals and organizations interpret information to make choices. If decisions are made based on flawed assumptions or biased data, the entire safety system can fail to address real-world risks.

Q2: What is a specific example of how data bias has physically impacted safety training?

A: Gina points to CPR training, noting that 95% of mannequins are anatomically male. This lack of representative data creates a “modesty deterrent” and technical discomfort, resulting in women being 14% less likely to receive CPR during a public medical event.

Q3: What does Gina suggest is the biggest pitfall for organizations rebranding their programs as “SIF-focused”?

A: The pitfall is rebranding on paper without actually improving the quality of investigations or examining the decision-making conditions that led to the exposure. Simply changing the name of a near-miss program doesn’t change the safety outcome if the underlying system remains the same.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#UtilitySafety #SafetyAlchemy #DataBias #OccupationalHealth #IncidentPrevention #EHSLeadership

Challenging the Status Quo: Rethinking Safety in the Utility Industry

Is safety truly the utility industry’s first priority? And is it even a real thing, or just a byproduct of something deeper? In this thought-provoking episode of Influencing Safety, Bill Martin, President and CEO of Think Tank Project LLC, joins host Kate Wade to challenge traditional views on safety. They explore the critical role of teamwork, communication, and human connection in fostering a truly safe work environment. Bill shares insights on the psychological factors that influence workplace culture, the hidden impact of mental health, and how shifting our focus from compliance to competency could change the game.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Safety isn’t just about compliance—it’s a byproduct of strong teamwork and communication.
✅ A psychologically safe work environment fosters better decision-making and fewer incidents.
✅ The traditional “safety first” mindset might be limiting our ability to create real change.
✅ Human connection and mental health are critical factors in workplace safety.
✅ Small changes, like pre-job huddles and open conversations, can have a major impact.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#WorkplaceSafety #UtilityIndustry #SafetyCulture #PsychologicalSafety #TeamworkMatters #LeadershipDevelopment #IncidentPrevention #CommunicationIsKey #CUSP #IncidentPrevention

In this episode of Utility Safety in Depth, host Kate Wade sits down with John “Scotty” MacNeill and Rena Harrington to explore the mission of the United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities (USMWF). They discuss the critical role USMWF plays in supporting families affected by workplace fatalities, advocating for stronger safety regulations, and raising awareness in the utility industry. With personal stories, industry insights, and a call to action, this conversation highlights the human impact of workplace safety failures and the importance of proactive prevention.

Key Takeaways:

✔️ The Mission of USMWF: How the organization supports families affected by workplace fatalities.

✔️ Bridging the Safety Gap: Why family members must be involved in post-incident investigations.

✔️ The Power of Storytelling: How sharing personal loss creates real change in workplace safety.

✔️ Advocacy & Legislation: Efforts to improve safety laws at the state and federal levels.

✔️ What Utility Companies Can Do: How organizations can collaborate with USMWF to make a difference.

USMWF’s MISSION

Offers support, guidance and resources to those affected by work-related injuries, illnesses or diseases. Dedicated to sharing lessons learned that leads a movement of change in promoting actions for safe and healthy working conditions. Through the collective voice of families of fallen workers and other activists, we strive for the elimination and controls of workplace hazards– therefore preventing future tragedies.

​

USMWF’s VISION STATEMENT

USMWF is an organized community of dedicated family member victims, a nationally recognized non-profit leader driving the transformation of the work environment to safe and healthy conditions for all employers and employees – both today and tomorrow.

Read the article in iP Magazine – Read Here

Visit https://www.usmwf.org/ to support The United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#UtilitySafety #WorkplaceSafety #IncidentPrevention #LinemanLife #SafetyAdvocacy #StaySafe #USMWF

In this episode of the Incident Prevention Utility Safety Podcast, Kate Wade interviews Dr. Kevin Rindal, DC, chiropractor, human performance expert, and co-founder of Vimocity. Drawing from his extensive experience with the U.S. Olympic Swim Team and industrial athletes, Dr. Rindal shares insights on preventing soft tissue injuries, implementing dynamic warmup programs, and securing organizational buy-in for holistic well-being strategies. Learn how utilities can leverage sports medicine principles to enhance safety, reduce costs, and improve workers’ quality of life.

Key Takeaways

1. Industrial Athletes and Soft Tissue Injuries: How utility workers face similar physical demands to athletes and the role of dynamic preparation in reducing injury rates.
2. Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches: The importance of addressing leading indicators like pain to prevent more significant injuries or reliance on opioids and other pain mitigations.
3. Integration with Daily Routines: Methods to seamlessly incorporate warmups, muscle maintenance, and recovery into existing workflows, making it scalable for smaller organizations.
4. Leveraging Technology and Gamification: How apps, micro learning, and team challenges foster engagement and create sustainable safety habits.
5. Leadership and Culture: The critical role of leadership buy-in at all levels in making safety and well-being programs successful.

Connect with Kevin:

• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinrindal/
• Email – kevin@vimocity.com

Resource Links:

• Short form job-task specific training video | LINK
• Dynamic/ Full-body movement routine (5 min or less) | LINK
• Avoid Slips, Trips and Falls video | LINK

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#UtilitySafety #IndustrialAthletes #InjuryPrevention #Vimocity #WorkplaceWellbeing #DynamicWarmups

In this episode of Utility Safety In Depth, we delve into the fascinating concept of the 100th monkey effect and its implications for safety in the utility industry. Join us as we discuss how collective consciousness and human connection can drive significant improvements in safety culture and outcomes. We’ll explore practical strategies to foster a more caring and supportive work environment, emphasizing the importance of communication, empathy, and mutual respect. Discover how embracing the power of human connection can lead to a safer and more resilient workforce.

Key Takeaways:

• The 100th Monkey Effect: How collective consciousness can influence individual behavior.
• The importance of human connection in safety culture.
• Practical strategies to foster a more caring and supportive work environment.
• The power of communication, empathy, and mutual respect.
• The role of leadership in creating a positive safety culture.

#utilitiesafety #safetyculture #humanconnection #100thmonkeyeffect #workplacewellbeing #safetyleadership #utilityindustry

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

Are you tired of hearing the same safety jargon without seeing real change? Join Bill Martin, President and CEO of think Tank Project, LLC, and Kate Wade, Editor of Incident Prevention magazine, as they dive deep into the root causes of workplace injuries and fatalities. Discover how to move beyond motivation and empty slogans to create a truly safe and connected work environment.

Key Takeaways from this podcast:

• Importance of Synchronization: The way forward in safety management involves creating a synchronized workforce where everyone is connected on a deeper level. Synchronization allows for better communication and understanding, reducing the chances of injuries and accidents.
• Action Over Motivation: Motivational speeches and slogans alone are insufficient to bring about real change in workplace safety. There needs to be actionable steps that translate motivation into tangible improvements on the ground.
• Understanding Human Behavior: The podcast emphasizes that much of human behavior is automatic, driven by the brain’s need to conserve energy. Safety programs should account for this by focusing on changing automatic behaviors rather than expecting constant vigilance.
• The Role of Leadership: Effective leadership is about asking the right questions and involving workers in safety decisions. Leaders should model the behavior they want to see and create environments that encourage participation and ownership of safety practices.
• Continuous Learning and Experimentation: The podcast suggests that safety improvements should be approached as ongoing experiments, where teams try out new ideas, evaluate their effectiveness, and adjust accordingly.
• Dealing with Resistance: Resistance to change is natural, especially in large organizations with many layers. The podcast highlights the importance of addressing this resistance by aligning everyone around common goals and encouraging openness to new ideas.
• Mental and Emotional Health: Addressing mental health issues, such as addiction and depression, is crucial for creating a safe work environment. A connected and supportive team can help identify and mitigate these risks.
• Practical Applications: The podcast concludes with a call to action—what small, tangible change can be implemented on Monday to make the workplace safer? It’s about translating ideas into real-world actions that have a measurable impact.

#safetyculture #workplaceinjury #safetymanagement #safetyleadership #industrialaccidents #safetytraining #safetytips #safetypodcast #accidentprevention #riskmanagement

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

Welcome to Incident Prevention’s Utility Safety Podcast, hosted by Kate Wade, editor of Incident Prevention magazine. In this episode, Kate sits down with Scott Francis, the technical sales manager for Westex, a Milliken brand renowned for pioneering protective textiles since 1941. Scott brings decades of experience in the safety industry, especially in the flame-resistant and arc-rated clothing markets.

During this insightful discussion, Scott shares his expertise on the latest advancements in flame-resistant and arc-rated apparel, the importance of live demonstrations, and how Westex is leading the way in educating safety professionals. He also touches on the challenges of balancing cost and safety standards, and the critical role of comfort in ensuring protective clothing is worn consistently.

Whether you’re a safety manager looking to enhance your PPE program or simply interested in the latest trends in utility safety apparel, this episode is packed with valuable information.

Key Takeaways:

1. Impact of Live Demonstrations: Live flash fire and arc flash events leave a lasting impression, helping safety professionals understand the severity of thermal hazards.
2. Survivor Stories: Hearing from thermal exposure survivors like Brad Livingston emphasizes the real-life consequences of not wearing proper PPE.
3. Education and Training: Westex offers extensive educational resources, including webinars, regional safety conferences, and online materials to keep safety managers informed.
4. Balancing Cost and Safety: The competitive landscape in flame-resistant fabric manufacturing drives innovation and helps maintain affordable prices without compromising safety.
5. Comfort Equals Protection: Comfortable PPE is more likely to be worn consistently, directly impacting worker safety.

#UtilitySafety #FlameResistantClothing #ArcRatedApparel #PPE #WorkplaceSafety #SafetyPodcast #IncidentPrevention

You can read the current magazine at Incident Prevention Magazine.

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine – https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo – https://utilitysafetyconference.com/