Harnessing AI: Crafting the Future of Safety Professionals
In an ever-evolving world, technological advancements have the potential to transform industries and revolutionize the way we approach safety. Among the many emerging applications of artificial intelligence (AI), one particular use case stands out: the ability to listen to and analyze tens of thousands of daily tailboard conversations to determine their effectiveness in achieving desired […]
Tip of the Spear: A Tactical Approach to Safety Leadership
Leadership is defined as the action of leading a group or organization; it’s a verb. It’s also a skill that is extremely fluid. Leadership style can change depending on the person and the situation, but all effective leaders have some common qualities. When I developed the list below, I initially came up with 68 possible […]
Planning for Emergencies: How to Increase Survivability When Someone Gets Hurt
Most of us never plan for an accident to occur on the job site, and there is no way we can know how an individual or crew will respond to the trauma of seeing a teammate injured or killed. That’s something I learned when my crew watched me take the combined induction from two energized […]
The Art of Safety: Self-Reliance
Given the predictable nature of hazards, how and why do incidents occur? Think about this: If I know the winning numbers ahead of a lottery drawing, it’s simple for me to be 100% successful at winning the lottery money. So, if we know how hazards are going to act and how they cause harm, why […]
August-September 2023 Q&A
Q: Is there a rule that determines at what voltage level we must ground downed primary (e.g., at voltages higher than 4 kV)? A: No, there is no rule that you must ground downed primary when working to get it back up in the air. When conductors are on the ground, the objective of grounding […]
The End of the Pin-On Man Basket
I have been warning my clients to prepare for an expensive high-reach, non-insulating platform compliance issue, and that time is very near, if not already here. The issue is the use of pin-on man baskets for cranes. For quite a few years, it has been illegal to use a crane to hoist personnel with a […]
Equipotential or Total Isolation?
System grounding is one of the topics that people ask me about most, which is great because I have always found temporary system grounding for employee protection to be a fascinating subject. I performed bracket grounding all throughout my years spent working on line crews in the 1970s and ’80s. I was taught that it […]