One worker, one safety official

[old-iron-habit]

The company I work for does a lot of MSHA, power industry, and pipeline work. The industry trend is more and more safety officials on the projects. We are currently rebuilding a electricial power plant in the midwest. The safety rules on site require us to have one full time "degree'd" official for every 25 construction employees. We currently have 7 full time safety people on site. On Monday of this week one of our estimators attended a pre-job covering a number of smaller and medium pipeline projects. The project spec's calls for a full time inspector for the first 25 employees and one for every 25 after that. Some of the projects lumped togather are small repair jobs scattered in pumping stations over a two hundred mile radius. He asked which projects the safety official rule applied to, as some of the work was items like changing a door latch at a remote pumping station outhouse. The reply was no exceptions. If you are on site for any reason the safety official must be present. They are very up front about it, willing to pay the price so I guess we can not complain. I am throwing this out because this is becomimg more the trend all the time. Degree'd safety people are in high demand. It can be a very lucrative carreer for younger guys and gals that do not know what they want out of college. Safety experts in this area are starting at over $30.00 hour with all the overtime they can handle.

 

[Shimmy1]

And we f#@!** wonder why we are paying $4 for diesel and why propane was $4.50 per gal last winter.

 

[02Dmax]

So what does a safety expert do? Will they actually tell me to do something a different way or just write a report about it after I chop my hand off? I'm an independent mechanic so I've never worked around these people.

 

[old-iron-habit]

We are required to do a pre task safety planner for every task each crew or part crew does each day. There can be muliple's in each day for each crew of individual. The safety officials help with that, they are required to do project safety reports each day on observations. They are not out to get the guys, there responsibility is to ensure the project safety rules imposed by the facility management is in place. I could write a book on "weird to professionals" safety requirements. One is a critical lift plan and report filed for any crane pick over 3,000 lbs, no matter what crane size. We recently got wrote up on a job because we were assembling a 100 ton crawler crane. We had a 75 ton all terrian crane setting the tracks hoisting the tracks onto it on a paved parking lot. The crew got the lift plan approved, set the first track, moved the hydro to the other side, set up exactly the same, and set the second track. We got wrote up for no lift plan for the second track, had to appear before the safety board and explain our actions. We were under 20% of capacity. On one job our office double wide trailer was set up in a trailer parking lot. The facility was worried about there truckers hitting the trailer so they ordered hiway barriers for around our trailer. The rental company delivered and set them around the trailer with a self loader over the weekend. The following week pur people had to go before the board and explain why 22 picks were done over the weekend without the proper paperwork. That was was fun to explain that it was themselves that did it. All in a days work.

 

[JDOFMEMI]

More safety than work seems to go on in many plants now.

I was at a power plant to bid some work. We had to fill out a pre job safety plan to walk 200' from the office to a small open area to discuss the work of building a wall to divert water. we had to come back and sign off the permit, and before leaving I realized I had forgotten one measurement I needed.
The manager made us get a new permit to walk back out and pull a tape for one measurement. I asked why it was not covered under the one we just had done 30 minutes ago, and was told that because it was signed off already, we needed a new one.

 

[Ronsii]

Well... we may not be able to do a job economically(or timely) but at least we will be safe!!!!

 

[tootalltimmy]

I was working for an excavation company as an operator/laborer. Small job was to dig out gravel from a large recreation center pool construction. They had miscalculated the final grade on the deep end of the pool.. We had to lower the grade by 6 inches. Everything was framed in and no way to use a bobcat. We had to load up 5 gallon pails, attach to a rope and hoist the pails up 10 feet by hand and then dump.

Pails probably weighed 75 lbs and were hoisted over people's heads.
Plastic handles on the pails liked to come off. Sounds a little redneck doesn't it?

My problem with this was I had to go through a 2 hour safety orientation before doing a very unsafe redneck job for 4 hours.. The paperwork was more important than the actual work we did. It is all about the paperwork!

 

[Ronsii]

Usually when we're doing jobs like the one you mention with using 5 gallon pails we either wrap duct tape around where the metal handle goes into the plastic or tie the line around the bucket and up to the handle instead of just to the handle, the latter method makes it easy to keep the handle out of the way when filling the bucket. But like many have said... the paperwork is more important than the actual job anymore, a sad state of affairs in deed.

 

[RBMcCloskey]

While I fully support a safe work environment and safe operations at all times, I am watching "safety" become the next bureaucratic self defeating monster, it is very quickly becoming about the process not results, have you filled out the correct plan and get you work permit signed.

Congratulations, instead of getting the employees to buy into it by using common sense, the "Safety Nazi's" decree and they must be obeyed, with the eventual bulling behavior of grade school hall monitors.

Remember, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

 

[Moonlite]

I was told one time for safety reasons with all the equipment around i could not pull my truck up by a machine that was down. Told safety guy well then they better bring machine to me cause if it was to dangerous to pull my truck there i dang sure didnt want to be walking around there either. I ended up having to come back the next day as they would not be working in that area then.

 

[Shimmy1]

We can blame all this safety male bovine feces on what our society has become. Too many useless, lazy, looking for a way out a-holes just itching to grab a lawyer and hope to retire on someone else's dime.

 

[JDOFMEMI]

Well said Shimmy1:iagree

 

[CM1995]

Yep - tort and general reform of the civil litigation segment of our court system would go a long way.

 

[kshansen]

We can blame all this safety male bovine feces on what our society has become. Too many useless, lazy, looking for a way out a-holes just itching to grab a lawyer and hope to retire on someone else's dime.

That combined with management/owners of companies who had no regard for the safety of workers. How many miners or construction workers have been killed or seriously injured due the the lack of proper ventilation or something like inoperative brakes?

Not that long ago I heard an employee at a quarry who was running a crane and when he told the boss he needed to relocate crane to make a pick was told to do it where he was or he could find someone who knew how to run the crane. Crane operator tried moving the load, boom bent, boss fired him for damaging the crane. Yes crane operator should have refused to try the pick but sometimes a guy needs his job to pay bills and will let that override what he knows is a safe act. Luck in this case only equipment suffered any damage, but easily could have been a multiple fatality and boss man would have put 100% of the blame on the harassed operator!

Many of the safety rules were written with the blood of those workers who were killed!

 

[mitch504]

That combined with management/owners of companies who had no regard for the safety of workers.

Many of the safety rules were written with the blood of those workers who were killed!

It's like unions or anything else, starts as a good response to a need, then...

The pendulum swings.