Tailgate meetings are an exceptionally important part of establishing a safety culture within a company. Safety is of course, the primary concern for these brief meetings, but other pertinent subjects should be brought out and discussed as needed if they pertain to the project and the workers. Communication from the top all the way to the bottom is exceptionally important on most construction and mining projects.
My own personal experiences indicate that these meetings must be documented on paper and everyone present needs to sign off. Why? Lets say you have a meeting on Monday where everyone is instructed not to go under a gravel screening plant while it is in operation, a common practice up to that point. Everyone that works at that operation is present and signs off. On Wednesday, the plant maintenance mechanic violates this instruction, and is found at noon shut-down by the plant operator, lying on top of the plant generator fuel tank, dead. The tank is directly under the main feed hopper conveyor belt and just behind the screen deck feed conveyor. All indications and an autopsy show that the mechanic was somehow caught in the single feed hopper conveyor return roller and pulled through. Every bone in his body was broken.
Because this was a DOE (Department of Energy) project, they pulled jurisdiction and performed the investigation themselves excluding OSHA. The state deferred to DOE. DOE performed a very complete and lengthy investigation. They shut down the entire project for the rest of the week. The screening operation was shut down indefinitely. They measured and took pictures of everything, and they interviewed and tape-recorded everybody from the project and area managers on down to the laborers that worked around the plant. They reviewed all documentation and visited the screen plant manufacturers facility in the northwest. The contractor offered legal representation to the supervisors and plant workers before, during, and after the interviews with DOE.
In retrospect, I should have accepted the offer of a legal expert, not because I had anything to hide, for I was one of the supervisors interviewed and was, moreover, the plant mechanics direct supervisor. But at the time, most of us being investigated simply had no idea of the seriousness of the situation we were in. As it was, we faced being charged with negligence individually, and DOE cited several MSHA regulations that we were in violation of, something the company could have been cited for and which would have been very costly. The company could have lost the contract as well. Introspection of this event over time has shown me just how truly ignorant we were at the legal ramifications at the time.
The saving grace in this tragedy, at least for the company and we supervisors, was that I always made a copy of the original weekly toolbox meeting sheet after everyone including myself signed off. I turned in the original to the project safety director, and the copy then went into my own files in my office desk. A day or two after the incedent, the safety director came back to my office and wanted to let me know that he could not find the original copy of the toolbox meeting sheet. I said, "no problem," and pulled out my copy. We immediately made a dozen copies of this, and my original copy then went into the office safe. The original was never found that I know of.
The point is though, that the deceased worker had been at the meeting, and he had signed off. That simple fact alone largely got us off the hook. It also shot down a potential civil law suit that was being considered by the widow and her lawyer.
We remained shut down entirely for an additional week, during which we retrained our entire workforce in the OSHA 40 hour safety requirements. We remained shut down at the screening plant for another month while we awaited various rulings concerning jurisdiction and how to meet DOE safety concerns. Some of us received additional safety and compliance training, particularly those that were involved directly with the screen plant operation.
Because of the fact that we were performing a DOE project, it was determined that we did not fall under the auspices of MSHA or OSHA. But as a sop to DOE, we volunteered to comply with and exceed MSHA regulations and guidelines. Doing this satisfied their concerns and we were allowed to re-start the plant, which then had to work double-shift/6 days a week to make up for the lost production. It was also more difficult to operate and work around the plant because of all the guards we installed and other procedures that we instigated, which slowed production somewhat. As anyone might assume, we were under intense scrutiny for quite a while from both DOE and the prime contractor, particularly at the screen plant.
One big issue that had to be resolved was fabrication and installation of a guard over and around the killer return roller. DOE would not allow us to restart untill this was taken care of. Just fencing off that portion of the plant and posting signs was not enough for them. The plant manufacturer was not any help nor were senior company equipment managers, all of whom came in for a look. The solution was eventually suggested by the plant operator, whom was extremely upset over his friends death, who simply asked if the roller could be taken off! We posed this question to DOE and they approved the procedure. I had the roller cut into small pieces and threw it in our scrap bin.
That little sheet of paper and the information it contained did not stop a good man and personal friend from being killed despite his being aware of the dangers. He chose, on a personal level, to disregard the warnings he had been given. The paper did save the company and several supervisors severe penalties and potential loss of our jobs, not to mention what likely would have been large legal fees. I learned long before, when working on other government projects, to save every scrap of paper and document every meeting, particularly those dealing with safety and environmental issues. The trick of making copies of those documents for my own files saved my own and other peoples bacon more than just this one time.
Your observation Grader4me, that brief meetings like this every week or every shift should not be for concern of avoiding citations or penalties is pertinent, but the sad fact is, these meetings and briefings do have a dual purpose, and it would be well worth your trouble in the long run to get signature documentation and make extra copies that are kept and filed separately.
Meetings should be kept brief, no more than ten minutes. Make sure the meeting safety topic is pertinent, don't hold one on pouring concrete when all you are doing is pushing scrapers and moving dirt. Bring in other information as needed for the shift or weeks production schedule, and maybe special difficulties or things to watch for. Make sure everyone understands all the information presented. Guy F Atkinson Construction had a good practice in which they had a different member of the crew do the presentation every week. It might be the crew leader one week, maybe a crew member the next, possibly the project manager or safety director the next and so on. This sort of focused everybody's attention. Ask the crew for comments and suggestions and write them down on the toolbox meeting sheet. Ask if the crew has any questions that pertain to the shift or the project. Write those down so someone can get an answer and present it right away or at the next meeting. Document that.
In today's even more tort happy atmosphere, you have to cover your butt every way you can. Verbal communication is almost useless as the regulatory agencies and the courts want to see documentation that proves almost conclusively what was said and what happened. It takes a little more effort, but in my experience, it's well worth it.
Good Luck!