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Setting the Tone for Safety: Project safety starts with leadership

By Claire Swedberg | May 14, 2024
Setting the Tone for Safety: Project safety starts with leadership

Every safety initiative starts with leaders and project managers taking ownership of their employees’ safety on the job site. To take the lead and make it stick, leaders need proper training and buy-in from employees. 

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Every safety initiative starts with leaders and project managers taking ownership of their employees’ safety on the job site. To take the lead and make it stick, leaders need proper training and buy-in from employees. 

Tony Barton, safety training and development manager at Cupertino Electric Inc. (CEI), San Jose, Calif., sees the success of any electrical project as a four-legged stool. The legs upholding a project are quality, schedules, cost and safety. 

“You take out any one of those legs, or you short any of those legs, the stool falls over,” he said. “Safety and quality are really tightly tied together and are just as important as meeting cost and schedule requirements.”

Uniformity in safety training

Barton has spent two decades training and spreading the word on electrical industry safety. He makes a point to exchange ideas with workers, including those with a wide variety of roles and safety training. However, he notes, more than 90% of the people he interacts with in his role at CEI are field employees.

The field employees that come to CEI through apprenticeships have standard or sometimes even significant safety training and knowledge under their belts. Project management staff, on the other hand, may not always have as much safety training, depending on whether they came to their position by advancing through the trade, earning a college education or through related work experience and training.

To ensure universal safety knowledge among CEI field leaders, the company requires all foremen have a minimum of OSHA Outreach 10-Hour Construction training (also known as OSHA 10), and general foremen and superintendents have OSHA Outreach 30-Hour Construction training (OSHA 30). Many foremen pursue OSHA 30 to advance.

OSHA 30 is targeted at supervisors and workers with safety roles in construction and other industries. The courses promote safe and healthy work environments by training workers to identify, predict and avoid hazards.

Annual supervisor safety training

CEI offers an annual supervisor safety training program. The company’s production and safety departments look at any standards or practices that have been or are likely to be updated and develop a one-day seminar outlining the changes and the new processes or policies accompanying them.

At CEI, “Safety from the top down, leadership-wise, is in pretty good shape. We are very lucky—we have great buy-in from our executives and have a dedicated VP of corporate safety who joined CEI within the last year,” Barton said.

He also noted that superintendents and foremen are often younger than those who held the same roles a decade ago. With that influx of younger field leaders comes a new understanding about the importance of safety, with less tolerance for unsafe practices.

Training demands are rising along with increased safety awareness, as much from customers and general contractors as from local or national regulations. Rosendin, San Jose, Calif., is among the electrical contracting firms that have set requirements and signed contracts that demand a certain number of safety professionals.

Eric Latona, Rosendin’s general superintendent and previous corporate trainer, helps contractors achieve state accreditation and develops national programs, including modules on safety training, for NECA conferences.

“Rosendin puts safety people on job sites regardless of contracts—sometimes it could be five guys on a job and we’ll make sure that we have [safety] oversight,” he said.

Variety of backgrounds in safety

It can’t be assumed, Latona said, that an individual understands the need for safety practices without proper training. 

“Probably a turning point for me was when I started teaching at the apprenticeship in Silicon Valley,” he said. 

He was surprised to learn that students in his workplace electrical safety programs didn’t come to class with the same background that he had gained in his youth. 

Latona’s father and brother were also electricians, “so it was always impressed upon me that your life is at stake at all times. I discovered that everyone didn’t have the same conversations like we do, sitting at the kitchen table,” he said.

Noting that luck isn’t a strategy against accidents, Latona makes a point to help project participants and leadership appreciate that, too. At Rosendin, even new employees are “scored on safety during interviews, they’re scored on safety as we progress through jobs.” That can include the recordable incidents that can affect insurance rates and even determine if a company will be able to bid on future projects.

An additional challenge is that, while project managers and safety staff may have “some background in construction, not all have been electricians.” That’s where additional training comes in to explore the basics of the equipment found in the electric closet in addition to learning safety gear and the hazards of electricity across the board.

Site-specific safety training

For all leadership, Rosendin holds a monthly meeting on updates to electrical safety in the workplace, from electrical systems to environmental specifics such as heat and wildlife.

“Each project may have different safety issues that have to be identified,” said Joshua Johnson, corporate safety director for Rosendin. He added that the regular safety updates mean that each project or safety manager will bring the necessary electrical training. “Before we put boots on the ground, we develop a safety plan that is site-specific.”

Training requirements at work sites fall into multiple buckets, but include compliance training that incorporates OSHA-based safety practices and skills, both in general and for specific projects, said Sasha Reed, senior director of industry transformation for Procore Technologies Inc., Carpinteria, Calif.

Site-specific safety training includes safety rules and emergency procedures that meet the needs of the project and site. 

“Training is a consistent requirement of the job,” Reed said, and, at each new project, “all of this is expected to be completed, but without an impact to the schedule or productivity.” 

If safety training is not built into the schedule, it sometimes occurs during off hours, which leads to less complete coverage and comprehension.

“One misconception in the field is that managers don’t need, or don’t have, enough time to focus on safety training for the leadership. However it is critical that managers understand the risks and requirements, as they are responsible for planning and managing the work,” she said. 

Procore has worked with the industry to minimize the amount of time required to learn new systems efficiently.

“While leadership and management have a lot on their plate, making time for them to understand the risks that their field personnel could be exposed to is critical,” Reed said.

Toolbox talk, plan, one-line diagram

There are a variety of ways to provide work-site managers with the electrical safety training they need. One option is comprehensive training that covers an all-encompassing understanding of electrical safety and potential hazards. Such training should include electrical safety procedures, hazard identification, risk assessment, tool and equipment use, and emergency response.

Another level of safety training on-site is toolbox talks. These daily brief meetings can cover various topics, including electrical safety, hazard recognition and best practices. Those who lead toolbox talks can reinforce safe work habits and promote a culture of safety on the job site, Reed said.

Effective safety plans or procedures can also help prevent electrical hazards on the job site, she said. Key components of an effective safety plan include procedures for identifying and mitigating electrical risks, emergency response protocols, regular safety audits and inspections, incident reporting, and investigation.

One-line documents include diagrams that show the flow of energy throughout a building. Posting these documents in common areas for visibility gives workers a reference they can check throughout the day to understand what areas are energized.

“While each of these methods provides additional touch points on safety training, changing the behaviors of workers is a challenge and it starts at the top,” Reed said.

Involving workers in company safety

At Rosendin, even when people from the service department work alone, “we make sure, even on the service side of things, that individuals are documenting their work before they go in there,” Johnson said, adding that a safety manager oversees the work being done.

On the other end of the spectrum, large sites such as data center projects demand intensive safety planning, Johnson said. At such locations where there’s redundant power and multiple generators, “we make sure that everyone is aware of the hazards, and they understand where the power is coming from, and how we isolate that power,” he said. 

Other challenging sites include those with transportation work such as with Bay Area Rapid Transit and hospital projects where uninterrupted power is essential.

When it comes to ensuring workers make it home each night, everyone needs to be a safety leader, even when someone is overseeing the site. 

STOCK.ADOBE.COM / MRARTHIT

“It’s not just the leadership with the training. If there are 10 people on that job we have 10 safety professionals. We want to make sure that everybody is responsible for safety, regardless of their title.”
— Eric Latona, Rosendin

 

“It’s not just the leadership with the training. If there are 10 people on that job, we have 10 safety professionals. We want to make sure that everybody is responsible for safety, regardless of their title,” Latona said.

“They all have the ability to stop work—they all have a stop work card and they can utilize that card at any time to help somebody from possibly injuring themselves or anybody else,” he added.

Management can also adopt incentive programs to reward employees for staying up to date on their training and recognize them when they put best practices into place. By gamifying safety, this kind of incentive can drive a company’s cultural change.

Procore offers a “Safety Qualified” training program that can further enhance workers’ safety knowledge. Each course dives into PPE, well-being, mindset and culture.

A good training program should evolve over time to keep up with the demands on the worker’s time and be presented in multiple formats so it’s easy to keep up with. 

“What we’re seeing across trades is the diversification of training delivery methods,” Reed said.

A diverse program can be a mix of traditional instructor and student training classes, in-the-field instructional refreshers and on-demand training online. Companies should tailor training to changing project environments and create an ongoing supplement to the required standard technical training.

Workers and their managers appreciate the need for safety practices more than ever. 

“In earlier times there was this perception that to be a ‘real’ electrician you have to sometimes work ‘live,’ which we all know can have dangerous consequences,” Barton said. “Today, that is no longer the perception or understanding. It’s a great time to be in safety.” 

stock.adobe.com / MrArtHit

About The Author

SWEDBERG is a freelance writer based in western Washington. She can be reached at [email protected].

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