Page 2 - Graypvine October 2019

Safety 3. Not understanding the seriousness of the outcome:
Especially among workers with less experience. They don’t
have the experience or knowledge of what could happen.
4. Voluntary actions and being in control: This comes into
with Jim Grant play a great deal outside of work. Without the influence of
Vice President, Safety & Field safety such as on our projects, people are more likely to make
Operations an easier, but less safe decision.
5. Personal experience with a serious outcome: As an
Influencing Risk Tolerance organization gets safer, you’re going to have fewer workers
As we move our safety program forward, our goal remains that have had a personal experience with a serious outcome.
the same: we want everyone who comes on our projects to go New workers won’t understand the lessons of the past. It’s
home at the end of the day free of injury. This will take more than important that experienced or tenured workers are helpful in
simply creating rules and requirements. It will take creating a communicating serious incidents to new workers.
culture on our projects that gets the craft worker committed to 6. Cost of compliance: Not wanting to be financially impacted
the importance of safety and prompts them into making good by buying the proper tool, PPE, or equipment.
decisions. To do this we need to understand what influences 7. Overconfidence in the equipment: We see this a lot
people to take risks. It’s not always a personal intention to with forklift incidents, where operators exceed capacity by
disregard safety. Why a worker decides to accept risk goes to the believing the lift will pick up more than it can.
heart of understanding behavior-based safety. 8. Potential profit and gain from action: For example, longer
2 While some of our contractors conduct a great deal of safety working hours that yield bigger paychecks for the worker but
training in hazard recognition, they may not pay much attention can cause fatigue-related risks.
to the decision-making process or focus on developing their 9. Role models accepting risk – LEADING BY EXAMPLE:
supervisors to create a culture of safety, as we do here at Gray. Because of personality or experience, leaders in a group
This will be our next step in supporting our efforts in creating the or organization can have a powerful effect on those around
safest projects in the industry. them. It’s important that we set a good example.
Here are some influencing factors when considering risk tolerance: How can we influence risk tolerances? Communication is KEY!
1. Overestimating capability/experience: We see this when We need to give our contractors and workers the proper tools and
we witness someone picking something up by themselves, teach them how to understand risk tolerances so they can use them
when it should be a two-man job. on and off the job. We must have conversations about risk tolerance
2. Complacency or familiarity with a task: Especially among at our jobsite-wide safety talks and during safety orientations, and
experienced or tenured workers. Complacency grows as provide our team members with a better understanding of how they
someone performs a task unsafely many times without injury, can make the best decisions to create safer projects.
but the risk is always there.

Safety Personal Commitment

Statistics to Safety

All statistics reported for Gray are cumulative for Calendar Year 2019

1 Fatality Vincent Tumlin
IT Support Manager
Majors
0 (Disabling Accidents) 3 years, 10 months with Gray

Recordable Accident
50 (Off Work, Limited Work,
and No Lost Time)

281 148 “I hold myself accountable for identifying hazardous
situations and taking steps to prevent an accident. By
Near Miss / Property Damage First Aid / Injury but not recordable planning the steps required to complete a task and
by being prepared with the correct tools and safety
gear I help to ensure a safe outcome to my task.
A goal of zero lost time incidents means there is a level of acceptance of
other types of incidents that do not lead to lost time. When other incidents are Understanding “Go Fever” even when I am focused on
accepted, then we increase the chance that lost time, and more severe incidents getting a task completed allows me to slow down and
will occur. The triangle graphic above is an illustration of this. Gray’s focus is to rethink my actions before a “Blink of an Eye” event
stop all incidents, by starting at the very bottom of the triangle. If we eliminate can occur, causing harm to either myself or someone
all incidents, then we eliminate the possibility of the catastrophic incident. By else. Living the Gray Safety 6 gives us all the ability to
definition, a lost time incident is an injury event that causes a worker to miss at
least one day of work. A safety incident is any event that needs to be tracked and stop and rethink our plan or actions to help insure we
recorded regardless of whether medical attention was required or not. all come home safely at the end of the day.”