Page 2 - Graypvine October 2020

Safety & Quality

with Jim Grant, Vice President, Safety & Field Operations
and Trey Griffith, Director, Quality

How Safety and Quality Go Hand in Hand in improving safety and quality by influencing the culture
Influencing Risk Tolerance on our projects. Here are some influencing factors
Safety and quality are very closely related in many ways. when considering risk tolerance that we would like you
We wanted to take the opportunity to show another to consider:
instance of how these systems tie together with the • Overestimating capability/experience: We see this
subject of influencing tolerance. when we witness someone picking something up by
One of the major factors with both safety and quality themselves, when it should be a two-man job. The
is tolerance. When talking about safety, it is called risk same with quality, some work requires certifications,
2 tolerance. For quality it is tolerance of accepting work as well as licensing depending on the trade. Make
that does not meet our project documents and industry
sure this information is up to date when its required,
standards. This topic takes us down the path of creating when this isn’t required make sure we are doing an
rules and requirements. It reaches out to the importance of in place mock up to ensure the installer is capable of
creating a culture on our projects that gets the Foremen, meeting the project document requirements.
Lead Supervisors and the craft worker engaged in the • Complacency or familiarity with a task: especially
importance of safety and quality and encourages them among senior workers. Complacency grows as
to make good, safe, and quality driven decisions. To someone performs a task unsafely many times
do this we need to understand what influences people without injury, but the risk is always there. Concerning
to take risks or accept non-complaint work. It is not quality, we hear they, “have done it that way for
always a personal intention to disregard safety or quality, years”, but we have the responsibility to ensure it is
so understanding why a worker decides to accept risk installed correctly. Look at the contractor’s submittals
goes to the heart of understanding behavior-based to see what the manufacturer requires and base your
decision making. inspections on that along with the specifications.
While some of our contractors conduct a great deal • Not understanding the seriousness of the
of safety training about hazard recognition, they may not outcome: especially among less experienced
reinforce the importance of the decision-making process or workers. They do not have the experience or
developing their supervisors to understand the importance knowledge to know what could happen. Often a
of creating a culture of safety. The reason this culture decision is made with good intentions much like a
is so important is it allows people to feel comfortable sprinkler head that puts out more water, however
to stay STOP, as we do here at Gray. This is what we based on the design this could create a big problem.
need to emphasize in coordination and jobsite wide Therefore we ask for you to go out to the site
safety meetings. and make sure things are going in per the project
Likewise, with quality, our trade partners do have very documents. The key is to “know before you go!
experienced and knowable individuals who want to do • Voluntary actions and being in control: This comes
the right thing. Unfortunately, at times we find that poor into play a great deal when no one is around, or
decisions were made due to outside circumstances or outside of work. A survey conducted by Caterpillar’s
solely based on past experiences or lack thereof. Much industrial employees found that 90 percent of their
like safety when decisions are made without considering all injuries occurred off the job.
of the specific project documents or a lack of knowledge, • Personal experience with a serious outcome: As
it ends up as an incident of quality in the form of re-work. an organization gets safer, you are going to get fewer
This increases the risk for safety as we are now going back and fewer people who’ve had a personal experience
to correct something which the majority of the time will with a serious outcome, new people won’t
require some sort of demo. understand the lessons of the past. It’s important that
So, this is our next step in supporting our efforts in senior workers be helpful in communicating about
creating the safest and highest quality projects in the serious incidents to newer workers.
industry. As leaders of our projects we can have influence • Personal experience with a serious outcome: