Page 8 - BWL PipelineAprMayJun2020

C’MON, DON’T BE A BABY! ASSESS THE HAZARDS!
by Alex Martin
New parents are hilarious. I’m speaking as one. But we watch our kids, who have no clue what they’re doing, and think every action, good or bad,
is a sign of what our infants
will be like in the future. For example, "he loves to watch TV! He’ll either be in television, or a couch potato;" "she doesn’t like to be held. She’s either very independent or she hates me;" "He can pull himself up, he’s so strong, he’ll be a football player, or - an industrial safety consultant.” Personally, my daughter always reaches for my smart watch, so I’m thinking she’ll either be a tech giant or a pick pocketer. In the long run, these early indications probably don’t mean much. if you couldn’t tell, I am the football player turned safety consultant, but
I am 100 percent certain that my daughter, Lula, has no future in industrial safety.
How can I be so sure? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her violate like 397 safety manual rules in her 12 months of life. I’ve seen her bee line towards electrical outlets, hang out
at heights (for her they’re
heights) with no fall protection, and she almost never uses anything for its intended purpose- a box is a toy, my shoe is a toy, sunglasses are toys, and toys are projectiles.
Ultimately, it seems the
poor girl has a hard time recognizing hazards. I guess
I should cut her some slack though, she is only one year old. Adults recognize hazards through a few different methods, but one of the
most effective is by a job briefing. At the BWL, we have
a safety manual rule that insists a job briefing, or as we call it tailgate, is done prior
to the start of each job. Rule 103.3 says: “The Employee- in-Charge shall hold a job briefing with the employees involved before they start each job. The briefing
shall cover at least the following subjects: hazards associated with the job, work procedures involved, special precautions, energy source controls and personal protective equipment requirements.” I guess our Lula would be a little better about working around hazards if my wife and I had a job briefing with her each day.
Maybe we’d have to buy her a little fall harness for when she was standing on the bed; maybe she would lose all interest in the magical outlets. Well, maybe not.
Safety manual rule 103.3
also says that as the hazards change we should reassess the hazards. It reads “Additional job briefings shall be held
if significant changes occur during the course of the work which might affect the safety of the employees.” This is something that, as parents we do frequently. Every time we take her to a new room, the assessment starts. Are there covers on the outlets? Where is her pack
and play? Do we have enough diapers? Is there anything
that can fall on her? Do we have a bottle? Do we need a bottle? Water, milk? Is it too early to try juice? Where are the dogs? How long will we
be here? Is it too hot? Does she have enough toys? Ok, so we might even overdo it, but you can see the point. If we don’t reassess the hazards as they change, we could easily find ourselves in an overly
hot room, bottle-less, with
Lu in one arm and fighting
off the dogs with the other.
At this young age, I’d
never leave my daughter unsupervised, but sometimes that’s how things work for adults. At home, we probably don’t have the luxury of working with a crew to complete big jobs and even at work we sometimes find
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