I know a few of you work in engineering, construction etc and will be familiar with the concept of Safety Moments (or similar expressions) to start a meeting.

Any good ones you’ve heard lately? We have the same old “driving on work business” stuff and it’s not very imaginative…

Any inspiration (before 1pm!)? 😀

remember it’s a penis measuring exercise where you need to let the senior manager drop the bomb at the end so if your not him your role is to provide a warm up to their real issue…

PPE, office maintenance, weather conditions and seasonal illness and not spreading illness around the rest of the staff are all good starters.

Once damaged, safety is the only business driver that a company is unlikely to recover from”.

How long have you got?

I can link to a safety video on YouTube if you want to make everyone stop dead in their tracks and think. It’s also been known to make grown men cry. Emotionally graphic. 10 minutes or so.

5 mins or so – we’re supposed to open every meeting with a safety moment though, so linky would be good as might use it in future – ta.

I used to work for an american multinational and we had some of these. They varied from good to ‘not so good’.

Good: as spring is arriving, and you get the gardening tools back out of the shed just take a few moments to check the plugs and cabling to make sure they haven’t doubled up as a mouses feast over the winter. And get a RCD device anyway, it might save your life.

Not so good (not so relevant really); a US guy recounted a tale he’d read where a man had been cleaning his hunting rifle, had left it unattended for a few moments, and came back to find his young son was aiming it at his younger brother. Worse, he kept the ammo in the same cupboard and his son had loaded the gun up. The learning points, never leave your rifle unattended and store the ammo in a different place. 😯

Don’t cut grass without steel toe caps, get someone to hold the ladder when cleaning windows, don’t lift heavy things at home – paving slabs etc, don’t try and do electrical things at home without knowing what your doing, etc, etc, etc, which company do you work for?

Install flashlight on your iPhone for potential escape from hotel?
Take some notice of airline safety announcements?

What is really crap is some video of an industry you know nothing about and aren’t in a position to make a proper judgement about.

Do you and your family have a fire escape plan at home? Suggest some ideas and solutions and ask why people haven’t.

Are proportionally more or less people killed at work during a recession? Why? (Answer is less cos fewer new, inexperienced workers – you could tie it into an increased focus on site induction and mentoring for new employees).

What industry? I need to do these regularly and always try and tailor them to the business / project. I’m not sure why people think it’s appropriate to give safety moments about “BBQ Safety” or “Be Safe in the Sun” to people building major accidental potential installations.

[video]http://youtu.be/venO7Jd-978[/video]

I’ve seen some decent ones where someone’s taken a safety rule that seems a bit arbitrary (holding handrails on stairs, reverse parking, etc) and done some research into how that reduces risk. Actually try to back up some of the behaviours/rules with some facts.

Other than that, seasonal stuff is good as above. I might nick that if I need it at some point ;).

I was present at a RAF brief one morning when the Station Commander turned up at the back in his flying suit (very rare occurrence).

Station Flight Safety Officer spotted it and said with a twinkle in his eye something like “todays safety message – Pilots above the rank of Squdn Ldr do 3% of the flying but are involved in 20% of the accidents”

(* flight safety pedants the numbers aren’t correct- I can’t remember them correctly but give an idea of the point he was making)

Cheers guys – all helpful. Nuclear industry this time.

What is the procedure for whistleblowing? What sort of problems can be reported?

If it’s nuclear a good one to build a safety moment on would be the recent and unfolding South Korean nuclear scandal (google it). Essentially suppliers selling parts and components into the industry with forged safety certs. Billons of $s and long shutdowns to sort it out, and I’d imagine some jail time. Interesting because we would normally associate this sort of corruption with dodgy suppliers from china but these were from “reputable” suppliers. One example was dodgy cabling installed in safety instrumented systems.

Essentially the point of the safety moment is not taking things at face value. Questioning suppliers, audits and vigilance required to ensure substandard parts don’t get installed.

Do you use safety harnesses? As I have a pretty stomach churning one regarding loose fitting harnesses with pictures!

When I used this one I did ask all those present to put their cups of coffee down.

null

“Wear a helmet while cycling to work” ??

<ducks for cover>

Cheers guys – all helpful. Nuclear industry this time.

Powering the Low Carbon future 😉

have a read of Normal Accidents by Perrow

never heard of this…..

how about “don’t be a dick” and leave it at that?

was on a job a while back and the safety briefing was pretty much “don’t be a dick. any f-ups call dave.” covered all bases, IMO.

Tell to get **** and stop wasting valuable meeting time on in the main irrelevant cra*p. And don’t say as I once did ‘Put a lid on hot drinks mugs, as I’ve lost at least 2 relatives to hot coffee.’

NB: I don’t have a problem with discussing specific safety issues with the job at hand, but these generic put some poor sod on the spot so he/she waffles about gardening safety are ridiculous.

Thank you bigblackshed for the link. I might be a bit cynical most of the time when it comes to safety moments or talks, but that one really hit home. Well worth 10 minutes of your life watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=venO7Jd-978

“The highest risk anyone working on this project faces is crossing the road outside.“

This one obviously runs a risk of the STW-er chest beating manly man syndrome – “Don’t ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself” (assuming that you’re both competent and properly trained to do it)

“Don’t leave trailing cables on the floor”

Mr Overshoot, I’m having my lunch 😆

was on a job a while back and the safety briefing was pretty much “don’t be a dick. any f-ups call dave.” covered all bases, IMO.

dragon – Member
Tell to get **** and stop wasting valuable meeting time on in the main irrelevant cra*p. And don’t say as I once did ‘Put a lid on hot drinks mugs, as I’ve lost at least 2 relatives to hot coffee.’

NB: I don’t have a problem with discussing specific safety issues with the job at hand, but these generic put some poor sod on the spot so he/she waffles about gardening safety are ridiculous.

You’ve obviously not got much imagination (or only ever work in an office).

We have to give them in rotation and they’re supposed to be 10min long presentations on somethign industry specific. So things like the Longford gas plant explosion, BP Texas City, etc. Although I guess in a more generic company then the comparable issues would be how to avoid inadvertently entering contracts, cosequeneces of a lack of due dilligance, bribary and corruption laws etc.

Ohhh, and anyone warking in Engineering the CSB youtube channel is a goldmine. As is the NASA website (and not just space stuff).

DrJ – Member
“Wear a helmet while cycling to work” ??

<ducks for cover>

Not so daft, it is a requirement for me to do so riding through our works site. Lots of people ride along the road/paths to work with their helmet on the bars, stop at the gate to put it on before entering the site!!
Colleague is currently off work due to a fall caused by ice on the on site road. He is going for a scan this week. His helmet is apparently a mess!

We also have an “off the job” reporting scheme for those who are off work due to injuries acquired away from work. This becomes a world wide statistic and the bean counters get a bit upset. In the new “lean” way of working this can have quite an impact on everyone working in small teams or lone positions requiring someone to be in position during a 24hr/7/365 process. This usually sets of the safety team sending out the “appropriate” safety message to whatever the cause of the injury was!!

One a week so have a ton of them. main difficuly is that driving the essentially site focussed safety culture message in an office environment ultimately gets a bit nannying – handrails, slips, standing on chairs, carrying hot coffee, crashing through doors, paper cuts…..mostly you end up focussing on the uncontrolled part of your day – when you leave work and H&S goes out the window, phones when driving, diy – hand injury, ear and eye protection, ladders etc.
For hardcore plant stuff google charlie morecroft, really puts the human element into forefront.