The Why Matters
March 15, 2022
Jim discusses "The Why" and how it is important to safety management. He shares two stories. The first is from a project he worked on where the safety professional could not answer the why. Jim to the rescue and making a new friend. The second why is from his adopted community from over 50 years ago with a school bus and a freight train. A School bus from Nyack High School crossed a set of railroad tracks and was struck by a train. 5 people were killed along with 40 people injured. It caused a whole change to the school bus industry. The names of the victims are Thomas Grosse, Richard Macaylo, James McGjuinness, Robert Mauterer, and Stephen Ward.
Not a perfect transcript.
this show is brought to you by safety warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. I wanted to talk about something that's an ongoing theme for say two words and that is why it is important. I heard the latest podcast from Todd Conklin, the pre accident investigation podcast. He was interviewing tim Walsh, it reminded me of two stories here, one from the newspaper this morning And it's Tuesday March 15, the ides of March and a story from, Well in my past, I'll share with you both stories. The first story is about boilerplate safety plans. You know what they are, You're working in a workplace for a long time years and it's the same jobs coming over again and again and again the same some medals over again and again and again. And you have one basic safety plan and it could also be other plans depending on what you're doing. Work plans, uh, what have you and you just change the names around a couple of details and it's appropriate for the next project. These plans are a little bit dangerous. Sometimes I worked for a large engineering firm and we had boilerplate plans for everything. Most of the plans had to do with has whopper and that's not a new sandwich or burger king. It's a hazardous waste site operations and emergency response plan. How the regulation is implemented by companies is that there is an overall safety plan for the company and then a site specific program for the job site. I left the company and was working for another company on a large project. A couple of years later my customer was hired to decontaminate and repair an aircraft hangar on a large military facility. It was a D. O. D. Contractor that owned the facility and they hired my former employer as the general contractor. I got called into a huge roundtable meeting about the plan that was submitted by my former employer along with a few questions on plans. I submitted it from my part of the world. My former employers plan was written and I use air quotes by my replacement. It was a plan for another project that had been modified for this one. The people reviewing that plan from the Department of Defense that that contractor had redlined that plan. I mean the plan was more red than black and white it looked like and they were eviscerating my former employer and all of standard. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I said you know what, I cannot let these guys do this anymore. I gotta know trying to help battle a little bit. I don't like to see anybody get hurt. And I said you know what I could answer a few questions here because I wrote a lot of this stuff. This is a border plate plan and I know a lot of the wise and I had worked there for over six years. Why don't we look at some of these things and maybe I can answer some questions. I started to answer the why, which my replacement did not have the answers for it. We ended up working through the document over the course of a couple of hours. I basically bailed him out of my former employer and it became very easy for them. And when it came to my plan, I was able to explain the wise and everything went away. That's a story for another day. I can't really share out of the podcast. So the wind was important, communicating why we have things and plans of being able to articulate that in a meaningful way, avoids a lot of problems. Here's story number two. This actually came out this morning in today's low hot dot com. Why do school busses stop at railroad crossings? We all know that was probably because of an accident, but what I found out today was that it was an accident a couple of miles away from my house. How many of you people have seen school busses get blown by at railroad crossings or if the flashing red lights are on or anything like that and people acting like idiots around school busses. I'm sure that's all of us and maybe some of the listeners here, including me have grown impatient with school busses stopping at railroad crossings. So next week marks the 50th anniversary of the Y in this situation, On the morning of March 24, a school bus driver across railroad tracks that did not have barricades or warning lights, they weren't required by law. He did not stop to look and see if a train was coming. As a result, a freight train hit a loaded school bus and dragged it a quarter mile. Eventually it claimed the lives of thomas, gross richard Mchale, Oh, James, Mcginnis, robert, malterer and Stephen ward, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing names here, Over 40 other people were injured on that school bus as a consequence. You know what? Because of the accident was, it's a common theme here. Human error, that sounds familiar, right, let alone that the system wasn't in place at that rail crossing to prevent this type of situation from happening. So as a result, school busses now stop at all railroad crossings, even if the gates are not down and no training is visible. There were a whole bunch of other safety standards that were implemented, including the inception of trauma counseling for victims and responders afterwards. Now, you know, the why maybe knowing will make you appreciate that some rules are made because of horrendous situations, to say the least. The other thing is that if someone leaves the company, make sure you know the, why everything is in place before they leave and may make your life a little bit easier because the situation I was involved with in the first story is not the first time that that happened to that guy that replaced me. He left the position soon afterwards due to stress explaining the whys also gives you a better chance with the workforce or whoever else you're dealing with to manage them. It gives you an opportunity to manage hazards. It gives you an opportunity to grow relationships, maybe come up with better solutions for hazards in the workplace. Remember the overwhelming majority of people here are safety professionals, we are not tradespeople, we may not know about the work. We need to form. Learning teams, learn about the work, interact with people, got to live the way down low on things, help people out, giving the other person the opportunity to learn, giving them respect and not acting like an overlord. A safety overlord is likely to give you a better outcome and better outcomes with workplace safety means that you're saving lives and sending people home safely for safety wars. This is Jim proposal is your safety training old stale and Hackney is your safety trainer still preaching a warped version of behavior based safety. How about safety training that actually addresses your hazards in your workplace is, and it's not standardized bologna from 25 years ago. Contact the safety ward's team at safety words dot com or call jim proposal at 845 269577. To remember if you're receiving this message, you are the solution to unsafe workplaces. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast. J. Allen
this show is brought to you by safety warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. I wanted to talk about something that's an ongoing theme for say two words and that is why it is important. I heard the latest podcast from Todd Conklin, the pre accident investigation podcast. He was interviewing tim Walsh, it reminded me of two stories here, one from the newspaper this morning And it's Tuesday March 15, the ides of March and a story from, Well in my past, I'll share with you both stories. The first story is about boilerplate safety plans. You know what they are, You're working in a workplace for a long time years and it's the same jobs coming over again and again and again the same some medals over again and again and again. And you have one basic safety plan and it could also be other plans depending on what you're doing. Work plans, uh, what have you and you just change the names around a couple of details and it's appropriate for the next project. These plans are a little bit dangerous. Sometimes I worked for a large engineering firm and we had boilerplate plans for everything. Most of the plans had to do with has whopper and that's not a new sandwich or burger king. It's a hazardous waste site operations and emergency response plan. How the regulation is implemented by companies is that there is an overall safety plan for the company and then a site specific program for the job site. I left the company and was working for another company on a large project. A couple of years later my customer was hired to decontaminate and repair an aircraft hangar on a large military facility. It was a D. O. D. Contractor that owned the facility and they hired my former employer as the general contractor. I got called into a huge roundtable meeting about the plan that was submitted by my former employer along with a few questions on plans. I submitted it from my part of the world. My former employers plan was written and I use air quotes by my replacement. It was a plan for another project that had been modified for this one. The people reviewing that plan from the Department of Defense that that contractor had redlined that plan. I mean the plan was more red than black and white it looked like and they were eviscerating my former employer and all of standard. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? I said you know what, I cannot let these guys do this anymore. I gotta know trying to help battle a little bit. I don't like to see anybody get hurt. And I said you know what I could answer a few questions here because I wrote a lot of this stuff. This is a border plate plan and I know a lot of the wise and I had worked there for over six years. Why don't we look at some of these things and maybe I can answer some questions. I started to answer the why, which my replacement did not have the answers for it. We ended up working through the document over the course of a couple of hours. I basically bailed him out of my former employer and it became very easy for them. And when it came to my plan, I was able to explain the wise and everything went away. That's a story for another day. I can't really share out of the podcast. So the wind was important, communicating why we have things and plans of being able to articulate that in a meaningful way, avoids a lot of problems. Here's story number two. This actually came out this morning in today's low hot dot com. Why do school busses stop at railroad crossings? We all know that was probably because of an accident, but what I found out today was that it was an accident a couple of miles away from my house. How many of you people have seen school busses get blown by at railroad crossings or if the flashing red lights are on or anything like that and people acting like idiots around school busses. I'm sure that's all of us and maybe some of the listeners here, including me have grown impatient with school busses stopping at railroad crossings. So next week marks the 50th anniversary of the Y in this situation, On the morning of March 24, a school bus driver across railroad tracks that did not have barricades or warning lights, they weren't required by law. He did not stop to look and see if a train was coming. As a result, a freight train hit a loaded school bus and dragged it a quarter mile. Eventually it claimed the lives of thomas, gross richard Mchale, Oh, James, Mcginnis, robert, malterer and Stephen ward, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing names here, Over 40 other people were injured on that school bus as a consequence. You know what? Because of the accident was, it's a common theme here. Human error, that sounds familiar, right, let alone that the system wasn't in place at that rail crossing to prevent this type of situation from happening. So as a result, school busses now stop at all railroad crossings, even if the gates are not down and no training is visible. There were a whole bunch of other safety standards that were implemented, including the inception of trauma counseling for victims and responders afterwards. Now, you know, the why maybe knowing will make you appreciate that some rules are made because of horrendous situations, to say the least. The other thing is that if someone leaves the company, make sure you know the, why everything is in place before they leave and may make your life a little bit easier because the situation I was involved with in the first story is not the first time that that happened to that guy that replaced me. He left the position soon afterwards due to stress explaining the whys also gives you a better chance with the workforce or whoever else you're dealing with to manage them. It gives you an opportunity to manage hazards. It gives you an opportunity to grow relationships, maybe come up with better solutions for hazards in the workplace. Remember the overwhelming majority of people here are safety professionals, we are not tradespeople, we may not know about the work. We need to form. Learning teams, learn about the work, interact with people, got to live the way down low on things, help people out, giving the other person the opportunity to learn, giving them respect and not acting like an overlord. A safety overlord is likely to give you a better outcome and better outcomes with workplace safety means that you're saving lives and sending people home safely for safety wars. This is Jim proposal is your safety training old stale and Hackney is your safety trainer still preaching a warped version of behavior based safety. How about safety training that actually addresses your hazards in your workplace is, and it's not standardized bologna from 25 years ago. Contact the safety ward's team at safety words dot com or call jim proposal at 845 269577. To remember if you're receiving this message, you are the solution to unsafe workplaces. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast. J. Allen