Safety Management Articles

• Confused About Arc Flash Compliance?

  If you’re in a quandary over arc flash compliance, you’re not alone, according to Incident Prevention’s recent survey.

• Root Cause Analysis

  Even the safest among us will occasionally veer off the road to safety excellence and encounter an incident. When this happens, the best management practice is to identify and correct the cause(s) so that you can get back on track and avoid future mishaps.

• A FULL Commitment

  We all know the data. Typically, one third to one half of our field injuries are musculoskeletal disorders such as strains and sprains, rotator cuff syndrome, lower back disorders and tendonitis. Workers’ compensation costs for these injuries far exceed those for acute incidents such as burns, cuts and even fractures.

• NESC-2012-Part 4: Summary of Change Proposals

  NESC-2012 change proposals have been published and are available for comment through May 1, 2010. Subcommittee 8, Work Rules Sections 40-44, is responsible for the changes to Part 4 of the NESC. The main change proposal includes a requirement for employers to determine potential electric arc exposures for employees who work on or near lines, parts or equipment 50- 1,000 volts. NESC-2007 does not specifically require employers to perform an arc hazard analysis on low-voltage systems so this will be a major change for 2012.

• Soil Resistivity Testing & Grounding System Design: Part II of II

  The sole purpose of the design exercise for grounding systems is to make the performance predictable upon installation. For ground system designs, there are several options for the design process or the method of manipulating the data by formulas, spreadsheets, or software. Likewise, there are alternatives for the design result or the actual instructions showing locations, models and quantity of grounding electrodes required to achieve the grounding system performance indicated by the design.

• Huge Steps

  If you’ve tuned into the news in the last two years, you have undoubtedly seen reports of crane accidents that have occurred across the country. There have been many injuries and in some cases fatalities due to the highly populated areas in which these events have taken place.

• Soil Resistivity Testing & Grounding System Design: Part I of II

  For utilities designing site-specific grounding systems, soil resistivity testing is an absolutely necessary step. Soil resistivity data is required for the ground system to meet a specific performance requirement. With resistivity data, the design becomes predictable so that you know the final ground resistance to expect after installation.

• Making Safety a Core Value

  E.ON U.S. recently introduced its next phase of safety development at its Operation Safety Summit.

• Incident Analysis

  The essence of safety is preventing incidents from having the opportunity to occur. When they do occur, it is usually the result of one or more safety systems failures. Failures, however, are the seeds of opportunity. Incidents provide us with opportunities, albeit unfortunate, to improve our safety systems and prevent future incidents. The process used to identify what improvements are needed is called Incident Analysis.

• Moving from Operations into Safety or Training

  Over the past 50-plus years in production settings of all types, training has been largely made up of new employees spending either specified or unspecified periods of time with more experienced employees. At the end of that period, the experienced employee was responsible for pronouncing the new employee “trained.”

  Sometimes, these practices produce an effective safety or training professional. It has been our experience in over more than 20 years of observing and discussing moves from operations to safety or training with several hundred organizations in a number of production industries, including electric utilities, that the move is not automatically successful. Furthermore, it is far less than automatic for some of the individuals that for years have been assumed to be perfect fits for these positions.

• What's in a Number?

  Does it really mean anything if the RAI (Recordable Accident Incident Rate) for your non-payroll workers (hereafter referred to as “contractors”) is 6.2? At Entergy, where our most important value is to “Create and Sustain a Safe Working Environment,” numbers like those can be very important.

• Strategies for Safety in the Wind Industry

  For the wind power industry, practicing safety has always been more than a mission—it’s required. After all, a wind technician may be working in a space the size of a bathroom located on a tower 80 meters tall, surrounded by massive mechanical and high voltage electrical equipment, in a harsh climate, far from medical services.

• Safety Culture Success

  Organizations rely on numerous metrics—from incident rates to absenteeism—to help quantify and evaluate safety performance. But as lagging indicators, such metrics tell us little about the root causes of safety. Do employees truly buy into the organization’s safety policies and procedures?� Do workers get actively involved in the safety reporting process?� These are questions that are critical to understanding why a culture succeeds or fails in meeting its safety goals.

• Free Climbing vs. Safer Climbing

  San Diego Gas & Electric recently hosted a Western Fall Restraint Conference. SDG&E is moving forward in establishing safer climbing practices and knew they would benefit from bringing their western partners together to share what has worked for them in launching a new program, best practices, equipment concerns and overall experiences.

• Effective Fall Protection for Utility Workers

  A review of the relevant standards and training that companies need to provide.