CHAPTER 8

Safety First

(Without It, Nothing Else Counts)

What can go wrong will go wrong.

Vignette: Fire!

My corner office windows gave me a 180-degree view of our entire docks of Victoria’s Inner Harbor. I would glance through the window from time to time to rest my eyes from the glare of the computer monitor, and rest my mind from the constant number crushing I was doing as the chief financial officer and general manager of the company. The view was always interesting. Vessels were coming in and going out. Some days we had unexpected visits from harbor seals, and even an eagle or two fishing for salmon in the Gorge.

Quite a delightful view most of the time.

Today, I could clearly see a fire at the end of the wooden dock. The flames were at least 3 ft high, very near one of the workers. Why was he not moving away from the flames?

My first reaction was to reach for the phone. The number 1 on the speed dial was 911. The yard foreman was already running with an extinguisher and yelling out of his lungs to the dockhand to stay away from the flame. He extinguished the fire rapidly, continuing to shout. I could not hear all the commotion that was ensuing because my window was closed and they were at least a hundred yards away, on the water’s edge. I went out to meet them and get an update on what happened.

The dockhand had to separate a stuck piece of rusted equipment and thought that using a blow torch would ease his task. Tarred wood and open fire mix too well. He should have known better. This was the topic of the foreman’s discussion.

We were fortunate this time. We avoided a disaster.

The safety committee’s plan was working.22

Safety first.

Lessons Learned: Check, Then Check Again

One of the first hazards my safety committee noticed was the lack of fire safety stations and designated smoking areas throughout the 6 acre yard.

Dealing with highly flammable materials, various combustibles, paints and paint thinners, blow torches, and welding machines, fire was a constant danger throughout the yard.

The fire department visited us regularly, not only in emergency situations. The previous owners did not always address all the fire department recommendations.

I decided to find a remedy to this situation.

We established five fire safety stations fully equipped with various fire extinguishers, sand, axes, and fire hoses connected to the city water supply. One fire station was 20 yards from that day’s fire. The foreman was nearby.

Shipyards were notoriously accident-prone places. Workers tend to fall in the water (mostly getting wet), fall from scaffoldings (a very precarious and perilous situation), or face fires, like the one that day.

Accidents will happen. Prevention is essential. Mitigation comes second. Safety training comes third.

When people get hurt, the most important thing is to get them out of harm’s way and to treat them as effectively as possible.

Unfortunately, several deaths occurred in various shipyards across the country. Each event was discussed by my safety staff and appropriate measures were implemented to avoid the same event happening in our workplace. The time and effort vested in safety was highly appreciated by the workforce.23

Manage risk positively.i

Vignette: The School Van

She had a flat tire.

Lynn was driving the training school’s van (a Ford Econoline), from Prince George to Terrace, to deliver a series of courses to our customer there. This was a one-way 573 km (356 miles) trip.

Lynn was a professional instructor with several years of experience in delivering technology courses to my company’s customers in the remote northern British Columbia region.

The trip that day was a normal routine for her. She did the same round trip many times before. The scenery was beautiful, the road mostly free of traffic, and the wildlife around each corner always a surprise.

She liked to travel across beautiful British Columbia. She told me once that driving this fully automated high-end, high-class, and high-mileage vehicle gave her a feeling of power over the machine. She was a “tiny” but highly energetic person.

She was transporting 11 fully loaded computer-desktop workstations to be used during the course.

I wished she had used the laptops instead, but she preferred the workstations because they had more up-to-date software and were more powerful than the laptops. Of course, the LCD monitors were also preferred by the students, as were the full keyboards used in this configuration.

The van was equipped with shelving and straps to retain all the equipment during transport. This left very little space for access to the spare tire.

And now she was facing a fully loaded van with a flat tire in the “middle of nowhere.” The night was falling rapidly. Her cell phone was drained. She could not reach for help.

Fortunately, a police cruiser was returning to Terrace that evening. She made it safely to town that night.

Have a contingency plan.

Lessons Learned: What If

The next day, when she described to me by phone her adventure, I could not erase the image of a major disaster that was narrowly avoided.

What if she had an accident? Wildlife was crossing these roads very often.

What if she slipped off the road? What if . . . ?

This happened not because she was a “small” person. This could have happened to any of my instructors on any of the provinces’ roads. I had not planned for a “common” road-related hazard. I forgot the human factor. I did not have a mitigating strategy protecting my instructors from the perils of road travel.

After discussing this issue with my branch managers and other issues related to lone instructors delivering courses across the province, we developed a series of policies to protect our instructors in the event of situations that could put them at risk. We also asked for input from our instructors.

On the basis of these discussions, three important policies were implemented right away. They were as follows:

Instructors were to travel only in pairs.

Instructors were to be equipped with two fully loaded and tested cell phones before any trip.

Instructors had to check with their branch or headquarters on regular intervals (no longer than 2 hours) identifying their coordinates and reporting their travel status.

Everybody felt much safer and secure.

Safety is paramount.

iPositive risk management is an approach that recognizes the importance of the human factor and of individual differences in propensity for risk taking.

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