Unsafe conditions can arise at any time. The change from safe to unsafe may be easily seen — or it might be undetected until tragic consequences occur. It could be something easy to spot, such as a portable cord laid across the stairs you are using to perform your assigned work. Examples of more difficult to spot hazards may include some drops of oil left on the floor by a careless lubrication technician. It could be something you would not know about unless someone told you. The variations are endless, and you can’t hope to anticipate them all.
Unsafe conditions can be created by other trades/departments, recent hires (or transfers), contractors, vendors, and many others who do not report directly to you. It’s not your job to train or supervise these people. Even if it were, you can’t do that and complete you assigned work.
The solution is to maintain safety control. Here are some tips to help you do that:
- Determine if your work area needs to be roped off. This technique is routinely used with cranes, and it’s typically with red (do not enter) tape. Some of the reasons to rope off include falling object, tripping, and electrocution hazards. You can sometimes justify a rope-off on the grounds you just don’t want people walking through the area.
- Coordinate with other parties. There are many ways to communicate with people who are outside your normal chain of command. You can include them in your job briefing, just have a three-minute chat to apprise them of what you’re doing and what you need them to do safety-wise, talk with the area supervisor (and trust that person to handle the other parties), and so forth. But do this ahead of time rather than wait until you happen to notice they entered your area while covers are removed or they are walking on your cables.
- Answer questions. Another party may ask you for clarification. For example, “Do you mean you don’t want anybody to move this fan from the entrance to the confined space you’ll be working in, or we just can’t change the speed if it gets too noisy in here?” It’s a fair question, so provide a fair answer. But keep it short and to the point, as you don’t have time to give a class on the subject or enter into a drawn-out discussion about it.
- Overcome resistance. You may find that not everyone is amenable to cooperating with you. Perhaps they violate your red or yellow tape. Or a lift truck driver sets a pallet down 2 feet from the panel you’re working in and refuses to move it. Or a bored operator won’t stop walking over to chat in the intervals between cycles where he has nothing to do. You have to focus on your work not just for the sake of safety but also for the sake of productivity. You don’t have time to go back and forth with these people. Escalate the issue if they persist. Typically, you can ask any supervisor to step in. If that doesn’t do it, stop work and report the problem to your supervisor.
- Be vigilant. People can inadvertently introduce hazards into your safe working space. Where you have natural pauses in your work flow, look for potential developments. For example, you finished your work in Cabinet A-6 and just completed your tool count. Before you open Cabinet A-7, do a quick lookaround to see if anything has changed.
- Don’t tolerate aggressive transgressions. These are different from simple unsafe acts, which are best handled by asking the unsafe actor to tell you what he’s doing that’s not safe. Examples of aggressive transgressions (from actual case histories) include pulling down your yellow tape, retracting one of your outriggers to gain room in the aisle instead of driving the lift truck down an adjacent aisle (which would take much less time!), removing your lockout tag and cutting your lock, or taking off with the welding screens you arranged around your work. In most companies, these are termination offenses. And for good reason. You don’t just catch the person and put things back the way they were. You stop work and report that person and the behavior to a senior supervisor.
If you exert and maintain safety control over the working environment, you can eliminate the potential for others to intentionally or unintentionally create dangers for you. Good advance communication is your primary tool for preventing the unintentional creation of dangers. If you are unfortunate enough to encounter intentionally created dangers, the communication occurs after the violation does. In either case, it needs to be clear, professional, and factual.
