I'd like to share my safety success story. It’s about a construction worker who came through my 40-hour safety orientation class and how the experience shaped his entire outlook on safety.

From ‘Blow & Go’ to ‘Take It Slow’

I work for a major construction firm. One of my jobs is to conduct safety orientation for new employees. Each employee has to complete my week-long orientation before they’re allowed to go out to the construction site.

This story involves one of the workers—let’s call him Phil T—that I was orienting. During the orientation, I noticed that Phil asked a lot of questions. He wanted to know things about the company’s safety policies. He asked about having a questioning attitude, stopping work if it wasn't safe and opportunities for sharing safety lessons learned.

At the end of the orientation, Phil came up to me and told me that these concepts were all new to him. I was stunned. After all, Phil was no spring chicken. He had been in the construction industry for 27 years.

Phil explained that he had just arrived from a construction project in Las Vegas. The mindset of many workers in Vegas was "blow and go, get ‘er done." Workers typically work a schedule of six 12 hour days per week with the possibility of a seventh day at the full 12 hours. So the tempo is intense and nonstop. People simply didn’t talk about these safety concepts at the other places where Phil had worked during his career.

At the end of our discussion, Phil shook my hand and told me that he now had a new outlook on what it means to work safely. Phil now takes safety personally. He has joined our People Base Safety program and is an avid promoter of our safety culture. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Conclusion

I've been conducting this safety orientation for 20 months. I believe I'm saving lives. When I see the workers I’m orienting embracing safety at the end of the orientation, like Phil T, I feel great satisfaction. If that’s not safety success, I don’t know what is.

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TELL US ABOUT YOUR SAFETY SUCCESSES
Send your success stories to glennd@bongarde.com. Just get the ideas down and don’t worry about getting it perfect. We’ll work with you to polish up the writing.

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