On October 15th Life and Safety will host a free virtual and in-person seminar in Greenville, SC where SC OSHA Compliance Manager, Anthony Wilks, will discuss the current state of South Carolina OSHA.
Anthony Wilks Compliance Manager, SC OSHA
Life and Safety will also discuss the changing safety environment and the tools we can use to assist us with training, inspections, and documentation.
To accommodate as many people as possible you can attend in person or watch the live stream. We will have the same training both in the morning from 9am-11am and then again from 1pm-3pm.
Seating is limited for the classroom sessions so be sure to sign up now to reserve your seat.
On September 1st Life and Safety welcomed Mathew Craddock as a full time employee.
Mathew Craddock has been a contractor for Life and Safety since 2010. Mat has over 20 years of experience in multiple fields including industrial maintenance/mechatronics, controls programming, CNC machining, IT systems administration, environmental health, and safety. Mat holds a position as an adjunct instructor for Greenville Technical College in the field of mechatronics and is considered one of the leading subject matter experts. His career in maintenance and electronics began when he worked in a cotton mill as a maintenance technician while attending high school. Later he joined the Army at age 18 and volunteered for the 101st Airborne Division, Long Range Surveillance Detachment 75th Ranger Regiment. During his time in the LRS unit, he served as a unit armorer, cavalry scout, and high frequency encrypted radio technician. Mat has been deployed in combat to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait and has also served in many other countries during training exercises. After his enlistment, Mat obtained his associates of science degree in electronics engineering while also working in the maintenance field as maintenance technician for a plastics blow-molding manufacturer. Since then he has worked primarily in the automotive, bio-medical, and machine fabrication industries. Mat has served as plant EHS coordinator and trainer for electrical safety/arc flash while also teaching these subjects for Life and Safety. Mat continues to hold dual roles as both an electrician/programmer/EHS coordinator and also as an instructor in mechatronics for local colleges.
As an addition to the Life and Safety team, Mat Craddock, will head up our Arc Flash projects as the new Arc Flash Manager.
In October of 2011 I started with Life and Safety and now, 8
years later, have seen our online services grow from a small OSHA 10 and 30
reseller service to a department that develops custom online training solutions
for employee and contractor orientation as well as site and task specific training.
Inspections, Audits, Observations, and Assessments
Life and Safety creates custom training solutions for our clients and over the past 5 years we’ve built digital inspection solutions that allow operators and inspectors to complete their checklists on a smart device while in the field. There’s no need to carry a clipboard, complete paper forms, carry it back to the office, review the findings, forward for remediation, or file for retention. Everything is digital and stored in a database with immediate notification of deficiencies and the opportunity to respond effectively and efficiently to trouble areas while at the same time incentivizing positive behaviors such as completing inspections, audits, observations, and assessments.
Training Transcript Management
The newest tool we’ve added is the ability to access contractor
training records immediately from anywhere. Instead of relying on wallet cards
or word of mouth the contractor has a scannable code on their ID badge, hardhat,
or something equally as accessible. The safety person can then scan that code
and access all their training while verifying that they are trained to do their
job tasks.
On the Horizon
We are continuously improving our online tools and processes
with a few projects currently under development. The most exciting new tool we’re
working on is an ISO certification process management tool. With it you’ll be
able to manage your documentation and access it easily much in the same way
that our contractor transcript tool works. More details about this new tool will
become available after the first of the year.
Thank you to all our clients who have and continue to help us
test and build these tools for safety.
I love motorcycles. I love motorcycles and riding motorcycles A LOT! I love everything about them. Any motorcycle. Alta, BSA, BMW, Beta, Harley, Honda, KTM, Husky, Indian, Triumph, Suzuki, Vespa, Yamaha, dirt or street, big or small, loud or quiet the flavor doesn’t matter to me; they are all awesome. This love affair started when I was a child and has only deepened as I have grown older. Many years ago, I started riding off road in a type of motorcycling called Enduro. Enduro would best be described as really long trail hiking, but on a motorcycle. It marries two of my greatest joys; motorcycles and nature. Eventually, I discovered this thing called Hard Enduro. Hard Enduro is just like regular Enduro, still really long hikes on the back of a motorcycle, but the trails are really, really hard. Like dangerously hard. Hard to the level that if you make a mistake while riding them it is very likely you are going to at least get hurt. Possibly die. Imagine riding a motorcycle along a cliff edge with the trail in front of you only being about six inches wide. Or riding on terrain that mountain goats would give a second thought too, all the while being miles away from anything that could be considered civilization; in the back country of our great nation. That’s Hard Enduro and it is my passion. The reward for what many would call pure suffering and stupidity is simply the things you get to see. There are so many places of wonder and beauty in our country that are so far away from anything, very few will ever get to see them. For me, a motorcycle is how I choose to get to those places, though still with a considerable amount of effort. So, you may be asking yourself, “what this has to do with safety and why on earth would a safety professional do such a thing?” Safety professionals are the Nervous Nellies that walk around wearing safety vests writing things down on clip boards who are afraid of anything that might even be remotely risky, right? Not necessarily.
In late summer each year for the past several years, I have made a pilgrimage to the Western United States to meet up with my best friend and take off into the wilderness to do several days of ridiculously hard motorcycle riding. I recently returned from such a trip out to the Teanaway National Forest in Washington State where there are some of the best Hard Enduro trails in the country. Obviously, this is quite a long drive from Greenville, South Carolina and I had plenty of alone time driving home to think about what really makes it possible to do such things safely and still have fun. Here is where the safety part comes in. I determined that the top four things that allow me to participate at this level of foolishness and to still be safe are Planning, Training, Experience and Equipment. Sound familiar? Turns out the same things that allow me to do stupid human tricks on a motorcycle (and return to talk about it) are the same things that help keep us safe on the job. Now, I am under no illusion that I am perfect, and I am not this beast of a motorcycle rider that goes out and wins races or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I don’t race. Never have, never will. I consider myself to be an average rider who just has an above average love for the machines and the beauty of nature. But, where I do excel, is in my dedication to mitigating risk. Just because there is risk doesn’t mean that something can’t be made as safe as possible by eliminating or mitigating that risk while still remembering to be prepared for something to still go wrong.
First step is Planning. For months I pour over trail maps, trail
description write ups, US Forest Service topographical maps, Google Earth,
anything I can get my hands on that can give me the best possible picture of
where I am going. I determine in advance, how I’m going to get there, and what
hazards I will, or could, encounter along the way. This is not unlike a Job
Safety Analysis where we look at the task at hand and its environment to
identify potential hazards and develop plans to eliminate or avoid those
hazards. If the time is taken to look closely at a task and make a concerted
effort to control the hazards, there isn’t much left over that could surprise
us. But, should those unplanned situations occur, a proper JSA will require a
timeout and reevaluation of the situation to solve the newfound hazard. We then
can approach the situation with these new hazards eliminated or mitigated.
Second is Training. Whether it is reading, learning wilderness survival
skills, physical fitness training, learning how to take care of basic
mechanical problems on the motorcycle, training and education provides mental
tools to handle the unexpected problems which will inevitably show themselves
at the worst possible time. Our safety training serves that same purpose. If
you think back it is certain that there has been at least one time when you
recognized a safety concern or issue because of something you heard in safety
training. Maybe it was a large safety issue that others had overlooked, and
your specialized training allowed you to see the hazard. Or maybe is was
something as simple as moving a trashcan out of a walkway so that someone
wouldn’t trip over it. Chances are, you can attribute your actions to something
you leaned in safety training.
Experience. Getting out and riding my motorcycle in as many different
types of terrain and as often as I can allows me to feel out situations and the
machine in a controlled manner and then reflect when things didn’t go well to
try and find a better way. Without the time in the environment, the knowledge
isn’t there to be able to determine what right looks like. Experience in part
teaches us this. Not only my personal experience, but also that of my riding
buddy. My buddy is pilot for a major airline with many thousands of hours
flying everything from paragliders to the Boing 737 that he currently flies. As
a commercial pilot, his perspective on preparation and planning for hazards is
unique as a result of the environment of safety that he must work in
constantly. This experience transfers over easily and is an addition to his
experience riding Hard Enduro. On the job our own experiences help keep us
safe. They allow us to see potential problems in situations that resemble
something we have seen go wrong before. Our co-workers and supervisors’
experiences also help keep us safe as their perspective is different than ours
and they might see something that we otherwise would not. All that is required
is for us to have an open communication environment where we can speak from our
experiences and not to let someone do something that we know is hazardous.
Finally, is Equipment. I will not go out into the backcountry, or ride
at all, unless I know that all my gear is 100%. From the mechanical state of
the motorcycle to my personal protective equipment, everything must be
functioning at 100% or I do not go. As a safety professional I understand that
my equipment, or PPE, is the last line of defense if all the planning,
training, and experience fail. In a world of open energy systems, there is
absolutely no way that every factor can be foreseen or planned for. If my
motorcycle breaks down because of a maintenance item I neglected or if I fall
off my bike and suffer an injury with uncontrollable bleeding and I am 100
miles away from a paved road in grizzly territory or in the high mountains
where there can be blizzards in the middle of July; not having the right
equipment is much more than an inconvenience. Though it may not seem that our
working environment is as extreme, not having the proper 100% functioning PPE
or equipment can have just as potentially catastrophic results. Was the per-use
inspection on our equipment done? Did we follow proper lockout, tagout
procedures? Did we make sure that our gear was 100% before we started working so
that we can be relatively certain that our equipment is going to function
correctly?
When you approach your next workday, think about all the systems that
are playing a part in keeping you and your co-workers safe. See if you can
identify the Planning, Training, Experience and Equipment components of the
safety system in your environment. Think about the role you play in those
systems. You may gain a whole new perspective on why that guy with the safety
vest seems so nervous.