Dee Davis (00:57)
Good morning and welcome to Management Under Construction. I'm Dee Davis.
Brad Wyant (01:02)
I'm Brad Wyant and today's podcast is going to be all about safety culture. The question we're to be trying to answer today is have we over corrected from the dangerous past of beamwalking 15 stories up without any fall protection and harmful chemicals like asbestos? Who is served by today's safety culture? Is it effective? Is it truthful? Is it having the intended outcomes that we want to have? Or is it serving someone else? Is it doing something different than what
it says it's going to do on its face. So, Dee, I'd love to hear your experiences with safety culture and then I can talk a little bit about mine.
Dee Davis (01:40)
Well, I can tell you I've seen it evolve a lot in the last 30 years. I definitely started out in the industry swinging a hammer with shorts and a tank top, no safety glasses. My sunglasses were my safety glasses. No hard hat, dangling off the edge of buildings with no fall protection. That's how I started my career. Is that a good thing? Probably not. I was lucky I didn't get hurt.
But the industry seems to have evolved to, we can't do anything without wrapping everybody in bubble wrap. And that is not always possible. Sometimes it makes it very, very difficult to do our work. So is it really helping us? It certainly made construction slower, and made it more expensive. But I think we'll see too that our
safety numbers, if you will, or accident ratios have dropped dramatically as well.
Brad Wyant (02:34)
is important and we're going to talk about each of those different competing priorities here in a little bit. I want to talk about an experience where I was a moron and sort of break down how I got to the point I did and talk about safety around that. So I was working on a project where I was tasked with setting up
client trailers. The client wanted to hold more office space on site for their engineers and we needed to set up some office trailers for them. was a huge office trailer city. lot of work went into it in addition to the work that I was already working on because we can never hire on more people even temporarily. This is how construction works. Just do more with less. That's the way everything works. Not even just in construction.
At the end of the project, were like, finally almost there. And the electrical inspector had to sign off. And the electrical inspector for the small area we working in was not a county or even city electrical inspector. He was an inspector for hire. He was a contractor. Even inspectors can be contracted out. And he told me as we were going through the safety walkthrough,
to unscrew the face panel covering the junctions, the breaker box. And I was like, all right, well, sure. Yeah. Do you need to get a sign of this building? Fine. Whatever. Let's do it. I took my Leatherman out, took the screws out and let him look at it. And it wasn't until later that day, as I was walking through what I'd done with the electrical subcontractor who had done the work, they were like,
What do mean the electrical contractor already came and he signed up. Oh, yeah, he showed up and I walked him through it and he was fine. I was like, well, did he inspect anything? I was like, yeah, yeah, I took the panel off. You took the panel off? So it turns out, as many people that are listening already know, there was a big risk of electric shock with me doing that. That if something had been wired improperly, if I put a piece of metal too close to any of those wires that I could have really hurt myself.
I've been to four years of mechanical engineering school. knew enough to know don't touch the live wires with the metal object. So I was careful as I was taking it off, but I didn't realize that in the safety schema of the job site, I was not authorized to do that work. I didn't have the proper training. I didn't know just how dangerous it was. So.
I was issued a formal reprimand by the company I was working for at the time, which I think was the right decision. It sobered me up about just how overzealous I'd gotten in desire to get this project done, to move on to the next thing, and made me aware of how easy it is for somebody in the mindset of, don't get paid unless this gets done, to push schedule, to push results in lieu of doing things the proper way, in lieu of considering the risks of an activity.
And I wouldn't say that it's not that I considered how risky it was, it's that I thought, well, if this person's telling me to do it, it must be safe, number one, which we'll talk about in a minute. And number two, I know what's behind this panel. 220 volts split into 110, don't touch the copper with your screwdriver and you'll be okay. And as it turns out, that's pretty much all that an electrical contractors foreman or apprentice, would have done.
is they would have done it very carefully, but still. that was my experience with safety that was the most remarkable during my construction career. the reason I wanted to talk about safety culture today is not just that story, but I heard the story that Mike Rowe, who hosted the Dirty Jobs Show, he told the story about crab boat fishing. I love the way he tells stories. He's got a great voice. He does a great job telling stories.
After this particularly harrowing, weather-induced near miss on a crab boat, he wryly goes to the captain and says, safety first. And the captain disagrees a little bit explicitly and he goes, no, safety third. My first responsibility is to run this business. My second responsibility is to get these boys home rich. It's up to them to get home safely. And there's a wink of truth to that statement when compared to the safety culture of a modern construction site that just seems to be missing in my view.
What are your thoughts on that?
Dee Davis (06:48)
Well, when I first read that statement, when you wrote this episode, I thought yes. And then I thought, no And part of that is all the training that we've been given in the construction industry. Yes, I agree with the fishermen to some extent, but I also know that culture a little bit.
That culture is, there is a very limited window where you can go out and make a whole bunch of money and that money sustains those people in that industry for the whole year or for a very prolonged period of time. their attitude towards safety probably has to be a little bit different than our attitude towards safety because they have that window.
We have a 365 day window almost in construction. They have a few weeks or a month or whatever to go make their money, but it also is a different way of looking at it, of putting the culture of safety on the individual, which I think we don't do enough of in construction. We'd like to push the culture of safety onto the employer.
Not that that's completely wrong necessarily. There's some responsibility there. The employer shouldn't be pushing the employee to hurt themselves, to achieve the employer's goals. But at the same time, if it's not on the individual person doing the work, who the heck is it on? And I just recently got into a debate with somebody on LinkedIn about the simple topic of PPE.
They were saying the controlling site contractor should be responsible for providing PPE for all people on the site and that it's not their responsibility or their company's responsibility to provide PPE on the site. I feel like that's a step too far. it's kind of like, Everybody wants to push this around. Where should it lie? What do you think, Brad?
Brad Wyant (08:56)
I mean, first off, I've never heard of that. I've never heard of the general contractor being responsible for everybody's PPE That would be a huge cost and is not feasible from a logistical standpoint. Any Joe Schmoe who comes onto the job site, a truck driver, you're not going to be responsible for them. I would agree. I think that's a bridge too far. think that the contractor leading the job,
should be responsible for setting a tone of safety culture for not letting superintendents run wild and push down unrealistic schedule dates and compromise safety for the sake of schedule when you're taking risks that you shouldn't be taking. That's certainly a sign that the general contractor is promoting a culture that needs to be curbed. But to demand that the general contractor give everybody PPE, that's crazy.
It's not realistic, that's not a good way of doing the business.
in my opinion at least. So I wanted to try to...
framework our conversation around something a little bit more concrete than just talking about our own personal experiences and a few statistics. I read a couple papers by safety professionals who researched this as PhDs. And one of the subjects that kept coming up, was this concept of risk compensation theory. It's a controversial topic that was introduced in the 70s.
There are certainly researchers at the PhD level on both sides of whether this concept holds water or not. And I'll explain it now. risk compensation is defined to be how we describe a common human phenomenon. When presented with an environment, people adjust their actions to bring their level of risk to an amount that suits them. A good example to explain this concept is that somebody crossing the street at an intersection without the walk-don't-walk lights, you the orange hand that blinks and the...
numbers that count down, they're going to be more cautious if the lights aren't there than if the lights are there. If there's something telling you that it's safe to cross the street, then you're going to take a little bit more risk. If there's not something there telling you that it's safe to cross the street, then you're going to be a little bit more wary. It's still controversial today because it's been used to decry safety advances like anti-lock brakes and airbags in cars, for example. The argument goes that
when drivers go faster in more safe cars and cars that have been built to protect you better in the event of a crash or the event of an emergency, then the death rate in all of the accidents is going to say the same. People are just going to increase their risk tolerance because the cars are safer, is the theory. Turns out that there was a theory done that says that that might be true.
Cab drivers in the 70s were studied. Some had cars with ABS, some had cars that didn't have ABS. And the study showed that to a statistically significant amount, the drivers in ABS cars did drive a bit faster than their colleagues in non-ABS cars. mean, Dee, what do you make of that? We're both drivers. well, you've been driving a little longer than I have.
Dee Davis (11:57)
Always focusing on that age difference. No, I'm kidding.
Brad Wyant (12:00)
Sorry, sorry,
didn't mean to go there.
Dee Davis (12:03)
The truth shall be told. when you look at it from a car standpoint, look at now, we have cars that have all these features. they can if not drive themselves completely, practically drive themselves. My Lexus, if I set things up correctly, it'll stay in its own lane. It'll slow down when the car in front of me slows down. It'll do all these things. I can just sit there,
is that me taking more risk? Yeah, because now I'm not using my judgment, which is going to be superior than any technological judgment as we've seen over and over and over and we've talked about this in other episodes with the, the death rates of automatic driving cars, it's not good. So yeah, I think we do. And I even flashed back onto the,
example you gave with the electrical panel, had you not had someone who you thought was qualified tell you, it's okay, take this panel off, would you have done it? Would you have hesitated? Would you have gone and asked somebody? Maybe.
Brad Wyant (13:07)
I think back to that moment a lot, it was in the way he phrased it. He was like, hey, let's take that electrical panel off, I need to inspect. I was like, all right, you need to inspect, and you're telling me it's safe to do it. If he had said, can we get this electrical panel taken off, then I would have been like, yeah, we should get it taken off. I don't know if I'm the right person to do that. it's very interesting the phrasing of that, guess. I think you're absolutely right. The idea that we have these cars now that
whether they're designed to or not, provide a certain level of comfort, that does scare me. There was somebody I met when I was studying abroad during college who had worked for BMW as an engineer for two decades, and he said that he was really concerned about ADS. This was back in 2015, assisted driver automation systems, think is what the acronym stands for. And he was like, look.
We at BMW knew that this was going to be the future. We didn't have the software technology. We're not a software company. We didn't have the electrical engineering down. But we knew that this is where things were going. That's why I'm here at the Research Institute. But we also know so far that there's no way to make these cars drive themselves in the snow. There's no way to make themselves work in adverse conditions. And so what does that do then? You have a bunch of drivers who
are used to the car driving itself until the first snowfall of the season, which it does in Germany and a lot of other places. And then have those people forgotten to drive? Are they not going to perform as well as if they had been driving year round, if they had had an accident once in their lives? you made a comment, we were talking about the self-driving cars that I agree with, but I disagree with, that human judgment will always be better.
than the machine's judgment. And I think human judgment at its best will be better than the machine's judgment and it'll be safe enough. But I've had car accidents. I plowed into the back of a pickup truck when I was 21 years old. I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. I was burning the candle at both ends. And I was worried that a car on my left was gonna merge into me. I was falling too close. And at about 20 miles an hour on the 101, I plowed into the car because I just didn't see him break. He'd break very suddenly.
and these self-driving cars would have caught that. A car that has an automatic braking system would have slammed on the brakes because I was worried about that. And my judgment in that moment was not enough. To go a little bit further with that concept, when I was 16, I was a very cautious driver. I was terrified of having an accident. I really liked my car, but I also had just taken
Drivers Ed and I saw the classic Drivers Ed videos where you see blood and guts, you see how bad accidents can be and I knew at 16 that that could be me. I knew that I didn't have very much experience. But by the time I was 18, I felt like I really had a handle on it. I was like, driving, I can do this with my eyes closed. I'm totally good with this. I built some habits, nothing bad had happened yet and I even drove fast because I thought it was fun. So.
I think that human behavior around risk and safety really seems to change with experience and age. The more we know can go wrong, the more we've seen go wrong, the more cautious we're inclined to be on average, think. Which is why it scares me that all these people in the Silicon Valley writing software for self-driving cars, pushing self-driving cars, are under the age of 30. I don't know.
Can get some more experienced people in the room maybe? mean, Dee, what do you think? Are first year apprentices safer than five year journeymen? Are 25 year foremen even safer than both?
Dee Davis (16:49)
Well, it's funny because when you put it into construction terms, think for me, it becomes very clear. Is the first year apprentice safer? Absolutely not. That first year apprentice has no idea how dangerous that job site can be. They haven't seen enough yet. I think you can apply this across the board, but for me, when you put it in construction terms, it's like, glaringly obvious.
Brad Wyant (16:58)
You
Dee Davis (17:14)
That doesn't necessarily mean though that somebody with 20 or 30 years of experience is the most safe person. I will give you an example. I had a foreman on my job. This guy's been in the trade forever, very talented tradesman. I could not get this man to put his safety glasses on for anything.
It was ridiculous. it was the safety glasses. It was this unsafe behavior, that unsafe behavior. He did all these different things. I actually had to remove him from my job at one point. It killed me because I would sit him down and I would say, can you please stop doing these unsafe things because I can't let you do these things. Even though nothing bad has happened to you, you are setting the example.
Brad Wyant (17:35)
Hahaha
Dee Davis (18:03)
for the apprentices and the other journeymen on this job and if I let you get away with it I have to let them get away with it and pretty soon it's out of control. I pleaded with him please stop doing these things because I'm going to have to remove you from the site. He was removed from more than one site over the years that I knew him for safety violations and he just wouldn't comply.
He would comply for a while and then he would go back to his old habits. So
Yes, the reasons for people being less safe can definitely change with time and experience. And I think, as you get older and your reactions aren't as fast maybe you're aware of it, but then there's also the people with the Superman complex out there that think that I'm 60, but I still think I'm 20. That's a problem too.
I don't know, it's a very tough thing. I know I've mentioned this before on other casts, I had a job where we had a fatality on site. something really drastic like that can change somebody's outlook on safety. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes that to change somebody's outlook on safety.
to the point where they don't want to even be on the job site anymore. I had one person that chose not to work out in the field anymore. They ended up staying in the trade, but working in a more controlled environment because they had kids at home and they were kind of terrified after that of something really bad happening.
Brad Wyant (19:37)
That's sad to hear, especially if that person had to take a lower paycheck to go do that, which maybe they did, I don't know. Since we've talked about that story so many times on this podcast, it's still very sad to me to hear that somebody lost their life. It's horrible that somebody should die at work doing their job. That is not the way that life's supposed to go.
Dee Davis (19:59)
going back to that Mike Rowe's interaction with the captain, in construction, we look at that situation and we say, well, the environment was this, the person did that. There's always the assignment of blame when it comes to something really terrible like that. Should it be?
The foreman or the GC's responsibility? Should it be the individual's responsibility? Is it their job to get themselves home safely?
Yes and no. All the above are correct.
Brad Wyant (20:33)
Safety is everybody's responsibility is my favorite of those, for lack of a kinder word, trite safetyisms. It's everybody's responsibility, especially yours, would be I think the last thing you tack on to that. nobody can serve you better for safety than you. And I think it's good that we have laws like the ones that have been enacted around OSHA where if somebody says, no, that's not safe and I'm not gonna do it,
If it turns out that they were right and it wasn't safe, they don't face penalties. Nobody's gonna sue. They're gonna have the right to sue if they get fired over not doing work that they knew not to be safe. So let's get into the construction industry's statistics. Since OSHA was formed in the late 60s, deaths in construction per year have gone down from 38 per day in 1970 to 15 per day.
in 2023. And that statistic includes how many more people are working in the field now than there were in 1970s. let's talk more about some rates. could find the rates for this. Incidents, major and minor injuries have gone from 10.9 per every 100 workers in 72 to 2.4 per 100 workers in 2023. That's more than 25 % of what it was.
So something is working. We're not killing and maiming as many people as we used to. And that's good. nobody would argue that that isn't. But I have to imagine a lot of that has to do with technology and time making safety equipment more ergonomic, not to mention cheaper. Cut rate five level gloves, for instance, are partly made of elastic now, so they form to our hands. And they're dirt cheap. Trucks have backup cameras now. Saws have stops and better guards. Dee what
technological changes have you noticed since you've started in the construction business?
Dee Davis (22:30)
goodness. There's all of that. And I think there's awareness, raising the awareness, the sign that says walk, don't walk.
That's kind of the same thing as safety awareness. When I started in the industry, I feel like there was very little awareness. not nearly as much focus put on safety. These days you're required to take all these different trainings and there's all these refreshers and confined space training and, all the OSHA 10, OSHA 30, I couldn't even count how many hours of safety training I've had over the years.
the things on the tools automatic stops and guards and things on tools that were not prevalent, those things can be disabled and that unfortunately does happen sometimes and usually results in an accident when it does happen. But I've seen people do crazy things. I remember I was volunteering for, I think it was like Habitat for Humanity one time or one of those organizations and we were...
remodeling somebody's house for them. We were doing roof repairs and and it's all construction industry people out there doing the work. And it was the classic, I'm going to put the piece of lumber on my leg and hold it with this hand and grab a saw and go like that right next to my leg.
I stopped somebody from doing that on that job site. was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? And this is somebody with lots of experience. And they were like, what? I'm like, my goodness, do I have to explain it to you?
crazy stuff like that.
Brad Wyant (23:57)
And then that's somebody who,
that's somebody who on that job site on Monday morning is gonna be telling somebody to keep their safety classes on. But on the weekends in their own shop, they're doing it,
Dee Davis (24:07)
hey,
I've mowed my lawn in flip flops. I've done it. I will admit it openly. I have mowed my lawn in flip flops. I have climbed ladders in flip flops in my own house, not never on a job site folks, but in my own house and my husband and I joke, my husband's in the industry also. And if I'm doing something like that,
or he's doing something like that, we'll go, are those your steel toe flip flops? That's our little way of going, wow, are you sure you wanna do that? Is that really the best choice right now? I don't know, maybe you should go change your shoes.
Brad Wyant (24:42)
And that
was something a very wry safety professional explained to me once. It's like, look, you can be unsafe on your own time, but on company time, you're doing it the company's way. And that's the attitude that you need to have with these old guys who have been on their trade for 30 years and are telling you to pound sand when you ask them to put their safety glasses on. It's like, look, this isn't me telling you to do this. This is the company. And
The company is writing your checks. You don't get to choose how you do it. We tell you how you do it, when you do it, which is a little dictatorial. It's a little bit imperialistic,
Dee Davis (25:18)
I think it's that little bit of rebel, you the foreman that I just always had to tell him to put his safety glasses back on. And I always had to remind him about all the safety things and remove him from the job from time to time. It's just that little bit of rebellion. think there's people don't like to be told what to do. They just don't. And I'm even going to go as far as saying that that might be slightly more prevalent in men than it is in women.
Brad Wyant (25:18)
that we have to do it.
Yeah.
Dee Davis (25:43)
we have a lot of type A personalities as we've talked about on the cast so many times. Type A's definitely don't like to be told what to do. And so when you're out there telling them you have to do this, you have to do that, and the people who have been around for a long time started out where I started out, where people didn't really do that kind of stuff so much. Safety vest, what's that? Fall protection, what's that?
now we go through all this different trainings some would argue that it's almost too in your face and too prevalent and too talked about to the point of exhaustion. And I don't want to listen anymore.
Brad Wyant (26:20)
Well, and that's a very interesting point. And that was something I tried to bring up in the intro, the overcorrection concept, I think, is one that a lot of people have a point about. If you talk about safety to people until you're blue in the face and they're asleep, then you're not doing anyone good. In fact, I think you're doing harm. And to return to the inspiration for this cast, so does Mike Rowe. He said that the Dirty Jobs crew had almost no safety incidents in their first years of shooting on the show, first three years.
But in the fourth year, they had a bunch of injuries and near misses that were all very scary. And he chalked that up to becoming complacent, lulled to sleep, and endless in his words, safety briefings with people touting safety first to the point of monotony to the point of illogical behavior. He tells the story about somebody from the DNR telling him to wear a life preserver while standing at a foot of water. And he tells another story about somebody telling him to tie off.
on a four foot scaffold where the line that the guy wanted him to tie off with was longer than he would have had to fall And we've all seen that kind of thing on jobsites It's like, okay, but this is ridiculous. This is truly not gonna make anyone safe anymore. What are we doing? It's like, yeah, but safety first. It's like, well then that devalues that term. It undermines your credibility as a professional in this business.
And it makes people not want to listen to you. They're like, that safety guy, what the hell is he talking about? That project engineer telling me to do this. They don't know my job. I'm not going to listen to them ever. And that is definitely harmful. I'm sure you've seen things like that, Dee, where it's like, OK, this isn't helping make that person safe anymore.
Dee Davis (27:59)
I had something this week, I nearly forgot about it. I've had a couple of little crises this week on job sites and, they're going to spawn some more podcast episodes where we're going to talk about what happened. But what happened in this particular instance around safety is I had a meeting with the safety manager for the owner. And we're talking about this work we're getting ready to do. We're getting ready to do hot work on a roof.
And the safety folks for the owner are coming back and saying, you have to have a three hour fire watch.
three hour fire watch. What? Why? And of course the GC is going, what is happening? Why would I have to have a three hour fire watch? And so we get on the phone and they're telling us, well, is what safety management has said the upper folks in safety have said And I said, okay, I pulled up the OSHA standard. The OSHA standard is 30 minutes.
for Firewatch. And there's a little clause in there that says, in certain high risk environments, you may want to extend that Firewatch to up to an hour. there is some leeway there, but this particular case that we have is not a high risk environment. We don't have a lot of combustibles in the area In fact, we really have no combustibles in the area where we're going to be welding. And
It's just not a high risk environment. There's no reason to have more than 30 minutes. And I think the most I've ever seen in any environment that I've worked in has been an hour maybe. And so I said, look, here's how we can handle this. first of all, I would like them to cite the standard under which they're coming up with three hours. And I have a feeling I know what the answer is going to be because I did find in the shipbuilding standard,
you could go up to three hours in certain circumstances. And I think that's probably where they found it. But I said, I'd like them to cite the standard that they think they're enforcing. And that's always a really good way, by the way, if you're trying to diffuse some craziness about something that is happening on your job site. I've used this many, many times. Somebody's saying, the code's requiring this or the standards requiring this, make them cite it to you.
if you don't think it's right, because there's only one of two things that's gonna happen. Either they're going to be wrong and you're gonna be right by default, or you're gonna learn something that you didn't know. I've had it happen both ways, but usually when I'm pushing back on somebody for something that I think is too aggressive, I will say, cite the standard, and then we'll sit and read the standard together and they'll go, sorry.
So that's very effective.
Brad Wyant (30:41)
Yeah, there's a great term that I heard and I'm gonna bring it back to PC language for a sec. It's knowing the policy lets you be a jerk. Because if you know the policy, you can go back to that person and say, actually, no, no, no, you're citing the wrong code. We're not building ships here. And not a jerk in a bad way, but just a jerk in like, no, you're wrong. We need to do it this way.
And so for me, the fact that we now have safety policies that dictate that somebody's done the study, that somebody's studied the risk, that somebody sat in a room and thought about it and written it down, enables us in the business to have a standard off of which to operate and build the business around that. Everyone plays by the same rules. That's good economics, that's good competition, and that's going to keep people
reasonably safe. But still though, the idea that the general contractor's team always touts the safety first mindset while being a business interested in creating profit nags at me. We're responsible for not asking people to do work unsafely by those standards I just talked about. that is we should not be telling somebody to climb up on a 35 foot scaffold and tell them to hurry up without doing it with a harness to put on, save time, but
That would be an economically motivated request. It would be morally wrong. That's why there are safety standards. We could say, no, no, no. We've all decided as an industry, as a society, that that's not going to cut it. That that person deserves the time to put on the safety harness, and you deserve to pay them for it. But to pretend that we have made construction as safe as possible, that safety is number one.
That's what that would mean in my mind. If safety's first, then we're going to make the job site as safe as possible. Safety first kind of is a farce. The safest thing to do would be to stay home, to never light a torch or dig a hole. So safety is not any company's top priority, nor is it even a worker's top priority. We're all on the job site to make money, but we want to live to spend it.
OSHA, safety professionals, and others all strive to find the right balance between these competing interests, and we often disagree. I'm all about mitigating risk, but I'm inclined to agree with Mike Rowe to a certain extent that the tone of our safety briefings need to change from this is how much we care about safety and the safety first culture. Maybe it should be along the lines of these are the hazards that you're going to experience today, like
one of the job sites that Dee and I worked on. By the way, there's a big 20 foot wide, 40 foot tall tank of what is effectively dynamite out on the job site. So don't back into it. That's a hazard that you should tell somebody about. And a safety briefing, yeah, that's fair. But promoting this culture that we have solved it for you, that it is safe now for you to go to your job,
is not the right tone to take in safety briefings. Dee, what do you think?
Dee Davis (33:58)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And I think maybe changing the way we approach that, one of the things that I've heard a lot of safety professionals or even companies tout and I am uncomfortable with is every accident is preventable. No, it's not. No, it's not. And I will say that till I die. It is hopefully not in an accident. It is not. I have seen numerous.
minor accidents on job sites that are not preventable because things happen. Stuff falls. People drop things. It happens. To think that you're going to get that many fallible humans in one place with that many things and that much dangerous stuff going on and nothing is ever going to happen is ridiculous.
That is absolutely ridiculous. you just do stupid things and you don't mean to. I remember it was a lab job that we were doing and I'd walk to the job during the day when people were working, but at the end of the day, every day before I left, I would walk the whole site, every floor. And I was a mechanical contractor. So most of my work is,
in the ceiling. It was that phase. And so you're walking around and you're looking up. That's what we do. We walk around and we look up. Our necks get stiff. Well, somebody had laid out a bunch of stainless steel sinks, that were going to get dropped into the casework the next day, probably. And those things are really sharp, by the way. The edges, really sharp. And I'm walking and I'm looking up.
because that's what I need to be looking at. I've got my jeans on, I've got my safety boots on, I got all the things, right? There's no work happening around me. Nothing's going to drop on my head. No anvils from ACME or anything like that. And I run into this stupid sink and cut my leg wide open, even through the jeans. Was that a preventable accident?
Could I have been a little bit more careful and looked down a little bit more when I was walking around to make sure I didn't run in the sink? Sure. But come on.
could that sink have been moved a little further into the casework and out of the aisle so that somebody might not trip on it? Yeah, but come on, it was probably sitting there for a matter of hours before it got installed. Some things are just gonna happen. we want zero. We want zero accidents on our job sites.
Of course, zero's always the goal, but to flog people to death. I'm gonna tell you right now, I didn't report it. I didn't report that accident. I was the only one there. I didn't, I know, I see the look on your face. And it was 20 years ago, so sue me. But I was the only one on the job site. I wasn't hurt enough to worry about anything.
yes, I had some blood in my boot, but I was fine. And this is exactly what happens though. This is the consequence of flogging people to death over every little thing is they feel blamed, they feel responsible. It's a whole big production. So what am I gonna do? Not report it.
It happens all the time.
Brad Wyant (37:10)
Yeah, the idea of safety culture being so punitive that people don't report incidents. That's another whole can of worms. And I agree, in the same circumstances, I would not have reported it either, statutes of limitations aside. think that's something where it's like, yeah, that was just me being dumb. I acknowledged that I was stupid and that was a nice wake up call to look down I've done dumber things.
This is being a person, being fallible, accepting that stuff happens. And that's when I think the rebuttal argument against this risk tolerance, risk compensation argument really kicks in. It's like, okay, yeah, fine. People might drive faster in a modern car.
than they did in something from the 60s with no power steering, ABS, no automatic braking system. But let's have everybody drive around in those cars because stuff happens. And the fewer stuff that happens that we weren't paying attention for, that we were not ready for, the better. When people choose to be unsafe, that's of their own accord. When people make mistakes that they would not have otherwise made.
That's when you want ABS and airbags for when stuff happens. Lockout, tagout is for the what ifs of construction. Things that we hope never come to pass.
Dee Davis (38:37)
Well, and the degree of risk needs to be reasonably considered. So something like lockout, tag out, that degree of risk is huge. If you go flip the switch to something back on that should be locked out, you could kill somebody. I think we forget sometimes we treat everything like it's life and death when in reality,
Brad Wyant (38:47)
Exactly.
Dee Davis (38:59)
it's a cut on the leg because I was stupid and I tripped over something when I should have been looking at where I was going. That's not life and death risk. That's a little bit of blood and a bruise on my shin for a little while so what? That was no big deal. Something like falling off a roof, lockout, takeout.
those are the things that we need to be paying attention to. Those are the things that we need to be like, okay, everybody stop. I worked in a building one time. It was an occupied building. we built a brand new building and it tied to an existing hospital. And somebody cut accidentally a live gas line. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. There was.
running, screaming, it was bad. That was one of the biggest near misses that I've had in my career. that was another job where I had people who were like, I have kids at home. I don't know if I could do this anymore and left the industry because it's those level of risks. My husband has been in buildings that have blown up while he's in them.
there are significant risks out there to what we do. And then there's the band-aid moments, right? Where somebody drops something and you have the natural reaction of reaching out and trying to catch it and you cut your hand. It's a band-aid moment, okay? let's give things their proper due.
When the risk is high, we need to be very cautious and pay attention and treat it for the delicate situation that it is. When it's a band-aid moment, treat it like a band-aid moment.
Brad Wyant (40:41)
That's so true. think a lot of well-meaning people have gotten caught up in the fact that zero means zero and that nothing should ever go wrong and that, but if that person cut their hand, then I'm a bad safety guy, then I'm a bad project engineer, then I'm a bad project manager. No, stuff's gonna happen. Live with it. Live with the fact that we all are people and that it's not always gonna be perfect.
Striving for perfection and being upset when you don't achieve it are two different things. So take everything with a grain of salt. Don't berate somebody for not wearing their safety glasses the third time in a row because that person has a different outlook on life than you do at a certain point. It's still your job to tell them to wear them. It's still your job to enforce your company's and OSHA's requirements uniformly. But
It's on them at end of the day. If you're giving them tools to be safe, if you are creating a safe environment, if you're holding everybody to the same standard, if you're making people aware of the hazards, then it's their life to live at a certain point too.
Dee Davis (41:44)
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure there's probably going to be some safety people out there listening to this going, no, no, it's all or nothing. we have to preach zero otherwise, where do you draw the line? and that's an excellent question and an excellent point, okay, a band-aid is a band-aid, but
what if it's worse than a band-aid? because I lived in the world of grinding and welding for so long, things getting into your eye, you could lose your sight. That's kind of a big deal. It's okay, it, you're gonna bleed to death and you're gonna die? No, but that's also a really bad thing. you maybe couldn't work anymore. It's gonna impact your life.
Those kinds of things are a big deal. And where do you draw the line? Where does it stop being a band-aid risk and start being a risk we need to pay attention to?
I don't know, that's a hard one. I think that's maybe where we get into that all or nothing because who are we to make that decision for someone else? What is acceptable and what is not acceptable?
as OSHA or as a safety manager, you're kind of making that decision for somebody else, which is a tough spot to be in.
Brad Wyant (42:53)
That's the way we've set it up. I think continuing to have conversations like this that are frank about the pitfalls of safety culture, figuring out what the right choices are, not listening to dogma, not thinking, well, that's what's written down, so that's what I have to do. That's the only way that we make this make sense.
Dee Davis (43:13)
And I do think it is our responsibility as leaders, as, project managers, engineers, GCs, owners, whatever your role is. It is our duty and our responsibility to make things make sense. So when we're talking about, Hey, I've got to get up into this space and the rules and the available equipment don't allow me to follow the rules, but you're still asking me to do this thing or it's in my scope to do this thing.
Let's then talk about how can we do this in the most safe way, even if it's not following the letter of the safety rules. And I've had to do that in a number of cases over the years where if you follow the rules, the work can't be done, but the work still has to be done. So what do we do? And if you've got a great safety person,
on your site that'll work with you like that, approach it that way. and sometimes you really have to say it in those kinds of terms of look, the rules, if I follow them, won't allow me to do the work. can I not do the work? No, I have to do this work. It's a necessary part of whatever it is that we're doing. So how can I do this in the safest possible way?
work with me safety person to come up with a plan to do this in the safest possible way and limit the risks that whoever the person is that's facing it does. And I think that's fair and reasonable. And we've been able to do that in every job I've been on so far, but sometimes it's a little bit more of a fight. If you have an all or nothing safety manager, it can be a tougher conversation, but don't be afraid to have it.
Brad Wyant (44:54)
Yeah, being afraid to have that kind of conversation is the sort of negative culture that promotes people not reporting near misses, which our studies show a leading indicator that we have to report. If we don't get that data, we're not keeping people safe. If you're promoting a culture that means don't tell me bad things because I'm gonna blow up every time somebody gets a boo boo, then yeah, you are the problem. You are actually making the job site less safe.
Dee Davis (45:23)
Well, and what will happen I know tradesmen, what will happen is if you are hard to talk to or hard to work with or won't cooperate, they'll just wait till you're not there. You're not looking and they will go do it in the way that they think is best. It will get done because try and stop a tradesman from getting their work done. They will get it done. And they're going to now go do it without you, without your input, without your support.
and something bad may happen. And you can be mad and you can blame them all you want, but you're not going to be preventing it and protecting people if you're not able to work with them in that way. it's on all of us for sure. I do agree with you. I love that saying that, safety is on all of us. It's all of our responsibility, 100%. I feel it's my responsibility any moment I'm stepping foot on a site
I just had this happen to somebody said, I want you to work on that electrical panel live. My son's an electrician. I think about that constantly. would I ask my son to do that? Would I want my son working on that? And the answer's no, by the way. And I raised my hand and I said, I don't know about this. I don't feel comfortable with this.
let's talk to the GC, let's talk to the electrician. And sure enough, they came back and they said, we can't do that. We're not doing that. for most GCs and electricians anymore. They won't do that kind of work if it's possible to avoid it. not inconvenient. Inconvenient isn't impossible. you have a situation where it's impossible to avoid.
then perhaps it can be done that way. But if it's merely inconvenient, you're gonna have to be inconvenienced.
Brad Wyant (47:09)
Well, I hope this conversation has helped talk about some of the emotions around safety culture, some of the economics around it, and some of the statistics as well as what some of the PhD researchers have found in the subject. I hope that everybody listening stays safe, which is a often said and often meant thing in this business, which I'm very happy about. And we'll see you next time.
Dee Davis (47:30)
Stay safe out there. Thank you.
