You must have a story about a run-in with the safety person on your site. You probably have several. Send me a message and share your story with me!
I remember setting up scaffolding up to 15’ in the air and quickly climbing down when I saw the safety guy walking the site. By law, we have to tie off over 10’. The safety guy approached me and said, “How did you set up that scaffold?” I said, “I did it quickly, don’t worry about it.” Wrong answer. I didn’t even bother to have a harness nearby that I could have pointed to as a scapegoat. Easy to see discipline coming my way. He didn’t care at the end of the day about me as an individual, he cared that I was complying with the law.
As construction professionals, we need to COMMIT not COMPLY.
Since I didn’t know this dude (yet) my natural reaction was to be pissed off. He doesn’t care about me at the end of the day, he has a job to do- and thats to enforce the law. I don’t blame him because it’s humanly impossible to care about each person you meet as equally as your wife, mother or children. It’s just not realistic. That’s why we need to commit, not comply. According to Robin Dunbar, you can only care for about 150 people.
I’m talking to you today- you… and me, we need to commit, not comply when it comes to safety. As the guys and gals perform the work, a lot of innocent blood has been shed because of people like you and me skipping some safety steps that we personally believe to be a waste of time or unnecessary.
Read, understand, implement.
Read, understand and implement your local laws and regulations. Take it upon yourself to be a safety leader. To quote one of my best friends “I don’t give a **** why you are safe, as long as you are safe.”
Due diligence, is that a saying you hear often? I know I do. It’s essentially the company saying, we have done everything we can for safety, it’s the workers’ fault the accident or fatality happened. None of us want that on our consciences. Why is this important you might ask?
All laws were written in blood. At some point in time that law, rule or best practice was written because someone spilled some blood doing that unsafe action. You might think that the rules are stupid (some I do for sure) but it can boil down to this.
Do you value human life above all else?
It’s a question I wrestle with often. If you follow each law, rule and regulation to a “T” you are choosing to value human life above all else. Valuing humans above all else and practicing due diligence are like Oreos and milk. They just go together, you cannot have one without the other.
Now the question is—- do you value human life above all else?
Are you too tough to submit to the safety team? Are you too cool to tie off? Do you think nothing will happen to me because I am smarter than those other dummies? Is your ego too big to take an extra 5 minutes to tool your tethers or set up a controlled area for dropping tools? Are you too old fashioned to wear a mask?
Don’t lean on others to take your safety seriously because in the end there are only a couple people that truly value your life as much as you value your own life. Don’t kid yourself, most other people are in life for themselves too, even safety people. We as humans can’t possibly care enough above everyone the same. Take the time to work safely yourself and those you directly work with.
Commit, don’t comply.
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