In this episode of Safety With Purpose we are talking to Bryan McWhorter about Accident Investigation 101.
Podcast Transcript:
[00:08] All right. You safety professionals out there. Welcome to safety with purpose. My name is Scott MacKenzie. I am so glad that you are here. I’m so glad that you are part of this podcast. You know this podcast is platform is dedicated to you, the safety professionals. Everything that we do, everything that we focus on is dedicated to you and the companies that keep us safe and keep us coming home to our families and friends from the bottom of our Mars. Thank you very much. Now we’re going to be doing like little quick snippets because we know that you’re very busy and this particular episode we’re going to be talking a little bit about accident investigations one-on-one. So let’s get told, because we have no time to waste.
[00:44] “] We don’t. You guys are busy out there. Now I want to make sure you understand this is brought to you by those wonderful people at. Safeopedia. I’m telling you, if you got to save for Safeopedia.com and you say, Nah, I’ve got to figure out what to do with the PPE, I guarantee you they have the answers. So go out to Safeway. [inaudible] dot com and that’s where this particular podcast is located as well. But anyway, they got the answers for you. I’ll tell you that much. And they are passionate about safety as a, as you can imagine, their website’s great enough about Safeopedia. I could keep on talking and talking and talking, but before we get going, you know, we gotta do tailgate talk number one. We never start a podcast without a couple of tailgate talks. And what’s interesting, I just draw from Safeopedia and then I’ve, I’ve, I’ve always wondered, now this is interesting because I’ve got 30 plus years of industrial experience.
[01:33]”] I’ve taken the company public, I’ve done a lot of things and, and, and this Q and a section within safest PD is pretty cool. So I was, I was rooting around, looking around and, and then I found a, uh, a particular, uh, topic that is pretty interesting. Do workers need different respirators during the summer months and, and, and I get RTI, I’m thinking to myself, okay, if it’s winter and I’ve got a respirator and, and I’m working around some a hazardous area, okay that’s fine. But then when it’s summertime, do I need to get something different? And I think in this particular article it gets right down to, uh, it’s hard to do that, right? It’s hard to find a different respirator that is really applicable to that same condition that you’re working in. But they did focus on, and this was brought to you by those wonderful people are presented by Honeywell in industrial safety and in sort of bottom line, if you have to have a respirator in the summer and knowing full well that uh, uh, you know, it’s, it’s hot, it’s humid, it’s sticky, whatever.
[02:37] They just recommend they recommend by the, uh, providing or getting something that’s a little lighter, which makes sense. I mean, you don’t want to start hauling around a big old respirator in a hot summer months and it’s, you know, humid. But anyway, that I thought that was pretty interesting because uh, I’ve worked around a lot of uh, equipment, a lot of uh, hot and I mean very hot equipment and I thought that that was a pretty wise uh, council right there. And then we’ve got one more number two. Okay. Uh, when you go out to safest [inaudible] dot com that’s safest Safeopedia.com and then you look at their, uh, the way its laid out, the you can find uh, uh, webinars, right? You know, you know where it is, it’s under webinars. Yeah. So go figure. And then of course they have a number of webinars that are available for you to view, to be a part of, to participate in.
[03:30] And then once again, it is all dedicated to you. And the one that sort of jumps out to me that I think you might be interested in is how to mitigate summer construction hazards. We’re in the middle of summer is a dog day and I’m down here in Louisiana. My Gosh, I, I, I believe it’s about 150 degrees in the shade. Seems like it. It’s about that hot anyway. Um, how to mitigate silver constructions. What you need to know. And you know what the interview that’s coming up, uh, is with Bryan McWhorter and that’s being provided by a gentleman by the name of Bryan McWhorter. That’s pretty doggone cool. So they might be related, but anyway, Bryan has a mad skills, but this is really a good, uh, uh, Webinar for you to participate in. So nonetheless, those are the two things. So yeah, get a lighter, a respirator and then of course for the summer, and then of course go out to these webinars that are out there.
[04:24] And then you can have at it. Well, you know what’s so great about Safeopedia, let me tell you what’s so great about safe a PDF is all this information is for free. You as a safety professional could go out there, boom, find that information and it’s free. That is spectacular. That is committed to a purpose of, of, of safety and helping humanity. Sir, I hate to, it’s, it sounds dramatic, but helping humanity be safe. And I’m telling you that they’re passionate and they just, the content is voluminous and I don’t even know how to spell voluminous. How about that one? So anyway, uh, on with the interview, this gentleman by the name of , that’s Mc w, O r t, e r and we’re going to be talking about accidents. Investigation One oh one. So, uh, it’s quick and by the way all of the links and everything will be out on safety with safetywithpurpose.com. That’s safety with purpose.com. So you can pull down all of the goodies that go along with that, that corresponds with that interview. So thank you very much once again for joining the, uh, safety with purpose podcasts. And here is. All right. Once again, safety with purposes with and we’re going to talk about accident investigation. What? Oh, one, a fantastic topic, Bryan.
[05:48] Let’s talk. Let, thanks God. Yeah, this is one of those things where no one likes doing accident investigations. I mean, this is at worst case scenario. We do everything to keep people safe. Then Bam, someone gets hurt and now we need to investigate it. I’m so not a good thing, but it’s a very important topic for one thing. Every day, regulatory or safety agency [inaudible] is going to expect you to do a thorough accident investigation for any incident that takes place. And first, let me just kind of explain the difference in terminology for for this, uh, podcast. I’ll use the term accidents. Um, but I would use the same investigation for any incident, an incident it accident means someone got hurt and incident. It could be property damage or a near Miss.
[06:32] Oh, we want to treat them the same. Yeah. It’s not just accidents and not somebody getting hurt. It’s also near misses. It’s all, it’s everything. You’ve got to get rid of that,
[06:42] that problem. Go ahead. Yeah, true. And you got it. Scott, you, you want to treat them all exactly the same. So the, the first step, what would help a tremendously is, you know, I have a system in place come a checklist. So when somebody gets hurt or you have an incident, here’s your checklist that you’re going to follow. So just kind of walk you through it. It’s your system you’re creating to help you with us. So that again, you don’t miss something. It’s really important and a good tool to help is having a nice template for your accident investigation. So having an access best irrigation form that you fill out and you’ll walk through. I mean as as a tool that goes a long way to uh, yeah, helping you make sure that you capture everything. And on that form you should have all the, when, where, why, who, how, and then even maybe dive slightly into a root cause analysis.
[07:29] But you’ll have, you know, record your evidence, you know, um, have a, you want to quickly talk to the person yeah. That was injured and capture as much evidence and information as you can while it’s fresh. Again, like a CSI investigation. You, you want to do it quickly. You don’t want to wait. So that’s one of the things you want to have in your, your check sheet is no, I would suggest to you that investigation as quickly as you can. You even have a time limit, you know, even if it’s on another shift within 24 or 48 hours, you need to do that investigation.
[08:04] What’s but what’s bad is best practice on timing,
[08:08] uh, as soon as possible
[08:10] a fee,
[08:11] you know, and this is where you might need different people on different shifts. Say, um, again, if I go back to my days as a safety manager for a large factory, those, the 24 hour operation, you know, I would have the supervisors on shift actually do that initial investigation so they could do it within that shift so that, and they would follow that form. So that made it a real easy, they had the template and then when I came in and I would, okay, continue it.
[08:36] Now let me ask you specifically about a template. Um, let’s say I’m a company that I said, hey, I like what Bryan’s saying. I need a template. Do you have a template?
[08:46] Yes, actually a on for Safeopedia I know we had a template available. Will should be able to download, um, or reach out to save a pdf. And I’m sure they can get it to them. But um, yeah, there’s, this is one of those that because all agencies that, that handle this like OSHA require, you know, there are lots of good templates out there and they’re all going to be pretty basic in that again, who, what, when, where, why, but it keeps you on track, which is the point of any system. So a good checklist.
[09:14] I would, I make a recommendation right now if you, if I would just sort of go out to [inaudible] dot com I would look for that template and just sorta compare it with a template that you might have a template and it is like, okay, I’ve got a template, but why don’t you compare it? Because safety is an important, uh, profession to constantly improve. Here’s an opportunity to work with sable Safeopedia.com and at least get the latest and greatest.
[09:41] Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and then you just said it, we need to take advantage of, you know, again, it’s a horrible thing if someone got hurt. So we got 11 so we’re going to make lemonade out of it. We’re going to do is we’re going to use that event to make our safety more robust in that environment. So we want to identify the unsafe condition or unsafe behavior. I make sure it doesn’t happen again. So after you’ve done your investigation, then you need to do a thorough root cause analysis and that should be part of it and use tools like the five whys fish bone diagrams. But you want to make sure you, you didn’t address a symptom that you actually got down to the root cause of that incident. And then once you put a control measure in place so you follow up on it. So make a note to, you know, a month, two months, three months down the road, keep checking on it and verify that your control measures being used in place and is effective as again, this is what OSHA or any agency is going to want to see that, okay, you’ve addressed the hazard and you know what your control measure is effective.
[10:39] Now there’s one last thing you need to do. And they asked, you want to collect the data from that incident and put it with all your other data from other incidents. So either using excel or something along that line. So in other words, let’s say someone got hurt and they, uh, cut their hand hand laceration in the month of May. Now you want to be able to at the end of the year, look at how many hand lacerations you had, what time of day they happen. So in other words, you want to compile all the data and you use that as part of, uh, the information that would help improve safety overall. When you find trends, you can address them. And as a matter of fact, even just letting your employees know this, that hey, you know what we noticed the last year in January, we had the most of our, the majority of our injuries and there were this type of injury. That awareness campaign goes a long way.
[11:29] I’ll tell you right now, uh, safety is a lifestyle. This is real important. We’re going to have all those links. We’re going to have the link out on safety with purpose out on, um, out there. The templates, the root cause analysis template. Just because if you don’t have it, you got it.
[11:45] We have one. You can at least say, yeah, we’re all in line and that’s really good. And then of course it collection of data. So we’ve talked about the baseline template, root cause analysis, collection of data and we’re going to throw that article you’ve got you created specifically about accident investigation one oh one. Is that a good thing? Oh that’s great. There is more information that we’ve covered in this podcast that way people can refer back to it. So I love it. I love it. Everybody that’s Bryan, he knows what he’s talking about. We’ve got an article out there that’s going to be linked to safety with purpose boob. Pick it up. We’re going to also have the templates and the root cause analysis. Thank you very much Bryan. Thank you for everybody who has joined safety with a purpose. We’re going to be back and we’re going to just start talking more.
[12:31] He bombs as an industrial professional myself. I was always passionate about sales, marketing, branding, expanding the marketplace for my company. That’s what Ian Dust, real talk platform is all about. It’s about you, the industrial company, the industrial professional and your legacy, increasing sales, gaining greater exposure on what you do and how you and your company changes the world. Go out to industrialtalk.com that’s industrialtalk.com contact me. Let’s have a conversation to see how we can work with you on improving your bottom line and that you can be a part of an ever-growing network of industrial companies focused on expanding and growing and leaving a legacy. I hope to hear from you soon and be safe out there.
[13:33] All right. Thank you very much for joining safety with purpose. Thank you. Thank you to Bryan McWhorter, dropping some really good truth bombs on accident investigations. One Oh one we’re going to continue to provide great content. Once again, go out to save [inaudible] dot com that’s [inaudible] dot com it’s free. It doesn’t cause any pain whatsoever except for solutions. That’s what that platform is all about. Also go out to industrialtalk.com route around there. If you’re in the business of selling marketing, branding, you want to increase sales, boom. Go out to industrial talk.com. Find out more. Again, thank you very much, you safety professionals, you companies that keep us safe, keep us coming back to our homes and loved ones and friends and I’m making life wonderful. So, uh, once again, thank you. And uh, we’re going to continue to provide great safety content that’s also provided by Safeopedia. So just stay tuned and we’re going to just continue to have a great time. So take care and as always, you know, be safe.
Supporting Documentation:
Originally published by Safeopedia.com:
https://www.safeopedia.com/2/3677/occupations-and-workplaces/accident-investigation-101