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07/01/2006
Chairman’s Message
As I write, a friend has died. Not a statistic or a familiar name or someone I might have met before. An actual friend. Today is June 1, 2006, and my heart is sad and I’m sick to my stomach. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What is going on? What is the problem?
At this writing I know very little about the accident that took my friend’s life. These mutterings are not meant to infer any knowledge about the accident perceived or otherwise. I am simply venting my frustration that the industry (we) has (have) so much to do.
We have access to the best equipment money can buy, and to equipment specifically designed for our industry. It’s not like the past when we had to adapt other safety gear to our needs: like tree-trimmer belts, saddle belts and the like. We now have specific safety equipment for our needs in the tower industry.
We spend more time and money on safety than ever before. The industry is saturated with safety and education materials. Independent training companies are thriving. The safety industry has stepped up. The equipment manufacturers have stepped up. Individual companies have stepped up. Customers have stepped up.
As of today, 19 men have lost their lives in 2006. That is 19 fathers or sons or brothers or associates or friends. That is one roomful of men who were here last year and are gone forever. We have only pictures and memories of these very special people.
With all we have accomplished together to improve safety over the years, accidents should be less frequent, not more frequent, as we are witnessing this year.
From all accounts, equipment failure by design is not the problem. A hook used the wrong way will not function as designed. A load line burned by RF is not the fault of the load line. A safety lanyard hooked only to the belt is useless.
Properly trained workers must be able to go to a job site, spot and then correct safety problems. It sounds simple enough. But is it really?
It occurs to me that we are missing the point.
James Christiansen and Gordon Lyman once told me that people have a habit of working “at risk” or their behavior is to work at risk. I looked up “behavior” in Webster’s Dictionary: “The response of an individual, group or species to its environment; the way someone behaves.”
Directly under the definition were the words “behavior therapy,” which was defined as “psychotherapy that emphasizes the application of the principals of learning to substitute desirable responses and behavior for undesirable ones – also called behavior modification.”
I was given a book recently: Safety 24/7: Building an Incident Free Culture by Gregory M. Anderson and Robert L. Lorber. I haven’t read it yet, but the introduction and back cover point to exactly that premise. I will have read the book by next month and will follow up with a book report.
Who has the answer? I believe the answer is “all of us.” We all know what to do. It’s just not being done all the time.
Don Doty is Vice President of Doty Moore Tower Services, LLC of Cedar Hill, Texas and can be reached at 215-631-1302 or Don.Doty@StainlessLLC.com
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