A Soliloquy On Safety

I have only refused to do work one time in my life. And that one time was directly related to a safety issue. I was tasked with replacing PRV in a manhole. Pretty straight forward and easy task. That is until I arrived at the job site and none of the proper safety procedures were being followed by my co-workers and they expected me to be the entrant. That was a hard pass from me until proper confined entry procedures and PPE were in place. We eventually got the PRV replaced but only after I had refused to do the job and went and got the safety equipment myself. That unfortunately isn’t uncommon. The wastewater industry has a pretty piss-poor history of safety violations. And for an industry with hazards all around, all of the time, you’d think we would take things more seriously. It’s fairly common place to see people not wearing gloves when sampling or dipping primary tanks with a sludge judge. It’s also incredibly common for people to not wear hearing protection around blowers or wear safety glasses when sampling or doing mechanical work where there is a risk of getting things in your eyes (sewage, grinders, etc). This isn’t an OSHA lecture, this is a common sense lecture. Sewage or metal shavings aren’t good things to come into contact with eyes.

DONT DO WORK IN AN UNSAFE MANNER. And if someone tries to make you do it, or is too cheap to supply you with the proper PPE, refuse to do the work. It’s your life that is at stake, not theirs. Which brings me to the next point of this, and that is that the above listed offenses are fairly minor. You’ll lose hearing over time without proper hearing protection, and you’ll risk getting blood borne pathogens from not using gloves when grabbing samples, and you might blind yourself by not wearing safety glasses, but if you don’t follow confined space entry protocols with proper PPE you could very well die. I have several more stories of really bad confined space entries, but even less talked about is fall protection. I will not risk being maimed for life by entering deep tanks without some sort of fall protection. If you’re relying solely on some cheap aluminum ladder, or some fixed ladder rungs in the concrete (of which you don’t know the condition of until your descending), that is really foolish in my opinion. You need some sort of fall arrest system like this mobile davit arm so you can’t use the excuse you don’t have a solid anchor point or tripod.

That’s why I spent nearly 12k on this davit arm, base, and winch. It makes entering into sketching containment areas to work on stuck valves a breeze. Guess who isn’t going to fall 30 ft and get horribly injured for any employer? This guy. And you should have that same mentality. Budgets are tight everywhere but that is no excuse to not get the proper PPE. Lawsuits, injuries, and everything else that goes along with someone getting severally hurt or killed isn’t cheap either, so you might as well spend the money to do things right. More importantly, if you’re in a position of power and authority and responsible for the well-being of your operators, take the time to be a decent human being and get the proper PPE for people to do their jobs safely. I had zero questions or push back when I budgeted for this. In fact, I was encouraged to purchase it as I clearly explained the benefits and the need for it. If it’s properly explained, very few people will argue against purchasing proper safety equipment. You need to clearly communicate the safety standards to everyone in your plant and those above you. Harnesses, tripods, winches are all fairly expensive but when everyone is aware of just how dangerous our jobs are, very few will argue against it.

This isn’t really a review, but the above safety davit arm can be found on Grainger. The adjustable base is fantastic for getting to spots where tripods cannot and is great for the application pictured above. The davit arm is separate from the mobile base and can be removed and used in other bases that 3M manufactures. So you could have the tripod style base for other applications, or even a fixed base on a tank somewhere and use the arm in multiple applications. That’s a pretty versatile piece of equipment. It’s also built specifically as a retrieval system and fall arrest system, adding even more versatility. With that design feature, means this thing is a solid chunk of steel. It’s really heavy and the build quality is great, which is what I would expect for something designed to save my life and retrieve humans out of confined spaces. My favorite thing is that is was very easy to assemble and use. It’s nearly ready to use out of the box, which makes getting to the actual work a whole lot easier.

Finally, to the “leadership”(I despise this overused buzzword) of these organizations: Spent the the money on equipment and training for your crew. Take the time to participate in the training, and never expect work to be done in an unsafe manner. Set the standard. Be the “leader” you claim you are and actually be trained properly yourself. If there is one thing that immediately makes me lose respect for someone is when they run their mouth on things they’ve never done or been trained to do. We already work in a challenging industry. Let’s not make it more challenging by ignoring the numerous safety hazards we face each every day. Use the PPE properly and in the correct applications. Don’t end up a statistic because you’re lazy and want to rush things. The old saying is that there is nothing that needs to be done at the plant that is worth your life. That’s true.

See in you the trenches. Safely.