Safety Comittee
Hello everyone! I work in the construction industry as a general contractor & I’m looking to start up a monthly safety committee with key safety personnel and foreman attending. The plan is have about a 1/2 hour meeting & then walk the job for another 1/2 hour. Wondering if anyone has any advice or items that should be added to the agenda to make the most of these meetings. Would love for them to be fun, useful, and educational. Thanks in advance!
Comments (8)
I just recently started up a revamp Safety Committee. What worked well was to have a form ready for them to fill out on safety walks and to have outside vendors come in and do training. We call our walks "Safety Blitz." One thing is to ensure it does not turn into a Safety complaint session. Good Luck
We always talk about recent near-misses and/or case studies on hot topics on our site. We use lots of pictures (I make a quick slide show every month) and for each shift we always get different, good information. We use the group as an extra pulse on the site because as “office people” we are also not the experts in their tasks and day-to-day lives.
Doing the site walk is a great idea.
One thing that I think is important is to document what you see on that walk (both good and bad), and follow up on it at the next meeting (or sooner if it's a major issue). In my opinion, if you're not documenting things and doing the followup, the meeting will lose its meaning and people will become disengaged if nothing changes.
The first thing that comes to mind is have your meeting planed, have an agenda and give the employees "INPUT". However, do not allow your meetings to become just Bi____ sessions! Actually do things and fix things, just don't talk about them.
Second, make assignments! If possible make your team members "subject-matter" experts. I am not a Construction guy but Gen Ind (1910). But I trained some people to be Lockout "experts, some "Machine Guarding", some "Haz Com". and some "PIT" as just some examples! If you cannot do the training send them out. A day away for a "trench" training seminar is seen a a reward by most employees, away from work! If you will not do that, give them assignments, Safety Audits, Housekeeping Tours, BBS audits, PIT Inspections, Lockout Audits., and the like in your industry. Have them do some of the non-technical no-managerial things on your To-Do- List you can never seem to get to! In short, KEEP THEM BUSY.
One thing I guess I am old fashion about is Accident Investigation. Although worker input to accidents is very important, especially from witnesses and injured employees, in my opinion the responsibility of a Safety Team to find the root cause and then implement corrective actions, it is Management's. You should not defer or assign that to employees. Although you should use them to assist, your management is responsible. Some Safety Pros disagree with me, but so be it.