SCM Safety Newsletter Autumn 2019

Did the SCM safety professionals stop the improper use of the stool to access the work being performed at a height?  No.  Let us explain further…

If you can picture airport seating in a gate area it is spaced closely together to allow for plenty of passengers to sit while waiting. There was little space by this pole and sign for an A-frame ladder or a step-ladder. And certainly, use of the ladder would have inconvenienced the passengers in the gate area. So, the ability to use a proper tool for this work being performed at a height would have been difficult at best.

Could the work have been performed either early in the morning before the passengers arrived or later in the evening when passengers had all left, so that use of a proper ladder would have been possible? Not really. Light bulbs don’t seem to have the ability to recognize when it is most convenient to burn out. And the informational sign was important to the ability of passengers to find their way to the correct gate.

Could the maintenance workers at the airport have placed the light bulbs on a schedule for replacement, to prevent the necessity of replacing the bulb while passengers were in the gate area? Probably. But not knowing the work schedules of the maintenance workers, this is hard to say.

It is often easy for us, as safety professionals, when reading about what seems to be work being performed unsafely, to make generalizations. “They should have done this, or that…”  or the ever popular opinion of “if I had seen this, I would have stopped the action and made him do it properly, block off the area, bring in a man-lift or at least a step ladder, airport convenience be damned.”

What would that have accomplished? It may have embarrassed the worker, who was doing his best. It would have delayed the replacement of the burned out bulb. And it would have inconvenienced the passengers in the gate area.

So, the SCM safety professionals observing the work in progress monitored the worker to make sure he did not injure himself. That was the most expedient thing to do at the time.

It also was an interesting process to take note of. Work in progress does not always appear to be safe. While we could not know while observing the work, we could make a guess that this was not the first time an airport employee had used a stool to change one of the bulbs in the sign.  This system of using the stool had worked in the past, no one had gotten hurt, so the worker was confident it would work again this time. And it did.

How is work performed at your work site? When presented with a difficult task, such as trying to fix an informational sign positioned near passengers with limited space, or any other similar task that your workers may need to do, how do they approach it? How do they improvise to make sure that work gets done with minimal risk?

And in those situations, what could you, as a supervisor, foreman or employer, do to make it easier?

Our only suggestion with the limited space at the gate in the airport, and the passengers milling around, would have been to schedule the work to be done during hours when there are no passengers in the gate area. At that time, a proper step or A-Frame ladder could have been used, or, even better, a manlift could have been brought in that would further reduce the risk.

SAFETY TRAINING QUIZ