The Story of the Picture…

Last week, we presented you with this picture and asked you to find what might be wrong in the picture. What we did not tell you was the story behind the picture.

This picture is a good example of the concept in Safety II or Safety Differently of employees using what they have on hand to get the job done. Sometimes, as in this case, employees will get creative.

This picture was taken at a jobsite where only two employees were assigned. These employees were part of a larger company that had hired SCM to do site assessments. The office for the jobsite consisted of two trailers, which had come with most of the equipment necessary, except for some much-needed electricity for the type of work that was to be performed. The employees installed an outlet, missing the necessity for a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), and then provided their own extension cords to make the equipment work. As you can see in the picture, the employees tacked the extension cords up on the walls. What you could not see was that this was a “wet lab” where there were areas in the trailer where the floors were wet, requiring the cords to be above a certain height.

The electrical cords were a hazard, as many of you probably saw right away. OSHA considers extension cords to be temporary wiring, which means the cords are not for permanent use. The employees, not knowing the regulations, made use of what they had to get the job done. Fortunately, no one had gotten injured, which, from the picture, looks like it could have been a possibility.

At SCM, we often say that employers should make it easy to do the right thing, and hard to do the wrong thing. In this case, it appeared that the company did the opposite. The company made it easy for the employees to do the wrong thing. As you can guess, the SCM site assessor included this photo in the report, recommending that the company hire electricians to fix the problems.

Weekly Safety Challenge:

Are there areas at your worksite where you have had to get creative to get the job done? Did you use a temporary fix for a permanent problem? Were you given a six-foot ladder to do a ten-foot job, so that someone had to stand on the top of the ladder?

Talk about this concept with your coworkers. Hear their stories. Find out why it made sense to someone to use their ingenuity to make things work. And then figure out a safer way for things to get done.