Safety Briefing Essay

Perhaps one of the best safety tools to come along in industrial construction is the Field Level Risk Assessment (or as many of us call it, the “Safety Briefing”). Whatever you call it, it’s a tool that makes everyone stop and think about the risks associated with any task.

Before starting any new or familiar task, simply take four seconds to focus on the job at hand. This act of refocusing has been shown to reduce the probability of an injury incident by 90%. Wow! You may have done a task thousands of times before. In your mind, you know you could do it with your eyes closed. However, it’s usually not the task itself, but some small thing you did not anticipate that causes an accident or injury. Perhaps you didn’t notice the debris
Get into this habit and you will significantly reduce your chance of injury. If you get into the habit of taking chances or simply cruising from job to job, you will eventually get injured. This four second “reset” is an excellent way to refocus on the job at hand, whether it is at work or at home.

This concept was sent to me by our good friends at A & K Railroad Materials, and I’d like to thank them for allowing me to use it in this week’s article. In memory of Carl Kurek, a 34-year employee with A & K, we share his spot-on correlation between the four second “reset” and a quarterback:

“This is something I have preached over and over again for years, and I feel it’s one of the most IMPORTANT factors to stay accident free! I tell employees that their safety assessment is like that of a quarterback; he calls a play in the huddle, which is analogous to assessing a job we need to do - for example, cutting rail, torching scrap, unloading a car, etc.

Then, when the quarterback gets to the line scrimmage, he looks over the defense, which is similar to our guys looking over and thinking about the job they need to perform; what supplies do we need, what tools do we need, how are we going to do this, and what steps will be performed in what