���������

Union Rural Electric Cooperative (URE) hosted the 2023 OCSA Summer meeting and it was one to remember. After URE’s President and CEO Anthony Smith gave opening comments, Kent Eldridge, Buckeye REC’s CEO, provided a powerful message concerning the Blake Rodgers fatality called “Life at a Co-op Following a Fatality.” Angelea Kelly from Federated Insurance followed up with a practical presentation called “Preparing for a Serious Injury.” After lunch, an electrical contact tabletop exercise was facilitated along with a review of OSHA-requested documents and incident investigation discussion over the balance of the meeting. We asked for “lessons learned” to be included in the comments which included:

• “Good to hear from Kent; so much good information and action items that should be in place.”
• “Will review our mayday procedure and update our accident investigation process.”
• “This has been very good. A lot of information that is useful and informative to take back and work on.”
• “Great meeting! Documentation.”
• “Very good topics! Roundtable makes us all think!”
• “Documents being maintained.”
• “Very good and needed. I had several areas that need addressed. Great topic! Having discussion is better than lecturing.” 
• “We will push to start using the SAFE app for job briefing. Real-life scenario for energized rescue.”
• “Very good meeting. Revamp pole top.”
• “Excellent conversation.”
• “Being a new safety [guy], the information given by instructors and as a group was a huge learning tool.”
• “This was a very beneficial meeting and generated a lot of discussion. I look forward to looking into our cooperative deeper and passing along information from this meeting.”
• “Great discussion on a tough topic. Everyone seemed engaged and contributed.”
• “Great meeting. Takeaway: need to document a checklist/plan.”
• “Need to go back and dig through everything. Have some discussions with all crew members.”
• “Great meeting. Great pizza.”