This time of year, we have a heightened sense of alert due to the fact that electrical contact incidents tend to rise during the summer months with increased exposure. Let's keep that conversation alive.
Any time that exposure increases, incidents naturally rise – common sense, right? So, why is reduction of exposure rarely discussed as a legitimate safety strategy in high hazard work environments? Because it stealthily activates the most effective strategy in the well-known hierarchy of controls, which is elimination.
As a result, some of the most effective tools for our safety programs often get overlooked. Things like system hardening, line relocation, aggressive ROW programs, animal protection programs, an effective hazard ID program, and a robust maintenance program. All of these things result in outage reduction, reducing the need for employees to drive in hazardous conditions, work in adverse weather conditions, climb a pole in high winds, set up on a busy highway, or use a chain saw on a tree that has the lines pinned down.
There is no person or organization that does these things better than rural electric cooperatives because our employees truly care. It’s easy to miss such unseen benefits, but rural electric cooperatives consistently just do the right things for the right reasons, and sometimes that delivers enhanced safety of our lineworkers.
So, let’s be sure to maintain a positive relationship between operations and safety, so that we simply operate safely as one healthy unit, integrating the units together, each appreciating the strengths that the other has to offer.
We hope you enjoy this quarter’s edition of SAFELINES.
Dwight Miller, CLCP, CUSP: Senior Director, Safety Training and Loss Prevention
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