Week 4 Lecture Transcript

Justin Molocznik

Hi. I appreciate the -- definitely the opportunity to discuss the Focus Four. Very important.

Justin Molocznik

Absolutely. And as you said, you know, as we started this discussion at the beginning of the video, the Focus Four is basically -- we're paying attention to these things because statistically, there are been a lot of injuries and fatalities in these areas. There are a lot of different hazards on a jobsite in the construction. But this is where statistically, the likelihood of something happening is greater. So going to -- you know, starting off with falls.

And falls, it's kind of crazy when you look at the number of injuries that happen or the -- I'm sorry -- the number of fatalities that happen in our industry. Falls take up a major chunk of that. And that's why you see so much. You'll hear so much as you get into working on construction sites about fall protection and fall protection plans. And I think over time, people have gotten a lot better about understanding, you know, what potential falls are, what kind of protection needs to be put into place, can we engineer out the potential fall.

But in construction, especially with JTM Construction, we do a lot of vertical buildings and vertical construction, we rely heavily on fall protection. And that's really important, understanding around the tools, not the tools that we build with, but the tools that we use to protect ourselves with fall protection. Some of the experience I've had with other employers is not necessarily that we're not wearing the fall protection. It's that we're wearing it improperly.

Or maybe we are using it improperly. Maybe the anchorage point isn't strong enough. And one particular instance I can think of with a previous employer was a pretty bad fall that happened. It was about a 20-foot fall that happened off of a steel structure. But the worker that was utilizing fall protection actually had such a long tail off of their fall protection. So we're not going to go into great details around, you know, tie off points and the different types of fall protection, the self-retracting lifelines and whatnot.

But basically, what he was anchored to was too long. And there was a pendulum effect. So the person was anchored up at this point. And they were working over here. And when they fell, they had so much tail end on their fall protection that they swung and hit the ground and hit the steel beam as well. And you can imagine that, like, a 20-foot fall. It was very, very fortunate for the individual, ended up actually being minor injuries.

But certainly something to keep in mind when we talk about falls. And the big thing that I like to talk about is when we put fall protection in place, talking about harnesses and tie-off points, that's not going to prevent the fall. That's going to prevent the person from hitting the ground. There's still an understanding that has to be there that protection is in place to prevent the person to stop them from hitting the ground.

So really important to think about that when we talk about falls. It's much better when you talk about the hierarchy of controls to just engineer it out and say, you know what, we're not even going to deal with that. So moving down the list. Struck-by. You know, we walk by construction sites all the time. We see everybody wearing high visibility shirts and vests and hardhats. There's a reason for that. There's a lot of moving equipment.

When you talk about road construction, there are vehicles that the constructor might be driving. And then there's the public driving. So struck by is on the high end of injuries and fatalities because maybe the individual isn't seen by the operator of the piece of equipment. So it's really important to incorporate a high visibility program and make sure that people are wearing the appropriate clothing behind that. And like I stated, usually when it comes to struck-by, we're talking about large pieces of equipment.

And we're talking about humans. So one of them is a little bit more stronger than the other one. And they usually end up being -- ending badly. So struck-by is very serious. They don't take -- they don't account for as much fatalities as falls do, but certainly something that we're paying attention to and making the list of the Focus Four. Caught-in is another one that you had mentioned before. And when I think of caught-in, I think of pinch points.

And really, when we're talking about pinch points, we're talking about an area where we've got two hard things. And the pinch point is us, you know, the interaction of the human with that area. And so the training that goes around that, the understanding that needs to be put in place when we're teaching situational awareness is having an understanding of stored energy. If I've got some hard material, a piece of steel here, and I've got another piece of steel over here, and if it's anchored on a crane or they're moving it in or something like that, and I put myself in between that area, I've got a pinch point.

And I've got an opportunity to get caught in between. A lot of times, we see pinch points with hands and feet and legs. Those tend to be serious injuries, but not fatal. When we talk about pinch points with anything on the upper body, the head -- hardhats are great at protecting us from dropped objects from above. But when it comes to pinch points, a lot of times, they aren't designed for that kind of stuff. And those are usually fatal incidents as well.

So that's the caught-in piece of it. And then finally, the electrocution. When we talk about the Focus Four, that's scary stuff. That's the stuff that when we're talking about dealing with electrical systems and we're talking about electricity, a lot of times, when we're dealing with those systems, we don't have proper lockout tagout systems in place. Hopefully, that's a discussion that will be had at some point as the students go through the program.

It's really, really important to pay attention to the lotto program, the tags that are in place and just understand the system because the more we access systems that are alive, that electricity has to go somewhere. And when it's looking to go to ground, it will go through the individual. So it's really, really important to understand GFCI and short grounding programs. So that's just a management of if you have any extension cables on your jobsite or live systems, that they're protected.

So in the event that it detects some kind of leak in the system, like, for instance, it's trying to find ground through somebody, it'll turn that system off. So those are really, really important things. There are -- and it's great that we talk about this because we're talking about the Focus Four, we do have mitigations in each individual one that have been put into place, best practices and then regulations. And it's really important to know those things.

But it really makes it easy for the safety professional, the safety practitioner, to have those conversations with field workers and with leadership to break it down in the simplest way. Hey, these are the four things that if you get bit by them, it's going to be serious. So let's pay attention to it.

Justin Molocznik

You know, I think I could wrap it up with just one word, and that's training. Training your workforce for all four of those areas is really important. And here's the thing. When it comes to construction, we're dealing with a lot of turnover. There may be a big operation. And if it's a union permit, there may be a call out to the hall where 10 new people are coming out to a jobsite. And if they're going to be working up at heights, it's very, very important that you're aware of what training that that individual might have, whether it comes from the union, or if it's working with the company that you're working for.

You need to make sure that they know how and really break it down. Do they know how to put a harness on if they're going to be wearing a harness? Do they know what a good adequate tie-off point is? Do they know how to self-rescue, say, if they take a fall? There's a time period that they need to make sure that they get out of that harness and they are rescued before. We have some medical conditions that can come to rise if you're in ours for a long time.

So the training is really important. And OSHA, you know, OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 hours are really important, not only for health and safety professionals, but for leaders of, you know, foremen. And then OSHA 10 -- you know, there are some states that require all construction workers to go through an OSHA 10. And I think that's a really good idea, because it's an effective tool, communicating just kind of, again, as I've mentioned before, very broadly, the dangers of the workplace.

And then if we identify those things, what are you as a worker -- if you have that conversation, what is the worker going to be facing with? Let's give you individualized training to that. Are you going to be exposed to fall hazard? Well, then you absolutely have to have fall protection training. And we need to make sure that you understand how to use those tools and use them correctly.

Justin Molocznik

Well, you said it in the name. OSHA is a fantastic spot to go to; osha.gov has some great stuff. You can check on NIOSH as well. And then one of the groups that actually does a lot of the research for OSHA is the Center for Construction Research and Training, our CPWR, is a really good one as far as getting that information and give you some really good statistics to start some of those conversations. I would also say, too, if your students are working in a state that has a state-run program like Washington State does, visit their websites as well.

Like, in Washington State, it's Labor and Industries. A lot of great programs that are in place. California, Cal OSHA would be the same thing. And sometimes, when they're state-run programs, their rules and regulations may be a little more stringent than OSHA. So it's always good to be dialed in on that kind of stuff because when you have a state-run program, they may have different regulations than federal OSHA does.

Justin Molocznik

Absolutely. Thank you.