November 14, 2022 | Mark Paradies

Monday Accident & Lessons Learned: Audits & Proactive Improvement – Pre-Job Safety Assessment

Fatal Example

Here is a video with lessons learned about a fatal accident involving equipment (a scissor lift). As you will see, no pre-job safety assessment was performed.

Yes, these lessons learned were just about powered lifts. But there’s more to learn…

Additional Lesson Learned – Pre-Job Safety Assessment

But there is an additional lesson to learn. Every worksite should have a supervisor perform a quick pre-job safety assessment/analysis before the job starts.

This type of analysis looks for Hazards and makes sure there are adequate Safeguards before the job starts. These types of pre-job safety checks should also be performed by the workers.

The hard part of performing these checks is recognizing all the hazards.

To help workers recognize hazards, we recommend using the Hazard Wheel…

It helps people identify energy sources that could cause fatalities or serious injuries. The wheel was developed by Dr. Matthew Hallowell from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in conjunction with the Construction Safety Research Alliance.

In this case, power lines were an obvious hazard (high voltage). And getting equipment with booms or lifts near them would cause the natural Safeguard (distance) to fail.

If a pre-job safety assessment had been performed proactively, the worker could have been warned by the supervisor, AND/OR the other actions (visual pavement warnings and signage), could have been implemented to help prevent the fatality.

Don’t wait for a fatality. Be proactive. Learn more about pre-job safety assessment/analysis.

Learn More About Being Proactive with Pre-Job Safety Assessments

Where can you learn more about pre-job safety assessments/analysis and proactively preventing human errors? Easy!

Attend the Stopping Human Error Course coming up on April 24-25 being held at the Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe, near Houston, Texas. This topic is one of the many topics taught in the course that can help you develop a custom human performance improvement program for your site.

The Stopping Human Error Course is just one of the ten special pre-Summit Courses being held just before the 2023 Global TapRooT® Summit. See all the courses HERE.

If you are interested in improving human performance, the Summit includes the Improving Human Performance Best Practices Track. The track includes nine sessions in addition to the Summit’s five Keynote Speakers.