and Operations as a Career and I’m Marty T Hawkins, I think this is the first

episode that we don’t have a title picked out as we’re recording it.  I usually work off of at least some bullet

points or some article to talk to.  Its

storming really bad here in Dallas TX, I hope the episode sounds alright for ya

today! Well, let’s pick a topic, I’ve worked on accident investigations all

week so I guess we can start there, how about that, and well see where we end

up!  You know, accident investigations

seem to really stress us as employees out, I see how it can seem more like an

interrogation sometimes but actually accident investigations are designed to

help our companies, our industry and us employees.  I do a lot of incident or accident

Investigations, I learn something from each one of them, when completed

properly we hope to be able to avoid the same thing from happening again.  I hope if we’re in a management role we’ve

been trained to gather all the information for our company officials, health

care providers and legal teams so they can protect our employees.  Our industry does a great job learning from

these incidents and creating processes and procedures or rules to help identify

and prevent them from happening again.  When

our supervisors take the time to find the Who, What, Where, When and How

through their investigations it makes us all safer.  I see a lot of associates try and be a little

less than forth coming with answers sometime, Ladies and Gentlemen, be

honest.  The investigation will produce

the truth, these days 9 out of 10 times there’s going to be a video of the

incident, or a witness is going to describe what happened better than we

will.  I’m sure, or I hope, that we were

all told when we were hired that it is so important to report any accident or

incident immediately to our supervisors. 

Just today I know of a gentleman that was let go.  Not for bending the racking while placing a

pallet up in the reserves but because another employee mentioned it before he

did.  In his defense I’m not certain that

he was even aware he’d bent it but he would have had to know that he’d touched

it or hit it.  I think it was probably

his defensive voice or tone when being questioned during the investigation that

actually cost him his job. 

equipment operators for example, we’re trained to be aware of our surroundings,

how to properly operate the equipment and all the safety rules that govern their

operation.  The rules that are in place

today are the result of years’ worth of incident investigations.   An incident or accident occurred and we as an

industry learned from it, created a rule or procedure to prevent it from

happening again.  That’s truly what

accident investigations are.  There to

help us be safer and work in a safe environment. 

working on one case; a gentleman had reached over his head to scoot a pallet

off of a stack of 12 and lost control of it and it landed on his little

toe.  Three things were discovered during

the investigation.  First his supervisor

had not noticed that his shoes only looked like steel toe boots while in fact

they were not.  It was determined going

forward that the supervisor would be verbally checking with his crew each day

at the start up meeting to ensure that they had their proper PPE’s on.  Secondly, it was determined that pallets

would only be stacked 10 high going forward as 12 required most employees to

stretch way over their heads to scoot the pallet towards them.  And lastly it was decided that associates

should be wearing gloves when working with pallets.  These procedures were put into place because

of an investigation and should help prevent someone else getting injured in the

same way!   This guy lost 7 days of work.  The investigation stressed him.  Naturally he felt like the finger was being

pointed at him, that’s the human nature in all of us.  After it was completed, he felt much better

about it and was fine.

this one and thank goodness no one was seriously injured.  A gentleman was unloading trucks, lining up

the pallets in front of the doors, kind of making lanes out of them for the

receiver to get them tagged and the pallet runner to haul them off.  He was standing in between two pallets and

using his cell phone, the calculator on his phone to do some kind of counting

on the pallet, I guess.  Well the pallet

runner came to run under a pallet, kind of scooting it into the unloader.  Luckily, he didn’t get smashed between the

loads and it could have been a pretty serious accident.  Through the investigation it was discovered

that there were already 2 rules in place that would have prevented the

incident.  First, no unloader is to be

between the pallets or even in the lanes once it has been dropped off for

staging.  This rule he ignored.  And secondly cell phones were not permitted

in this particular facility, or in the warehouse anyway due to them being such

a distraction.  In this case they disciplined

the employee and now at the morning start up meeting everyone is reminded to

put away their cell phones.  Oh, and this

is a good comment to add.  The company

purchased like 20 little pocket calculators but only 2 people really wanted to

carry them.  Kind of makes the using my

cell phone as a calculator a mute issue doesn’t it.

supervisor its pretty tough to drill down to root causes of accidents, it’s not

always going to stare us in the face. 

I’ve always found its best to work backwards, talk to everyone that not

only saw something but to those that heard anything.  I think its important to even speak to people

that had seen an individual before something happened.  A lot of times we can learn that the

individual had something else on his or her mind before the accident.  And the equipment’s history, a very important

part of an investigation.  The pre-trip

and its recent maintenance records or schedule can tell us volumes about the unit.

quick, a gentleman grabbed a pallet jack, drove to the end of the building,

made the turn towards his dock door and found that the jack didn’t plug

properly.  Plugging is when you reverse

the acceleration to slow and stop the jack. 

Thankfully he had plenty of room and had slowed down enough to let go of

the handle and the jack just touched a stack of pallets before coming to a

complete stop.  Think of what could have

happened if the operator hadn’t of had the piece of mind to let go of the

handle or had been running the equipment wide open, could have been a bad

accident.  Anyway, so during the

investigation it was discovered the previous shift had experienced a little

trouble with the jack and had written it on their post shift report and even

filled out a work order on it.  Two

things were determined from the investigation. 

The previous shift employee did not place the equipment inside the

maintenance gate.  He had, from habit of

course, just went ahead and plugged it up to its charger.  With everything appearing normal the next

shift employee grabbed it and failed to do his pre-trip on it before signing it

out.  Now going forward its been

determined that all employees will take their pre and post trip equipment

reports to their supervisor so he or she can follow up on them. 

over investigations ladies and gentlemen. 

If we’re doing our jobs properly and as we’ve been trained all an

accident or incident investigation is going to do is make our jobs safer for us

and our teams and reduce loss to our companies. 

Be open, honest and helpful, it’ll only pay off for us. 

enjoyed talking a little about accident investigations today and I hope I

mentioned something that made you think about them, maybe in a more positive light!  If you have a thought or topic, you’d like to

know more about I’d enjoy learning about it myself, sharing a little about it

or bringing a subject knowledge expert on the show to explain it to all of

us!  Remember to like and follow us on

Facebook and Twitter too using @whseandops, we’re having some great discussions

on those feeds each week too.  Until next

week, be safe not only at work but at home as well, we’ve got loved ones

counting on us putting our safety training to practice!