MSW Management | Editorial

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Safety First, Last, Always

By John Trotti

John Trotti

Let me begin by offering a quartet of observations that are so obvious—perhaps trite is the better word—that sometimes they are overlooked when we talk about safety. The first is that safety rules are written in blood, proof that we are just smart enough to recognize a train wreck after it happens. Second, rather than a statistic, goal, or some sort of thing, safety is a culture underlying every thought, program, or activity in which you or your organization is involved. Third is that whatever you feel, say, or do regarding safety will be sensed, heard, and emulated by those who work with or for you; and fourth, no matter how good you think your safety program and record are, they can always be better. Let me put these observations in perspective.

When I began my military flying career in 1959, the Naval Aviation’s accident rate stood at 0.66 per 1,000 flight hours. Viewed another way, the odds favored my trashing an aircraft and quite probably myself in 1,500 hours of flight time…roughly three years of yanking and banking. Nonplussed, we figured military flying—whether training for or engaging in actual combat—was risky business, which was why we got to sport slick sunglasses and little gold wings, and draw flight pay ($78 at the time) each month.

But change was in the air, and by the mid-1960s the rate had been cut by a factor of 10 to 0.69 accidents per 10,000 hours. Why? Because a bunch of guys with gold leaf on their hats got it in their minds that if things weren’t done pretty quickly to cut the accident rate, Naval Aviation was going to run out of aircraft and aviators. And here’s the deal: When they got the idea and explained it to those who looked forward to some gold leaf on their own hats some day, big things began to happen…and happen…and they keep right on happening. That’s how culture change goes about business.

Today, Naval Aviation’s rate has stabilized at roughly 1.5 accidents per 100,000 flight hours, indicating that 1) safety is a process, 2) it can succeed, and 3) it can always improve. Underlying these improvements is the immutable fact that in order to be effective, safety must be rooted in an organization’s command structure. Yes, the kaizen principle is important to the implementation of a successful safety program, but it emanates from the top.

How Do You Up Your Organization’s Safety Culture?
Strange as it might seem, the first thing to do is tear your program apart, look at its most minute pieces, and put it back together again. It’s the starting point for hazard identification—a hard and tedious process—but one that is both doable and valuable. Much of the effort goes to reviewing your organization’s mishap records looking for anomalies, trends, remedial efforts, and oversights. When I was instructing in advanced jets, our commanding officer assigned several of us the task of individually going through the last five years’ accident reports for the entire training command, looking for anything that piqued our curiosity. A waste of time after all the work that had gone into the investigations and reviews, you might think, but as it turned out the process uncovered a number of areas overlooked by investigators whose underlying purpose lay in coming to conclusions that allowed them to close the books on mishaps and move on.

Today, Naval Aviation has programs at every level of command dedicated to uncovering hidden risks, developing means for reducing them, and then communicating those efforts swiftly, effectively, and repetitively. In the waste industry we have OSHA and several ad hoc safety programs, but nothing I know of that is industrywide, dedicated to hazard identification in waste management activities.

In conjunction with the rollout of its totally overhauled website this summer, MSW Management will initiate a hazard identification program dedicated to archiving and disseminating safety information in a timely manner.

Because of the need to input and manage a great deal of data and information, we will be providing a standardized entry form when the new site goes live. In the meantime, please address any thoughts or comments - jtrotti@forester.net.

MSW - May/June 2008