Toolbox Meeting

Toolbox meeting, normal people just wondering what this "toolbox" meeting all about? Talking about toolbox, meeting about arising matters or tasks.... for Safety & Health Practitioners, it is a common "pep talk" with the employees... my opinion, toolbox meeting should meet criteria below
a. a talk about OSH topic of course
b. an OSH topic related to the job that the worker wants to deliver
c. KISS (Keep It Simple, Short) principle applied

So, where, when, how to deliver the toolbox meeting, it depends on us then. For me, the best time is before the worker start the work. Toolbox meeting works as a friendly reminder to our beloved worker to be careful & follow all the Safety & Health DOs & DON'Ts during the work... that is all, I can say...

What about the topic? Tonnes of topic you can discuss... here are some links that you can used to select the topic...
http://www.safetytoolboxtalks.com/
http://safety-made-simple.com/toolboxsafetytopics/

Last but not least, try to be creative to make the toolbox meeting is the best & enjoyable session with your workers!! Goodluck

How to Use Safety's Magic Metre

another good article that I received from SafetyXChange...

http://www.safetyxchange.org/training-and-leadership/

How to Use Safety’s Magic Metre

June 1, 2010

Bill Dickerson

I’ve been teaching safety to young workers for 20 years, and I’d like to share with you one of the more successful tips I’ve developed: The Magic Metre.

The “Magic Metre” (or “Magic Yardstick”) is a visual image new workers can use to protect themselves from all kinds of hazards. A “Magic Metre” is the distance from your nose to your fingertips. It’s almost like a 360 degree bubble all around you, including up and down.

Eleven Ways to Apply the Magic Metre

When delivering high school safety talks and new worker orientations, here are some ways I suggest they apply the Magic Metre.

1. Noise: If you have to raise your voice above a normal talking level to be heard one Magic Metre away, you are likely exposed to over 85 Dba and require hearing protection.

2. Moving Equipment: When working around moving equipment such as chain drives, conveyors, etc., if you maintain a Magic Metre from your outstretched fingertips, you are unlikely to fall into the equipment or pinch point. The same concept works for hot pipes, electrical hazards etc.

3. Biohazards: If you maintain a Magic Metre from a fellow worker with a cough or cold you are likely beyond the “sneeze spray zone.” Maintain the same Magic Metre from blood and body fluids and products unless protected.

4. Tools: Protect yourself and others by maintaining a Magic Metre or “safety bubble” around you when using power tools, hammers, axes, etc.

5. Chemicals: From the MSDS, determine how many Magic Metres are required between you and chemicals you may be exposed to.

6. Workplace Violence: Maintain a Magic Metre between you and an angry customer or co-worker. Position yourself to minimize your exposure as a target, and protect vital areas.

7. Eye Protection: Wear your safety glasses or goggles within a Magic Metre of any process that could result in flying objects.

8. Fall Protection: A worker can be seriously hurt from a fall or poorly planned jump of even less than a Magic Metre. You require fall arrest protection if your feet are two Magic Metres above the next level.

9. Lifting and carrying: The safest zone for carrying loads is within the Magic Metre from your knees to your shoulders.

10. Call Before You Dig: Don’t dig (including hand dig) within a Magic Metre either side of a utility locate marker (hydro, gas, telephone, etc.).

11. Falling Objects: Almost anything that falls a Magic Metre onto you will hurt!

Conclusion

Feel free to use any of these suggestions in your new and young worker training. And if you think of any to add, I’d love to hear them.

Safety Training Prog (Part2/2) by Barbara Semeniuk

Something to share (http://www.safetyxchange.org/training-and-leadership/how-to-create-effective-training-sessions-part-2-of-2)

How to Create Effective Training Sessions, Part 2 of 2

November 17, 2009

Barbara Semeniuk

The first step in creating safety training sessions is to assess the existing gaps in your training program. In Part 1 last week, we looked at how to conduct a gap analysis. Let's turn now to how to use the findings of your gap analysis to craft training sessions that deliver your safety message effectively.

Customize Training to Suit Trainees' Needs

Safety training sessions must be reality-based. In other words, they must deal with the real challenges participants actually face on the job. Training should be customized to the needs and requirements of the participants and delivered in a way that allows for participation and interaction.

Before the Sessions

Effective training classes have to be directed and, before the training session develops, upfront work must be done by all parties. Participants should meet with their boss one-on-one before the training so that everyone is fully aware of potential barriers to success and gets involved in devising strategies to surmount the barriers. The goal of this process is to:

1. Identify Skill Levels: There shouldn't be a huge range of skill levels in the class. Students have to be selected so that their skill levels are appropriate for the training material or learning will not be effective. If you have an engineer at one end of the class and someone functionally illiterate at the other end, you will lose one or the other and neither will be comfortable in such an environment.

2. Set Expectations: Management, or the student's boss, should set expectations for the class and demonstrate their commitment to the process by meeting with each student prior to the learning experience and setting goals and expectations based on the course content. During this meeting, the student should be informed that he will be graded on a performance evaluation after the training class to determine if the skills have transferred. Remember: What gets measured gets done.

During the Sessions

It's important that the trainer engage the learners in a safe, fun, informative session with good adult learning techniques applied.

1. Encourage Coaching: The tell/show/do/teach cycle of learning is very powerful and participants should actively coach other members of the class. You can turn this into a fun and informative process by tossing balls to participants in groups to select the next group to lead the class in what they have discovered. Everybody participates in a fun, comfortable and safe environment.

2. Encourage Networking: Participants should network amongst themselves. It is possible that trainees may develop lasting friendships with people they meet in the class.

3. Look Forward: Once the learning session wraps up, rather than focusing on what the group now knows, instead focus on what the group needs to do from this point on. During the class session, build "to do" lists identifying what participants need to do to ensure that knowledge gained during the training sessions is not lost.

After the Sessions

After the training session:

1. Discuss Implementation of Key Concepts: There should be a debriefing by the boss. No happy sheets grading the niceness of the trainer's delivery or how happy the participants were in class. Instead, you want to discuss which key concepts from the training session will be applied immediately, within 30 days, within six months, within a year.

2. Train the Supervisor: The person's immediate supervisor can play an important role in the transfer of knowledge and should be held accountable for his/her staff. Special training sessions just for supervisors to facilitate this process may be in order as well.

3. Follow-up: Using the "to do" lists created at the end of the training session, have the management team evaluate how well these lists are executed by conducting performance reviews at clearly defined intervals. Also, ensure that performance appraisals are conducted at the intervals discussed during the debriefing.

4. Provide Refreshers: To help participants maintain their new knowledge, periodically offer quizzes, reviews or group sessions when new machines or tasks are introduced.

Conclusion

A well-designed course is a joy to teach. The session becomes an experience in which the trainer facilitates learning and the participants learn by doing. But to create effective training sessions you need to prepare: conduct a gap analysis, set clear performance expectations and help participants maintain their new knowledge during the course of their day-to-day activities. In this manner, information from the class will be disseminated, skills will be learned and barriers to success overcome!

Safety Training Prog (Part1/2) by Barbara Semeniuk

Something to share (http://www.safetyxchange.org/training-and-leadership/using-gap-analysis-to-improve-your-program-part-1-of-2)

How to Improve Your Safety Training Program, Part 1 of 2

November 4, 2009

Barbara Semeniuk

Is your safety training simply an information dump? You're not alone. Many trainers feel that the more information they present, the better the session will be. Others simply let regulations determine what they teach because these classes are an easy sell. And these same trainers hope for happy participants in a well-attended class who rate the instructor as good to excellent. They also expect these participants to demonstrate their commitment to this new knowledge by applying it on their own time under their own steam.

The reality is that to facilitate the effective transfer of knowledge from the instructor to the class, instructors need a well-designed course, using simplicity and variety. It's a process that requires a bit of planning.

Conduct a Gap Analysis Before Training Begins

The instructor and the students both participate in the learning process and they learn in the most realistic and systematic fashion. To ensure that this occurs, it's helpful to first conduct a gap analysis. Why? A gap analysis may determine that:

• Middle management is uncertain of their roles and responsibilities in a Health and Safety management system;
• Location management may not have built a strong relationship with the trainer to allow for shared safety expectations and goal-setting. Decisions are not done in a collaborative fashion;
• Workers are frustrated with the perceived level of resources allocated towards Health and Safety;
• Workers are frustrated because some of the rules don't make sense at their location or work environment.

How to Identify Gaps

Look at your safety training program and ask yourself the questions below. (Note: These questions are performance factors adapted from Rummler and Brache's research on performance factors by the Hile group.) If the answer to any of these questions is "No" or "Don't know" there is a gap in performance.

1. Does the safety program have the necessary corporate support in place? Does everyone have what they need to do what they are supposed to do?
2. Training sessions need to set clear performance expectations. Do your trainees know what they are supposed to be able to do after training and can they do it?
3. Are trainees measured on their performance and are there consequences for good and/or bad performance?

When performance gaps occur, you have a failure in the management system and a barrier to transfer of knowledge. You also have an opportunity for improvement

Conclusion

Management, trainers and participants need to be honest about any barriers to safety training and devise methods to surmount them. Next week, we'll look at some ways to achieve that.

How to manage HSE? (Part 4)

I have been 2 months I didn't write anything in this blog... quite tight with my work & other part time work. When I presented a paper last week in COSH2009, I highlighted another approach on how we can integrate HSE into Supply Chain Management...

The basic principle is like "cradle to grave" concept.... the most important aspect in integrating HSE into Supply Chain Management is to understand what are the activities involved in the supply chain... from there, we can see how the whole processes/activities inter-related... when the processes/activities were lay out properly & clearly, then it is easy for us to prepare the HIRADC.

Using Michael Porter Model on the concept of value chain, HIRADC can be integrated into the model. This will help SHO to understand what are the critical activities that have some impacts to the production. By understanding this value chain, SHO can focus & assist management to minimize any incidents in this critical/value chain... I will add in the model in the next post..

Lifting Activity (Part1)

Last Thursday was a busy day for me... busy supervising lifting activities at my workplace... currently, I'm handling a project installing a new DDUPS (genset for power backup).

Well, there are 3 gensets arrived... the weight, hemmm roughly almost 19 tonnes... the length around 6 meters x 2.4m width..... need to put these monsters on the 2nd floor of our central utilities building (CUB)... the height is roughly around 6 meters...

Before the activity was performed, did discussed thoroughly with the main contractor & also the lifting contractors... initially, I did requested to installed cantilever but it's not practical (+ it quite expensive of course)... so the lifting contractors proposed to used TWO 60 tonnes mobile crane to lift the genset... BUT, before we really start the activity, my supervisor asked me to do some calculations on the lifting activity... calculate the angle, the minimum length of the genset on the plith, the available space for the genset move in, the length of the cable to ensure the cable will not damage the wall (the edge of CUB)... so, manage to calculate it & established Method Statement of lifting agreed by the contractor... will post all the calculations & photos in next posting....

Construction Photos During COSH2008

Managed to capture some of the photos when I walked to KLCC & back to my hotel during COSH. I'm crazy about taking photos that are related to OSH around us... hopefully I can learn from them & I believe photos say more than a thousand words.....







Another one.... actually, it's the same building but at different angle

Safety and Health is everybody's responsibility

08.08.08... a good feng shui number that's always a belief among the Chinese (and also other races I think)... But, is it really meaningful in Safety and Health perspective? This is more on our belief especially Asian where numbers, animals, moons, stars etc are interrelated with our life....

I hope, through this blog I will try my best to share with people on the importance of Safety and Health in our daily life. We need to educate our people on the importance of Safety and Health to ensure we can minimize any risks that can injure or kill ourselves. We should learn from the past so that we are safe right now in order for us to achieve our ambition/dream in the future...

080808, let's the sharing begin....