Safety engineers say they get little respect

Organization has new plan to elevate the profession

Mon, Jul 21, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Construction Deaths

OSHA a no-show at safety session (6-30-2008)

Put a bunch of safety professionals in a room together, and you’re likely to hear the same complaint: “We’re undervalued!”

Anyone in any profession likely feels that way, but safety people have a pretty strong case: “We’re saving lives.”

As a brand, safety seems to need a makeover.

That’s the conclusion of the American Society of Safety Engineers, a professional association with 32,000 members who oversee and consult on safety for companies and other organizations.

The group began in 1911 in New York City after fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 female workers and became a wake-up call for workplace safety.

Now, the safety society has concluded that the profession and its mission are still not sufficiently ingrained in public consciousness.

The group recently completed a draft of a plan to elevate the profession. The idea took root after the society surveyed senior managers not involved in safety at their businesses and found they did not sufficiently value safety engineers.

When it comes to doing good works at companies, why should environmentalists get all the attention? the society says.

“With concepts such as the carbon footprint, the environmentalists have moved their issues into the public domain, widely engaging individuals with notions of personal responsibility,” the draft states. “The success of the environmental movement does not necessarily come at the expense of safety but it does illustrate that safety still lingers in the background and its importance is not clearly understood by corporate America.”

It’s an issue of some importance in Las Vegas, where public concern for workplace safety has grown after more than a dozen deaths at Strip construction sites and at the Orleans.

Those active in the Las Vegas chapter of the society have started to discuss how they might help.

Safety professionals often see themselves as “the conscience of the company” said Jerry Ray, a former president of society who works at the Nevada Test Site. The companies overseeing Strip construction are good companies, but “once they lose sight of the fact that you can’t hurt and kill people to get the project done on time, then it’s time for safety folks to step in and say we can’t do that anymore,” Ray said.

Some safety engineers working on fast-paced construction say the problem is that their efforts aren’t always valued by their bosses. Many safety experts are working for construction companies “because it’s mandated to have safety people, not because we have any clout,” said one construction safety engineer who spoke to the Sun recently on the condition that he would not be identified. “I’m constantly telling the project managers we need to slow the pace down, but they say the owners won’t let us do that.”

In the past, safety professionals have promoted safety as good for business. In the long view, saving lives saves money, they say.

Now the safety society is trying to add to that argument, telling businesses that caring about safety is an element of corporate social responsibility that elevates the image of a company.

That view was boosted by a Goldman Sachs report last year that found a link between stock performance and workplace health and safety records. It’s also a position currently in favor with federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration chief Ed Foulke, who spoke at the society’s national conference in June in Las Vegas. Foulke mentioned OSHA’s mandate to enforce safety just once in his one-hour talk. Instead, he emphasized that caring about safety is good business that can help companies compete globally.

“It’s a repositioning of safety,” said Dennis Hudson, who is leading the project for the society. “It’s social responsibility. It’s not just good business but something you must do.”

The society recommends a variety of methods to better market safety to corporate America, including promoting it in business journals and at conferences, conducting research and running workshops. The report also recommends better defining the profession and promoting safety professionals as versatile and strategic thinkers and leaders with important technical skills.

“Corporate America will say, ‘Our people are the most important thing. Safety is number one,’ ” Hudson said. “But it becomes such a trite notion. No one pays attention. No one gives it real meaning.”

Local safety professionals welcome the society’s objectives, but some are skeptical they will be enough here without strong safety enforcement efforts by government. They were particularly disturbed by events following the death of one of their own. Michael Taylor, a longtime safety engineer at the Test Site, worked for Perini Building Co. to inspect and correct safety at the Cosmopolitan. In January, he fell off the side of a building after a post holding up a safety cable collapsed.

The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found subcontractors had not properly welded the posts and fined one of the companies, Reliable Steel, $2,850 for the alleged fatal error.

“Taylor dies and they pay more for Gatorade every day than they did for his death,” said safety consultant Tom McManus, who knew Taylor.

The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration “doesn’t seem that important because of their fines and what they do,” said Teddi Penewell, president of the consulting firm OSHA Safety Experts. “It doesn’t get anyone’s attention.”

Within some companies, it sometimes seems the best a safety engineer can do is be mediocre, said McManus, a vice president for SCS Engineers.

“If they’re mediocre at their job, they don’t get in the way of progress, but they keep the employer out of the big problems,” McManus said. “If you are very very diligent and extremely aggressive with regards to safety and health, you’re just bringing the employer headaches every day.”

Safety consultant Bill DiTrapani said he tells employers saving lives and preventing lost time due to injuries is a way to improve production. But a lot of businesses in Las Vegas don’t want to invest the money it would cost upfront, he says.

Lately, DiTrapani has had to go out of state to find work.

“If you work at safety too hard, a lot of the money people get involved because you’re taking too much time from production,” said DiTrapani, who used to work for the Water District. “Everything is about production.”

Discussion: 8 comments so far…

By fishit

7/21/08 at 12:33 p.m.

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I am not sure how you get a group of safety professionals together. We have been trying for the last 3 years to get some of the safety professionals working in the Las Vegas area to attend a three day conference he hold in Reno to try to work on how to improve safety in the workplace. We have ask for ideas of how we can help safety professionals help improve working conditions in all areas of safety. But, we just don't seem to get any response from the Las Vegas area. Give me some ideas and I will work with our group and try to help improve what we do. We are currently looking at a one day event in mid November to try to bring safety professionals together to talk about what we do and what type of changes may be proposed to make Nevada OSHA better resource for us all. Fines don't fix things Actions Fix Things.
By firedawg2000

7/21/08 at 1:06 p.m.

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Try having it in Las Vegas. We're a little spoiled her in Las Vegas. We're used to people coming to see us. We definitely don't want to go to Reno.
By fishit

7/22/08 at 10:58 a.m.

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Sounds like a real commitment to safety when you can't travel on a one hour flight to Reno. I takes most of you longer than that to drie in to work each day. We would like to have this conference travel to the south every other year but since we don't see a lot of people from the south taking part we are not sure who would help put the conferenc together in Vegas. I takes a full year to get it put together working with speakers, hotels, vendors, and most of all Sponsers.
Any Ideas who would be willing to get involved?
By capesafetyguy

7/22/08 at 11:51 a.m.

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I have a safety consulting firm up here in Cape Cod and I've been following your safety issues for quite a while now in the safety media. Obviously fatigue with the experienced contractors and inexperience with the new men are huge contributors to your overall safety problems and probably a factor in your fall injuries and fatalities as well. A lot more aggressive OSHA with some heat stress standards and a committment to enforcement of the 30' maximum fall requirement would help a lot too. Hope you safety guys can get together to make some serious noise about the state of things. Looks like Perini just got another mega contract so crime sure pays in this Administration.
By 2wheelsdaily

7/22/08 at 11:55 p.m.

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Everything is a trade off between fast, cheap, and right. Around here, you are lucky to get two of three, or even one of three.
By 2wheelsdaily

7/22/08 at 11:55 p.m.

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Why would employers care about worker safety when they are trying to do every job as cheaply as possible and have a never ending supply of illegal labor?
By firedawg2000

7/23/08 at 1:36 a.m.

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Fish - I'm not dedicated to safety because I won’t travel to Reno for a Safety conference? With all due respect to safety professionals in Northern Nevada, we're not building log cabins down here in Vegas. We're building multi billion dollar mega resorts. Cities within cities if you will. Considering that, I don't feel any advice from Reno would benefit me at all. If you want Safety professionals from Vegas to take your conference seriously, then least you can do is come down here and visually see the safety engineering nightmare we're dealing with here. What we have here goes beyond OSHA standards and safety training. In addition, we have thousands of sub contractor employees from all over the US and abroad, we have GC's that care only about production and get away with willful safety violations, and we have a state OSHA run by a corrupt governor that lets his casino owner campaign contributors off the hook for willful violations. If you can advise me on how to coordinate safety on large scale projects, deal with human behaviors from all over the nation, and deal with an OSHA that undermines our efforts due to the corrupt local government that controls them, then I'll be in Reno tomorrow. Otherwise, I'm not going to Reno to talk about hard hats and safety glasses.
By fishit

7/24/08 at 12:25 p.m.

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firedawg

Belive it or not we havwe many of the same problems even builing log cabins here in the north. We try with the conference to bring people together to try to look for ways to solve all of our problems. Once in a while a good Idea comes from the North too. Having the conference or just a meeting will never solve the problems but it may help us talk with others from outside of the picture looking in who may just have some good ideas. Just because we work in the north does not mean we have never seen the type of projects you are working on. We need to get our hands into the OSHA pot and stir until we get proper support. This problem has been building for a long time and we will not solve it over night or trying to blame the Governor or Gorge Bush. How much time to you think either of them spends looking at safety?