January/February
2015
From
big-picture perspectives on leading safety efforts to guidance on specific
hazards, equipment, and scrap materials, the fall ReMA Safety and Environmental
Council meeting gave attendees a range of useful information.
By Theodore
Fischer
Coming on the heels of some of the worst months —in terms of
injuries and fatalities—in the scrap recycling industry in recent memory, the
fall meeting of the ReMA Safety and Environmental Council had an ambitious
agenda. Attendees got to see the big picture of what ReMA is doing to improve
the industry’s safety; hear about the progress that’s been made, in part, due
to ISEC’s work in the past few years; and learn about several new initiatives
launched that fall. At the same time, the meeting provided practical guidance
to attendees on how to lead their scrap facility’s safety efforts in ways both
large and small.
Emerging as
a Leader
Safety requires leadership, but who is a leader? David Crouch,
senior safety consultant at Caterpillar Safety Services (Peoria, Ill.), had
ISEC participants consider various definitions of leadership, then he pointed
out two categories of leaders: positional leaders and emergent leaders.
“Positional means you have a title. Emergent leaders are those who—title or
no—emerge from a group as leaders [whom] people follow voluntarily because of
the way they interact with them,” Crouch said. “That’s what you need to be.”
Three core skills facilitate
emergent leadership, he said. First, build trust. “Leadership is all about
relationships, and strong relationships aren’t some touchy-feely thing—it’s a
business concept that enables people to give their best every day and come
along with you on the journey,” he said. Second, create accountability. That comes,
in part, from how leaders interact with the three basic types of employees,
which he classified as drivers (high performers), doers (middle performers),
and draggers (low performers). Third, lead with passion, which Crouch defined
as “that abstract, fluffy thing that inspires others to come along with it,”
personified by emergent leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa,
and Mahatma Gandhi.
If you master these three skills,
“you become an emergent leader who influences others to give their best every
day,” Crouch said. “When everyone gives their best each day, a zero-incident
culture becomes a real possibility.”
He outlined six criteria for safety
management based on the teachings of Dan Petersen, considered one of the
fathers of occupational safety: (1) Top management is visibly committed to safe
practices. (2) Middle management is actively involved. (3) Front-line
supervisors are performance-focused “as opposed to goal-focused,” Crouch said.
“They need to do things to create the presence of safety, which isn’t
necessarily the absence of incidents.” (4) Hourly employees are actively
participating. (5) The safety system is flexible to accommodate the site
culture. (6) The safety system is positively perceived by the work force. “If
you do the first five real well, number six will probably happen,” he said.
Wisdom From
Wildlife
An “operations guy” who has attended ISEC meetings for the past
four years, Adam Hicks, ferrous manager at Main Metal Recycling (Jacksonville,
Fla.), offered “tools to use to make a difference in your companies, a
difference with your leadership, a difference with people in your organization”
that he has derived from the book Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any
Organization by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. The book sets out three
principles:
The Spirit of the Squirrel.
“Squirrels are working all the time because they have a worthwhile job to do:
They need to survive through winter,” he explained. What does this have to do
with safety? His workplace has not experienced any injuries in the past five
years, he said, because employees know their jobs are worthwhile. “They’re not
just broom-pushing guys or sort-at-the-shredder guys or run-the-scale
persons—they’re making an impact on the entire planet because they understand
the importance of their work.”
The Way of the Beaver. In the wild,
every beaver controls its own territory. “What I teach my people is, this is
your territory. This is what you need to focus on and make the best that you
can possibly make it,” Hicks said. “If they’re always consumed with outside
people, then they’re not thinking about themselves and keeping the core group
that they work with safe.”
The Gift of the Goose. “When geese
are flying, they’re honking; when they’re landing, they’re honking; when they’re
taking off, they’re honking. They’re always honking. They’re cheering each
other on. They’re saying, ‘Hey, Lead Goose, I’ve got your back,’” Hicks said.
“In our organizations, we need to honk each other.”
One form of human honking, active
congratulations, consists of saying things like “Thank you. Great job!” But
active congratulations must be TRUE, he noted: timely, responsive,
unconditional, and enthusiastic. The other type of honking, passive
congratulations, involves silently trusting someone to do his or her job right.
Hicks added a lesson he’s learned
from yet another wildlife denizen, the owl. “Owls don’t honk, owls don’t build
dams, owls don’t gather nuts—owls say ‘Who?’” he said. “What I want you to
think about as safety people, and as overall members of the family we call
scrap recycling is, Who do you want to be remembered as? Do you want to be
remembered as somebody who faced opposition from leadership and gave up? Or as
somebody who took the time to engage with an employee and show them that they
can make a difference in the world just by operating safely every single day?”
The Right
Tools for Scrap Facility Fires
Chris L. Champion, vice president of Hazard Control Technologies
(Fayetteville, Ga.), a manufacturer of fire-suppression products, gave an
overview of various fire types and the methods for controlling them. He started
with water—the oldest fire-fighting substance, but not a particularly effective
one, he said. “You have to use a lot of it to extinguish a fire, primarily because
it will not remove the heat very efficiently,” he said. “And if firefighters
use an abundance of water on your property, and it carries toxins off your
property, that’s your problem.”
Champion warned against using water
on Class D metal fires—those that involve combustible metals such as magnesium,
potassium, titanium, and zirconium—because they burn hot enough to split water
molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, each of which is an explosive gas. Quickly
recognizing Class D fires is the key to controlling them, he said. “When you
can recognize a Class D fire when it’s in a small stage, you can probably
extinguish it before it gets out of control.”
Foams, which constitute about 99
percent of what fire departments bring to scrapyard fires, perform well in two-dimensional
fires, Champion said. “They work by creating a thick foam blanket across the
surface of the fuel to separate the burning fuel from the oxygen in the
atmosphere,” he explained. “But if you have a three-dimensional pile of scrap
in your yard, there is absolutely no way to pull a foam blanket over it.” Most
countries—including the United States and Canada—have banned compounds
previously used in fire-fighting foams that are now considered health and
environmental hazards, he noted, and it takes a much greater quantity of the
newer foams to blanket a fire.
Instead of using water or foam,
many fire departments fight scrap facility fires with encapsulator agents,
Champion said, which rapidly cool the fire and encapsulate the fuel to render
it nonflammable. Further, he said, “they interrupt that radical chain reaction
so that there’s less smoke and toxins migrating away from your property.” He
considers encapsulator agents the best fit for recyclers’ fire-suppression
efforts, which might involve operating equipment, hot metal, and “very
burnable” fluff. “I like foam in a lot of situations,” he said, “but in your
business it’s probably not adequate because you have too many three-dimensional
objects.”
Mobile
Equipment Safety
Comparing scrap facility mobile equipment in 1975 to the machines
of today, about the only thing that hasn’t changed is the color, said Pat
Reilly, director of national accounts for Volvo Construction Equipment North
America (Shippensburg, Pa.).
Reilly briefed attendees on the
safety features of today’s wheel loaders, such as rear-view cameras, safety
guards—including belly guards, oil-pan guards, radiator grill mesh, light
guards, and boom-cylinder guarding—and flat windshields. “Visibility is not as
great, but you can add bullet-resistant glass, which makes the operator much
safer if the machine is working around the shredder and you have projectiles
coming out,” he pointed out.
Using the correct scrap attachment
also is crucial. “When the operator is using a short-armed fork to lift cars
when he should have a 12- or 15-foot fork, he’s got problems with bending and
issues of tipping,” Reilly said.
Excavators used with shear
attachments possess many of the same safety features as loaders, plus
falling-object protection and automatic lubrication systems. What do the latter
have to do with safety? “If your machine is regularly lubricated, you keep
operators from crawling into some difficult-to-reach locations,” Reilly
explained.
More important than equipment-based
safety features, Reilly said, is operator training. “As good as a machine can
be, and as well as you guys can protect it, if you don’t have a focused, safe
operator, it all goes right out the window.” Managers need to make sure
operators fully understand how the machines work and that they use the right
machine for the job. When a new machine is delivered, operators should receive
orientation training that—at a minimum—covers operating characteristics, safety
features, and daily maintenance.
Operators also must perform daily
inspections, Reilly said. “Most machines today do not need daily lubrication,
but a daily inspection is critical to make sure the machine is in good
operating condition—no leaks, no materials from the previous day’s activities,”
he recommended. Operators must report machine incidents or problems to
supervisors and maintenance personnel immediately, he added. Reilly urged
operators to take ownership of their machines and treat them the same way they
treat their own truck or car. “Or, if that’s not appropriate, like the boss is
watching,” he said.
The Risks
of Spent Perforating Guns
Kenny Jordan, executive director of the Association of Energy
Service Companies (Houston), asked ISEC participants if spent perforating guns
used for oil and natural gas exploration—“Don’t call it ‘frack pipe’!” he
urged—are an issue in their yards. After about half of those in the room raised
their hands, he gave the others a wake-up call: “I can almost guarantee you
that somewhere in your facility you’ve got the issue but probably aren’t aware
of it.”
To dramatize the serious explosive
hazards posed by perforating guns, which consist of metal tubes that get filled
with explosive charges, Jordan pointed out that a perforator charge can
penetrate a half-inch of steel, 4 inches of concrete, “and if I put four
sledgehammers back to back to back to back, I can shoot a hole through all four
of them with one charge.”
After use, the steel perforating
guns routinely get sent to commercial recycling facilities, where most are
recycled without incident, he said. The cause for concern, however, is that
each explosive charge in the metal tube sits behind a perforated scallop. When
the gun gets to the scrapyard, each scallop should have a hole in it where the
explosive detonated. “When you go to pick it up, and the scallop is still there
with no hole, you have no way to know what’s behind that scallop,” Jordan
said—was there no explosive charge positioned at that spot, or is there a live
charge still there?
His organization, AESC, is working
with the American Petroleum Institute and the Institute of Makers of Explosives
(both in Washington, D.C.) on a set of best practices for oil companies that
want to recycle their perforating guns “so that when you recyclers pick that
steel up, you know that it’s been inspected, that it’s free of any ordnance of
any kind, and you can take it and recycle it.” He expects the best practices to
be finalized during the first quarter of this year.
Notes From
the Field
One session gave ISRI’s three safety outreach professionals an
opportunity to share what they’ve seen and heard recently in their visits to
scrap recycling facilities while providing free ReMA safety services.
Transportation Safety Manager
Commodor Hall revealed that 960 of ISRI’s more than 1,700 members have U.S.
Department of Transportation (Washington, D.C.) operating authority, and
together they employ more than 10,000 drivers. He outlined the seven behavioral
analysis and safety improvement categories, or BASICs, of the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration’s (Washington, D.C.) Compliance, Safety, and
Accountability program: unsafe driving (such as speeding or following too
close), hours of service, driver fitness, controlled substances/alcohol,
hazardous materials, crash indicator, and—most important, he said—vehicle
maintenance. “About 20 to 25 percent of the companies I assess are over the
vehicle maintenance threshold of 80 percent,” Hall said, regarding the number
and severity of violations FMCSA or state inspectors identify on the vehicles during
roadside inspections. Exceeding that threshold makes carriers potential targets
for a range of FMCSA interventions. One potential reason for continual vehicle
maintenance problems, he added, is that yards are “using the same mechanic who
works on material handlers and forklifts to repair trucks, trailers, plumbing,
everything.”
Hall provides three- to four-day transportation safety
assessments, similar to DOT audits, during which he examines management
practices and inspects at least five trucks; offers three- to four-hour driver
and manager training classes; and provides two- to three-hour, hands-on vehicle
inspection classes that explain how to scrutinize every item on the
tractor-trailer.
Safety Outreach Manager Tony Smith
solicited ideas for addressing a problem most retail scrap operations face:
accidents and injuries involving scrap peddlers. “The peddler is the most
unpredictable animal in our business,” Smith said, “but they’re also our bread
and butter. How can we train them? That’s the question.” Suggestions included
establishing a part of the facility for peddlers that’s completely separate
from commercial customers; installing special bins, stop signs, and speed
bumps; and training employees on the hazards peddlers can create or encounter.
Smith’s two-day material handler safety train-the-trainer course
consists of one day in the classroom and four to six hours in the field going
over equipment inspection, machine set-up and control, and loading and
unloading. He suggested that maintenance personnel might be the best recipients
of such training: “They’re the ones who have to fix the stuff when it’s
broken.”
Safety Outreach Manager Joe Bateman described what occurs during
his one-day Safety Blueprint facility visits. “We come, we sit, we talk. We
look at your paperwork and program, walk your operation, and then we sit back
down [and] talk about what we saw—strengths, weaknesses, challenges—and plans
for the future,” Bateman said.
Theodore
Fischer is a freelance writer based in Chapel Hill, N.C.
What Is—or
Is Not—a Reportable Injury?
“Recordkeeping’s not the most exciting thing in the world to talk
about, so I wanted to do something a little bit different,” said Greg
Kadziolka, safety manager for OmniSource Corp. (Fort Wayne, Ind.). He asked ISEC
attendees, of the following scenarios, which must they report to the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Washington, D.C.) per the
recordkeeping standard requirements?
1. An employee falls out of his truck and breaks his ankle during
his lunch break.
2. An employee, upon hearing an announcement about a cutback in
hours, punches the break room wall and fractures his wrist.
3. An employee is injured in an automobile accident in the company
parking lot while on her way to work.
4. An employee is hit by a falling piece of metal and appears to
be unconscious for 10 seconds, after which he claims he’s fine and needs no
medical attention.
The audience was evenly divided on
No. 1. The right answer is yes—report it, Kadziolka said, because lunch breaks are
considered assigned working hours and parking lots are part of the workplace.
The audience was similarly split on
No. 2. This, too, must be reported, he said, but “you have to determine whether
he tried to hurt himself or was just reacting to the work environment.” If he
intentionally injured himself, you would not report it.
No. 3, on the other hand, does not
need to be reported, he said, because the accident occurred while she was
commuting to work, not while working.
The room was unanimous about No. 4:
That accident must be reported. The difference between an incident
that’s reportable and one that’s not can be very narrow, Kadziolka said. “A lot
depends on whether [treatment is] defined as first aid, which is not
reportable, as opposed to medical treatment, which is reportable.” For example,
report injuries that you protect with a rigid splint, but not ones you protect
with a “soft” wrapping like an Ace bandage.
And then there was this scenario:
What if an employee sustains a work-related injury requiring days away from
work, but then he is terminated for drug use based on results of a
post-accident drug test? In such cases, the employer must estimate the number
of work days the employee would have missed due to the injury and report that
number, he said.
Kadziolka reminded attendees of
changes in OSHA’s recordkeeping rules that now require employers to report all
work-related fatalities within eight hours and all work-related in-patient
hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye within 24 hours.
In a discussion of safety with ISRI’s leadership, President Robin
Wiener spoke about how ISRI’s safety efforts have evolved over the years—“most significantly over the
past few years, in large part because of the push from ISEC.” She named several
recent efforts, including ISRI’s work with OSHA’s Office of Cooperative
Programs; the Oct. 15 Safety Stand-Down Day (see article on pages 51 and 52),
and the formation of a Safety Working Group to oversee ISRI’s safety
initiatives.
The head of that group, Scott
Miller, chief corporate counsel for Sims Metal Management (New York), then
outlined one of its most important initiatives: the Circle of Safety
Excellence™, which aims to improve workplace safety across the industry. “It’s
open to every ReMA member willing to operate safely, share data for purposes of
benchmarking, and share experiences,” Miller said. For more on the circle, see
the advertisement on page 57.