A bit of advice for some of you younger safety pro’s that I learned from my very first plant manager, who by the way was the kind of plant manager every young and inexperienced safety engineer needs out of school! Claude Bloom was a “people manager” who just happened to also run a chemical plant so we called him a plant manager. He was wise beyond a normal man, with advanced ChemE degrees; but it was his people skills that made him so beloved and successful. He never once had to tell me that “safety was #1” to him as he demonstrated many times each day. He was actually criticized from time to time for having too much emphasis on safety and the Lord knows he worked me ragged. At a time so many of my colleagues were complaining about lack of management engagement, I was soaking it up and loving life as I could not churn out the PSM program and all the other occupational safety programs fast enough for him. Of course, it was Claude who sent me all around the country to training courses and other businesses to see their VPP STAR safety systems and this was back in the day when there were less than 100 STAR worksites and the majority were chemical plants in LA and TX. But one day I was really down, felt overwhelmed, and he came to me and told me what my priorities need to be in this profession of safety and if I live by this professional priority I will always be successful…