Recently, I visited an old client after a long absence. As I pulled into the parking lot, I immediately noticed the upgrade to the freshly paved and striped parking lot. My last visit, years earlier, I ended up parking in a crater in a gravel lot that some smaller cars would not have been able to traverse (yes, it had potholes deep enough and large enough to swallow a compact car). And sadly, the facility had multiple recordable injuries over the years in their “parking lots”. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the company’s effort to improve the parking lots. However, that appreciation evolved into a Behavioral Analysis of the workforce, including contractors, as I drove around looking for a spot and walked to the guardhouse.
There was ample parking for everyone, but there were at least 30 vehicles parked in a self-designated parking space, and of course, all of this was occurring close to the turnstiles for workers and contractors. There was no one parking like this at the end of this massive lot; only on the end closest to the turnstiles. The new lot even had walkways between the rows, allowing workers to walk in a somewhat protected zone, rather than walking behind cars and in the lane of vehicle travel. However, the spaces were nice and large, and some workers found it possible, by pulling up too far and BLOCKING the walking path, that a friend in another small car could park behind them (yes – two vehicles in a single spot). All be damned that they were parking on what is essentially a sidewalk. Keep in mind, that there were maybe 100 open spots in the lot each morning and evening I left. We went to lunch each day, and the lot still had hundreds of open spots in the middle of the day.
As I observed this parking fiasco, I couldn’t help but notice the “98% Safe Work” banner at the turnstiles. I am reasonably sure that was the same banner that was there when I was on site six years prior; at least it looked like it had been exposed to the weather for that long. These banners are standard in workplaces where Behavior-Based Safety is in place, and, as I have written about dozens of times, they are almost always inaccurate.
I arrive at the Security Office, a relatively new building, at least since my last visit. It is just on the other side of the fence where the “98% Safe Work” banner was blowing in the wind and directly under the site’s VPP STAR flag. As I am signing in and preparing to watch the 10-minute safety video so I could walk unescorted through the facility, I could not help but notice several electrical violtations (missing outlet cover, daisy chaining power stripe with extension cord and the ext cord was only a two prong cord so the ground prong on the stripe was removed so it could be used with the extensiron cord). I also noticed that all three (3) fire extinguishers were last inspected/maintained 5 years earlier, so I asked the guard when they got their new building, and she proudly said “5 years ago”- just a coincidence? One exit sign was completely missing, and its live wires were just hanging from the junction box. Two of the three guards (who had walked in from making their rounds) were wearing street glasses, not safety glasses, yet there was a sign on the building doors stating the required PPE to be worn when exiting the building and entering the plant. Their security vehicle’s yellow flashing light was not working as they pulled up. They were driving on a temporary donut spare, so I just had to ask how long that had been going on. “Months” was the answer.
So, what is your confidence level that what you were about to be exposed to was going to be VPP STAR level safety?
Trust me, the new parking lot was the highlight of my week-long “visit”. The same behaviors I witnessed in the parking lot were on full display within the facility.
It was only I doing this audit and not counting each violation separately; the facility ended up with 224 citations, many of which had multiple examples from multiple departments. For example, we observed (and intervened in) 15 instances of workers not wearing their seatbelts while operating a PIT (all 15 were listed as a single finding). Dozens of Fire Extinguishers were missing monthly inspections and/or annual maintenance (all entered as a SINGLE finding). Dozens of LOTO violations occurred, most by workers who were classified as “affected” but were performing servicing and maintenance tasks behind open or removed guards without the aid of LOTO.
And, of course, as in my previous time, management wanted to challenge every single finding, even when I had pictures of each violation. And the same old excuse… “OSHA was here and they never said anything about any of this”.
Bottom Line… we can learn a lot from the parking lot!!!!