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#94: The Foundation of Effective Training
131 Plays2 years ago
Learn how you can be a better teacher, educator, and leader in the safety classroom. Our guest is John Mahoney, the manager of EHS, Training and Public Education at Avangrid. He is also a civil engineer, Certified Safety Professional (CSP), and has been a volunteer Firefighter for 48 years.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded August 26, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer. My guest today is John Mahoney. John is manager of EHMS training and public education at Avon Grid.
John Mahoney's Background
00:00:28
Speaker
John is also a civil engineer, a CSP, and has been a volunteer firefighter for 48 years. John is joining us today from New York. Welcome to the show, John.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Yes, it's early morning, kind of, sort of. You know, we're on all these different coasts. John, you're on the east coast. I'm in the central time zone and Naeem, our producer, who's listening quietly is on the west coast. So yeah, it's an early morning for our recording today.
00:01:00
Speaker
So thanks for being here. And John, you have a pretty storied career. And I think we need to back, you know, let's back way up in our time travel here and set the set the scene for us. Tell us about like, where you grew up and what was what was going on in your life that started you on this path?
Path to Volunteer Firefighting
00:01:21
Speaker
Well, I grew up in a small village, Altamont, New York. At the time, there was about 900 to 1000 people living there.
00:01:30
Speaker
And my dad was in public service. He was a Albany City police officer when he got out of World War 2 and then went to the county Sheriff's Department and retired in 94. But that whole public service thing, I guess, is where I had that interest, if you can say that.
00:01:50
Speaker
And the fire department was just across the street. I lived on a side street from the firehouse and they used to come to the elementary school during fire prevention week. And I thought, oh, look at that truck. Look at that. Look at that equipment. You know, and they used to start a little fire in a tub and put it out with a fire extinguisher. And that just made me think. And then when I was old enough, I wanted to join and my parents were like, oh, you don't want to go to the firehouse. Do you know what it's going to take?
00:02:19
Speaker
If you want to wait one year and then you still want to do it, we'll let you do it. I said, okay, I'll wait a year. I waited one year to the day and said, I still want to join. And I, and I got sworn in July 1st, 1974, and, uh, has served through many officer ranks. And, um, I actually left that department after, uh, I got married and we built a house.
00:02:45
Speaker
But I moved from one department to another and have served as a commissioner for the fire district in which I live now, and still responding as a firefighter, although I don't do the interior stuff. I don't bend like I used to, not as young as I used to be, but still serving the capacity in training education, which I really started back in the early years in Altamont as a lieutenant doing training. And it's kind of carried on from there with respect to trying to educate folks.
Career Shift to Civil Engineering
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, John, what was, you know, back in when you were when you were, you know, a kid and amazed by that fire truck coming, what, what was, you know, after the like, big red truck? What really dry? What really drew you in and kind of got you hooked? Like, this is something I want to do? Was it the service piece of it? Or what was it back then? Well, I think for all young kids, it's kind of like the light sirens and that kind of thing.
00:03:46
Speaker
But there was a life altering event for me. One of my best friends had a major aneurysm while we were trap shooting at a local guns club and he dropped. And I watched two gentlemen do CPR on him and I thought, I need to be able to do something like that. So between the fire service and the ambulance service, that's kind of what really spiked my interest of being able to help. So I made it my mission to do that.
00:04:13
Speaker
Uh, we pushed for the very first, uh, herst tool in the town of Gildon and, uh, Altamont fire department carried that herst tool and was able to serve, uh, half of the town of Gildon. And we, uh, just kind of continued from there with respect for me, technical education and rescue work between high angle, low angle rescue and the first tool for vehicle extracations and things like that. So what is the herst tool, John, for people who don't know? That's the jaws of life. Yeah. Okay.
00:04:43
Speaker
They were Hearst was basically the first one way back in the late sixties, early seventies that developed that tool, which was done for the racing community. And then it found its way out into the local communities. And now there's multiple types of jaws of different manufacturers, but.
00:05:00
Speaker
You know, that's, that's where it got started, basically. And so I mentioned in the introduction that you're also a civil engineer. You know, you've been a volunteer firefighter for 48 years, and you've done a lot of training in firefighting. When and how does this weaving of, you know, earning your degree and being an engineer, like, when does that come into your story? And, you know, I'm also interested to hear about the training piece, you know, like, how did, how did all that come together? It sounds like a busy life.
00:05:29
Speaker
Well, when I got in high school, I was really interested in electronics. I love the electrical side of it. And when I went into tech school, it was like, oh, I don't like this theory. I grew up with my mom's side of my family in the construction work. So I'm used to bulldozers, dump trucks, payloaders. When I went to work for my local village, I was fixing water lines, running the water plan. I became a licensed wastewater operator while I worked for my local village.
00:05:57
Speaker
And that whole thing just kind of evolved to more, hey, that's mechanical, that's hands on. So I really found more of an interest in mechanical. So I switched because the theory, I didn't, I couldn't grasp some of it. It was just kind of difficult and mechanical engineering or mechanical technology at the time was not exactly what I thought it was. So I ended up switching to civil because I did one of those, uh,
00:06:23
Speaker
What really do you have for experience? What would you like to do? And as I did the pros and cons of mechanical versus civil engineering, it all really fell into the civil side of the sheet that I literally wrote everything down on. And I knew that if I got a mechanical engineering degree, even if I graduated with a 4.0, and I'm not a 4.0 student, I'm a hands-on guy,
00:06:48
Speaker
Did I be competing with all the other students that might have a 4.0 for mechanical engineering job, but I had no experience. So where was the experience? Civil engineering. So I switched and I had a great professor by the name of Tom Jewell. He was a PhD at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and he was also a veteran and he flew Chinooks in Vietnam. And he really inspired me on the beginning of the learning curve because when I went to him with questions,
00:07:17
Speaker
he would never give me an answer. He would always start to give you information so that you can make a choice. And that's where I learned to get the tidbits of information so that you can figure it out. He says, if I give you the answer, you'll know the answer to this problem. But if I give you information that leads you to learn how to solve that problem, you'll solve other problems. And that made me think, and that has stuck with me to this day, where
00:07:46
Speaker
I do the same thing. You know, what do you think? How would you approach this versus me telling you so that it gets the individuals, whether it's a classroom, you know, teaching electrical safety.
00:07:58
Speaker
or on the fire ground or drill ground, how would you handle this? What kind of pressure would you use, et cetera? Some critical thinking skills. I mean, those are the gifts of those mentors and teachers. Yeah. Yeah. And that legacy is carried on. Tom is obviously since retired. And he was the type of person that had a PhD. He was a West Point grad. And he flew Chinooks. And I thought,
00:08:25
Speaker
The only thing hanging in his office was his PhD and his PE license. He really didn't have a lot that he showed for it. And I just kind of made me think that this man has a lot of knowledge and doesn't have to, you know, I want to say brag about it, but publicize it, shall we say. He was very confident in what he knew. And when you talk to him, he was not a bolster or he was one that you could carry on a conversation with even as a young student.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that just made me understand how to treat people and how to teach them to learn. Teaching to learn is the big issue, not the subject itself.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So, John, what, you know, you finish up your degree. I mean, I feel like we're going down two parallel paths, right? I mean, because of the fire service and you said you do education with it, but then you also have the civil engineering degree. So, yeah, you pick a path and tell us what's going on. You can cross the road anytime you want.
00:09:29
Speaker
Well, it's kind of like a drunk driver going across the yellow line on both sides of the road because I have the fire service for my life since 74. And then this whole career change and the educational side has crossed that boundary many, many times. I went to the New York State Fire Academy and I've achieved the instructor level two for the national board. So it helps on the fire side, but it also helps in the classroom when I was teaching at GE. It helped when I was teaching wastewater operators.
00:09:58
Speaker
along the Thruway and other places on how to do laboratory testing and how to do their paperwork and calculations and things like that. So it has been one of those, I'll say, crossing the boundaries. They've mixed very well. It has not been a total separation. It has been something that I just fell into, basically. It just seems to merge and morph to
00:10:25
Speaker
go here, help this one, go over here and switch and put bunker boots on and train this one. And then tomorrow morning, get in a classroom or jump on a plane and go someplace in the United States or around the world. I've had the opportunity when I work for GE to teach around the world, but that's, that's kind of where it's come from. It is morphing back and forth and carrying the fire service into the classroom and classroom stuff, you know, for the engineering side back into the fire service.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, so when you just mentioned GE a little bit ago, was is that your first job post engineering degree? And then when did this EHS business come
Experience at GE and Root Cause Analysis
00:11:07
Speaker
into your life? That sounds like another honor. Yeah, well, it wasn't when I got out of Union. I graduated on Sunday, went to work for Clough Harbor Associates in Albany on Monday morning.
00:11:20
Speaker
as a civil engineer doing water waste water engineering design and eventually leading into the forensic side and troubleshooting for facilities that were not working because I was a licensed operator and an engineer so I could look at it from an operational standpoint knowing how those things are done calculations testing and from an engineering side from a design perspective as to what's working what's failing and that's unique
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, that was the beginning of my forensics and interest in forensics and that kind of spurned from vehicle accidents and and fires doing investigations on how they started how they happened and Now in the wastewater field that again crossing the boundaries Gave me something to look at from two different perspectives engineering versus operations So
00:12:18
Speaker
I think you're talking about root cause analysis. It sounds like you really focused on that. Did that take off into the EHS space at some point? It did. A friend of mine that went to night school had worked at GE in the legal department as an associate and said, hey, John, we're looking for somebody to run our wastewater plant at the Schenectady factory.
00:12:47
Speaker
I know you're a sewer guy and you're an engineer. I like to have your resume to show someone. I'm like, okay, I'll get you something next week. She goes, no, I need it today. I'm like, look, I'm in the office. I don't have my resume updated. So I did it the next day. And it was a couple of months and I got picked up by GE. And that's where I spent 22 and a half years and learned how to do taproot.
00:13:17
Speaker
I learned a couple of different root cause analysis programs and was one of the instructors developing our root cause analysis courses at GE. And one of the things that I got involved with is one of the vice presidents at GE corporate in teaching the program to not just the power systems business as it was known then, but to the entire corporation.
00:13:46
Speaker
transportation, aviation, and wind energy, and those folks. So I was one day with my wife. We were at a funeral for her uncle. And when I got home, the phone rang. And my boss said, I need you to go to Erie, Pennsylvania. And I said, what for? She goes, I need you to investigate a fatality. And I'm like, oh, hang on.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, okay, I'll go. So I was on a plane at six o'clock that night and the next day the plant manager picked me up at the hotel, gave me the lowdown and spent three days there. And we had a team, they put together the team and I led the team and it was a great team. They were better than I had ever expected and I could not have picked a team myself
00:14:41
Speaker
to equate to the knowledge that was in that room. And I won't go into all the details of that, but it was something that I was actually, when I left on Saturday afternoon, I was pleased at the progress that the facility had made because I facilitated it for them. They actually did all the work. And I told them that, you know, this is their facility. They are the ones that have to, you know, figure this out. I will help facilitate you. And it ended up being a very good,
00:15:11
Speaker
experience for them given given the circumstances of course but it was a very good experience for them because they felt that they had a part in trying to figure out what happened and and bottom line was there was no fault of anybody's it was nothing inappropriate or you know going against procedures or anything like that it were it just it was truly an accident and you know that's kind of when i came back i i was thinking to myself
00:15:39
Speaker
You know, I hope everybody can kind of, you know, move on from this. And when I talked to this safety manager a week later, I said, how's everybody doing? And he said, you know, this one gentleman came in and said, it wasn't about John, it was about us. And because we were a part of it and we got into the details, he goes, I feel better and I can move on because we were a part of that. And again, to me, that's part of the education.
00:16:07
Speaker
right, teaching them how to use skills and that really made a difference in my life to this day I think about what a positive result from that particular analysis for other people to be able to understand and move on that you would never dream on when you're looking at an accident that's a fatality.
00:16:29
Speaker
I mean, and also a good... I've investigated a lot of workplace deaths and generally, in my experience, my anecdotal experience, is that employers generally fall into one of two camps.
00:16:46
Speaker
the camp you're talking about which is we don't want the same or similar to ever happen on our watch again and we're gonna pull together and do what we can to learn and to prevent and then the other camp which is well we're gonna blame the victim and we're just you know move on yeah and I mean it's that's a pivotal learning piece for you and I'm sure it wasn't the first time you came across a fatality because you've been a firefighter so you've seen this before but this was your first in the workplace
00:17:15
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it left a mark. So, John, when you were talking, you know, we're talking about root cause analysis and you know, your specialty and this is a piece of what you did in your career. For people who are listening, you know, we have a listening audience that includes lots of different
00:17:37
Speaker
types of people and backgrounds and tenure and thank you to everybody who's listening now for our younger listeners or maybe people who are just starting out in this career who are still trying to figure out what root cause analysis means. Could you go a little, turn into a little professor here for a moment and just, is there a way to synopsize kind of what that means for people who aren't super familiar with the term?
00:18:07
Speaker
Most people that do root cause analysis, whatever system or process you use, then there's many. I was trained in Taproot as an instructor back in the late 90s, and I personally know the president and vice president of the company system improvements. But we got away from that only because of the costs that were involved when things started to downturn.
00:18:32
Speaker
I think when you're starting out, you have to understand that most people don't see fatalities when they're looking at root causes. They might see amputations, cuts, bumps, bruises, slip trip falls, those kinds of things. But you need to be prepared. And I think what allowed me to be prepared for that fatality I investigated was I was in buildings and taking people out of cars when they were not so lucky.
00:18:58
Speaker
And they have to be prepared for that, because it's not for everybody. It's not for the faint of heart. And I know for, you know, police officers who see it as young officers the first time, it's tough. The same way for the first EMT out the door, after training, going to a major event, it's tough and it makes you or breaks you. Either you accept it and you move on or you have to walk away from it. And to me, if you cannot take it, that's okay. It is not for everybody.
00:19:29
Speaker
My first fatality that I was exposed to, and I'll get back to the root cause stuff here in a second, was a car that was doing 60 miles an hour through a T intersection. I had a tree that was 40 inches in diameter. Yeah. And there were two fatalities. And it was, there was two people in the back seat. We ended up taking the person in the back seat who was really bad.
00:19:53
Speaker
You know, and I'm talking to myself the whole time I'm carrying this person to the ambulance, the whole time we're going to the hospital. This is what you need to be prepared for. This is what you're going to see. It's not every call. Are you going to be able to, I mean, I'm talking to myself, trying to convince myself one way or the other. And I was on the ambulance for 25 years until my daughter was born and I said, I need to just,
00:20:17
Speaker
back away from something. I hated to do that, but I was traveling with GE and it was difficult to maintain hours on the ambulance. But when you're getting into root cause analysis, you have to have a curiosity level. You also need to be able to understand the methodologies that you need to apply. Learn a methodology, learn another methodology if you can,
00:20:43
Speaker
because there is a morphine that can take place when you learn a couple different methodologies that you can apply. So there's acronyms out there that you'll hear. I don't remember the words to each of them, but there's SCAT, there's MORT, there's Ishikawa, Fishbones, Taproot, Apollo, just to name a few. And I'm not advertising, but you'll see these.
00:21:08
Speaker
you know, Google or Bing or whatever, root cause analysis or accident investigations, these things will eventually pop up. And the one that we used a lot in the beginning years was the events of causal factor charting, which Taproot used, but that was developed by the National Transportation Safety Board for doing aircraft events. And it serves pretty well.
00:21:34
Speaker
But again, you have to learn that process, that system, and you have to work the process. You can't take shortcuts. In one class I was doing when they were working the analysis to figure out what happened, they weren't using the guidance. And this one team, I always broke a class up and each team had a different event to analyze, but I always managed to give one event to two teams so that the class had a chance to see that
00:22:03
Speaker
No matter who does the analysis, you'll probably 85 to 90% beyond the same path. You'll never be exact because people, skill sets, influence, knowledge are going to vary. So having a group is always better. But when I put these two teams together and they compare, they're like, well, we did this a little different. We did this the same.
00:22:26
Speaker
Well, this one team who did not follow the rules come up with all of these, yes, this contributed, this contributed, this contributed, this contributed, to the point of being almost obnoxious as well. How can it contribute? But I let them use that methodology. And when they came up to do their presentation, they had to list all the corrective actions. And they couldn't list them all. And I said, does this make sense? They're like, well, no, not real. I said, well, does this make sense? They're like, no, not real.
00:22:55
Speaker
See, you took what I called the shotgun approach. Here's the event. You shoot the shotgun bullets, not bullets, but the bird shot at it, and you're hitting all these different things, but they don't all apply. But the little bird shot hit that thing. So if you go back, follow the rules, follow the guidance, they narrowed it down to six out of like 30 something. And they're like, oh, now I get it. I'm like, yeah. And that's why I didn't correct them when they were going down the wrong path.
00:23:25
Speaker
because in the educational world, learning what's wrong, doing what's wrong and showing why it's wrong to say, I don't want to do that again is part of the learning curve. If I show you everything that's right, you won't know when you do something wrong. And in root cause analysis, you have to understand that you can't just say, oh, that's pretty obvious. That's the problem. Maybe not what led up to it. So,
00:23:51
Speaker
You know, some of the things we talk about in more recent years is human and organizational performance. So I could say, what made Bubba Gump push the button? He doesn't normally push the button at this point in time. He always does his job, but we made him push the button at this point in time to let the product drop. Well, maybe Bubba Gump's wife went to the hospital this morning to deliver a baby. Maybe his parent had a heart attack the night before, was up all night.
00:24:20
Speaker
So there's influences you also have to think about as to why a person makes a mistake. And that has to be a part of your equation when you're looking at root cause analysis. Because if you say, you push the button, you dropped it, you shouldn't have done it, you're fired, or you're getting a week off without pay, and a person's sitting there going, I didn't get any sleep last night, I'm trying to do my job. So that's part of looking at it. But you have to have that curiosity.
00:24:47
Speaker
And you also have to listen to people when you're doing root cause analysis, whatever process you use. There's a lot of talking. There's a lot of psychological influences that you may not think about. So if I sit you in a chair and I stand up and I'm talking to you, I'm talking down to you, you're talking and looking up at me, there's that vertical barrier. So now there's an impression that I'm forcing you or you're feeling pressured to answer
00:25:17
Speaker
And you're not sure how you should answer because you don't want to be wrong or have somebody else get fired because of it. And if you have a desk between you, there's a physical barrier there. Even though there's no visual barrier, there is because the desk is there. So there's a lot of these things that you learn over time as you go through educational programs, psychological interview programs, things like that. And you can't do it in one year. You can't. It takes time to hone your skills. And that's what you really need to do is hone that skill.
00:25:46
Speaker
and learn by doing small things. And then the bigger things will come and they're easier because you still approach it the same way as the little thing. That's right. Yeah, you know, you're talking so much about training and training adults and critical thinking and gosh, paying attention to just human behavior and cues. I did so much of that as well in my in my years with OSHA and I didn't get
00:26:13
Speaker
once in a while we'd have some training like interview skills and things like that and you're right you just pick things up over time like you're paying attention to your body language and then you're looking and going hmm that person across from me their neck is turning red yeah what's going on with them
00:26:30
Speaker
They're starting to get a little twitchy, you know, they're nervous, they're scared there, you know, and try to identify that so you can continue with your curiosity and get the information you need without completely freaking someone out. Yeah. Yeah.
Adult Education Philosophy and Methods
00:26:45
Speaker
But you were you were talking
00:26:48
Speaker
You know, about, about adult education and John, it sounds like you've had, you know, you've, you've learned obviously through experience, but you've also had some training in that. How did, how did that unfold in your, in your career in life? Well, part of it came from the fire service going through the instructor level courses. They're a week long courses at the near state fire academy and then they're nationally recognized when you take the exams for that and it's called pro board.
00:27:16
Speaker
And then at GE, they spent some time bringing folks in and teaching us how to teach adults, learning those methodologies. We used a great consultant. His name is Bill Heacock of Heacock and Perez. And he is a down-to-earth guy who actually had a slight amputation in the manufacturing workforce in his early career.
00:27:42
Speaker
really in tune with safety, but he got into the educational side. And teaching us how to teach adults, it was an amazing learning curve. He didn't show up with oodles of PowerPoints. He showed up and he would talk and he'd use flip charts and he showed some PowerPoints, but how he taught was also how we learned how to teach.
00:28:08
Speaker
And it was very interesting. And he and I had traveled a couple different places teaching people to teach for GE. And, you know, we spent some time in the hotel. We spent some time at dinners talking about things. And we always could see eye to eye because we were always on the same path, if you will, the mentality of how we need to make sure people learn. This is not me bragging about what I know about electrical safety because I'm going to tell you, I'm a civil engineer, as you said,
00:28:38
Speaker
But I've worked a lot with electrical people. I still have a lot of interest in electrical stuff, just not design engineering. But I've worked with utility people, working for utility now. But my mom's side of my family were into Niagara Mohawk years ago, which is now National Grid. And they were out there putting power lines back up after storms, et cetera.
00:29:03
Speaker
I work with people at my fairgrounds from a local utility, and I've learned a lot with our electricians and from people that I've learned from at GE. I mean, I knew about turbines and generators. One of the gentlemen in the firehouse was a berry mechanic for large steam turbine generators back in the 70s and 80s. And I learned a lot about what they do, not the details that I knew when I finally went to GE, but a lot of the mechanical side and what they do in general.
00:29:34
Speaker
But that educational side was always interesting. And I learned from the best. I've also learned from the worst. And I've had some people in my classes, and they've ranged from far and many from just a couple to 20 in a classroom to 80 or 90 in a lecture hall to 250 at a conference to lecturing at the VPPPA conference.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's interesting because a couple of people will come up afterwards and say, where did you learn how to teach like that? You know, you, you kept me engaged and you were asking questions and I just don't get it. How did you learn how to teach like this? And I said, actually, it's, it's actually pretty simple being an engineer. Most engineers put people to sleep because they talk engineer speak, you know, firefighters talk, firefighters speak, safety, people talk, safety, people speak.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I said, what I figured out is I've been put to sleep by the best of people. And if I can just avoid that, I've got to look good. You know, and they think about that and they're like, Oh, well, you know, come to think of it. Yeah. I've had some boring lectures in my life too. And I'm like, yeah. And, and I, you know, I was termed at the Reverend John whenever I'm in a lecture hall or classroom, I don't stand up behind the podium.
00:31:00
Speaker
I work the room like the minister of the church. I'll walk around. And part of that is the, as Bill Heacock would tell us, if you stand up there and you just kind of turn, stand, walk, shake, do whatever, it's like a metronome, right? Tick tock, tick tock. And everybody will go to sleep. Yeah, you're forcing them to go to sleep. So when you walk around the room,
00:31:23
Speaker
They're turning their head, they're following you. When you point up to the screen, they're looking at what you're pointing at. When you raise your voice and lower your voice or change your voice, they're looking, they're listening. So what you're doing is you're using different senses of theirs, sight, hearing, smell, whatever, sound, sound levels. And when you walk around the room,
00:31:47
Speaker
What do most people do today, right? They're on their phone or on the computer. Well, our students are no different. And when you walk around the room and you're standing alongside of them or walking behind them, they don't know what you're looking at. So they don't want to do their emails. And when you're in a dark room and you see the, the shade of color change on someone's face from bright to dark, and you know, darn well, they're not looking at the PowerPoint that you're showing. You know, they're off Googling, binging or doing whatever.
00:32:14
Speaker
And when you're walking the room, they tend to not want to do that. So again, it's learning how to keep them engaged. And just by doing some of those simple things, it allows them to stay engaged versus fall asleep. And yes, for those that are listening, I have actually slammed a laptop closed on a manager that was sitting in front of me. And the reason for that was everybody behind that manager was looking at what the manager was doing on the screen. That's a distraction.
00:32:44
Speaker
I can't have that. So I literally walked up and very slowly closed the laptop and about the last day and slammed it. And everybody's like, what was that? And I didn't say anything, I just kept lecturing. But the point was well received by everybody else. So the manager did not open his laptop to do more work on it. But unfortunately, he pulled out his phone under the desk and continued to do what he had to do. And I... Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
At the break, I said, look, you know, I understand you have work to do, but these people need to learn this and pass the test at the end. I'm testing John. You got to pass a 25 question test at the end of my courses, because we have to know if you understand the material and the information. And there's only one way to gauge it. Either I follow each person on their job for a few weeks or a few months, which isn't going to happen. Or I give you a written exam or a practical type exam and see what your level of knowledge and skill set is.
00:33:42
Speaker
And it's kind of simple. I need to know that you know, that's the bottom line. And I won't, I won't send you on if you don't know, I've got no problem in qualified level classes like electrical safety or confined space or lockout tag out. I got no problem saying you ain't going any further. And I let the students know when I worked at GE, you got to get past me to get to the technical guys. And if you don't pass me, you get to go home. And that really sets the tone for,
00:34:11
Speaker
this is serious and yes it is because not just your life but your colleagues working with you their lives their body parts depend on you knowing this and it tends to set in to their psyche if you will that we need to take this serious and they do and I've had I've had people in the classes say you know I've taken a class like this before but never to this level never to this detail
00:34:41
Speaker
I learned a lot from it, and I'm like, good, I'm glad you did. I know you're not gonna remember 100% of it when you leave here, but if I raise you up to the level of knowledge, let's say at 100% at the classroom, when you leave here, you might remember 75% of it, but if I only raise your level of knowledge to 40%, when you leave here and a few weeks later, you're gonna be at 20% knowledge, that's bad for you and the people you're working with. So we always bring you up to the higher level so that you're always gonna remember something, and mechanical guys were
00:35:11
Speaker
We're always hesitant to take the electrical safety class, but it was a requirement for the field engineers at GE. And they're like, John, if I touch a disconnect switch, I'll be fired. I get that. But here's the reason you're taking this class. You're over here working on some mechanical part of bearing, thrust block issue, whatever it may be. I said, and the generator guy's over there. He opens up a cabinet with 13-2 in it. And you look over there and go, wait a minute. I'm only six feet away.
00:35:41
Speaker
I'm too close because that's high power, high current, and John said something about there's like a distance I need to stay away and I'm out of here till I figure out what's right. That's the bottom line. You may not remember those distances. You may not remember what the arc flash and the energy calculations are and the minimum approach boundaries, but you knew enough to get out of there. Bottom line, after eight hours of sitting through an electrical safety class, you knew to walk away.
00:36:07
Speaker
That's right. That's right. That's the beauty of it. John, you spoke about curiosity and having curiosity and asking questions. You know, in your experience and the questions that you ask in your classrooms, the questions that you ask of people and trying to really kind of
00:36:26
Speaker
drill into well hopefully we can help people with curiosity but for our listeners who are like I don't know if I'm that good of a question asker you know what are some of your go-to questions that you lead with you know obviously not a specific topic but you know when you're asking people questions how do you frame things let's let's do a quick two type of questions
00:36:55
Speaker
All right. The first one is going to be, Jill, did you get out of bed this morning on time? What's the first thing you're thinking? Uh, a defense. Uh, wait a minute. Uh, did I get, uh, you know, now what's on time? Yeah. What is it? Who said that? Right. And then it's like, Joe, could you explain to me what your morning routine is like? Um, what do you normally do?
00:37:17
Speaker
Um, and, and, you know, in, in explaining that to me, I just kind of curious as to what those steps might be, you know, you know, the first part of your day. And you say, well, you know, I usually get up six o'clock, the alarm goes off. I don't reset it. Well, okay. Now you're just talking to me versus trying to be defensive and say, oh yeah, I gotta put six. Well, that doesn't tell me everything I want to know. You know, did you shut the alarm off and get out of bed? Did you put those alarm on snooze?
00:37:43
Speaker
So, when you're asking questions, you need to ask open-ended questions. So, you know, I would ask if somebody pushed a button on some machine and something happened. Okay. Can you explain to me the routine that you normally go through? Is this the typical part that is used on this machining process? Look, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. I'm not.
00:38:11
Speaker
I'm not knowledgeable. I'm just trying to figure this out. And again, I'm not standing above them. I'm kind of at the same eye to eye level. I try to keep the barriers away. Explain to me what this process is. I understand part of it. But boy, I don't understand all of it. Can you walk me through it so that I can understand? I might know. I might very well know the details. I don't want them to say yes or no. I want them to tell me
00:38:40
Speaker
because I might pick up something that is out of the norm. And that's an influence to them to make a mistake. That is not gonna come out with a yes or no.
00:38:50
Speaker
That's right, that's right. They might be walking you through, I did that so much in my investigations as well and asking people, tell me about how this thing works. How do you do, like you're the expert on this thing, kind of walk me through it. And then all of a sudden somebody would say like, well, it's normally like this, but you know, three weeks ago this thing broke. And so now I have to do it this way.
00:39:15
Speaker
And you get to hear these little things that if you're listening, which is another thing you said about listening and being an active listener. Yeah, they might say, well, we've done this process for years and it hasn't really changed, but maintenance is falling apart. Now I go back and I look at maintenance. I'm like, what's the schedule? Well, the schedule is pretty plain. OK, so why isn't maintenance doing this? Well, we used to have 10 maintenance guys. Now we're down to five. OK, so they can't get to everything in a timely manner.
00:39:42
Speaker
So what's the problem? Is it the operational side or now is it a maintenance side? So now you begin to look at other influences to why this event actually happened. And when you hear the term root cause analysis, everybody's thinking there's got to be one thing. Yep. Right? It's too bad that that's the actual term. Yeah. And the funny part about it is when I was doing a lot of the taproot classes,
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, you talk about the root cause they say, well, here's the root cause and somebody said, well, what's the real root cause? I just told you there's no real root cause and an almost real root cause and that that there is no one thing I have to be honest, so that the audience understands and all of the years that I've.
00:40:31
Speaker
looked at various events that have happened. I'm not going to say accents because they're not. They're events. Something happens. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got killed. No damage happened. It just happened. Like you trip on a carpet. You don't fall, but you keep on walking. Okay. That's an event. No, no negative results. And when you think about those events and how you ask those questions and what you're looking at,
00:41:01
Speaker
You can see what those influences are and that to me is the real key in getting valuable information. These events will happen. There is no one thing and all the analyses that I've been involved with, there has never been one thing that allowed an event to happen. Never. There's always some sort of an influence
00:41:29
Speaker
some sort of a system failure, whether it's a policy or a procedure, they can say, well, the procedure's wrong. Okay, well, who wrote the procedure? A human being. Okay, do humans make mistakes? Yes. Do we blame that person for not putting something in the procedure? No, they made the procedure based upon the best information they had at the time, but things have changed in the last 10 years. The machine changed. We've got a DeWalt instead of a Milwaukee, but nobody changed the procedure.
00:41:59
Speaker
just as a quick example. So to those who are listening, I'd really love to know if you found one thing because if I take a look at your event, I probably will find some other influence.
00:42:09
Speaker
That's right. That allowed that event to happen. Everything, everything's multifactorial. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, asking good questions, being curious, um, you know, and also what you're explaining for anyone who's listening is to be patient with the process. Like there's no way to rush through these things. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the recent years here with Avan Grid, we've done a lot of work with human and organizational performance. I did that at GE. It really started back then about
00:42:39
Speaker
you know, 2015-ish, somewhere thereabouts. And when you learn about human and organizational performance, you understand that there are many, many influences that can happen. You know, there's, it takes some time to learn the process, but a lot of knee-jerk reactions by managers or whomever is, I want to know who's responsible, I want to know what happened. And when you look at these influences, and there's influence mapping that's out there you can, you know, work with,
00:43:08
Speaker
you find out that there isn't just one easy solution because it's not easy to identify one fault or error if I can put it that way. You know, there's bow ties that are out there and you talk about pre-event, post-event, there's barriers, there's processes. You know, HOP uses what they call the Swiss cheese model where everything aligns just right and it goes through the holes and the bad thing happens at the end from the person to the hazard.
00:43:38
Speaker
These are the kinds of things you have to be wary of and understand. And that's why, you know, there should be several defenses to protect the person from the operation, the hazard, whatever it may be. So that if one thing fails, there's other things there to protect from going immediately to a negative result. And that's tough sometimes to identify. But when you're talking about humans, you're talking about creatures that make
00:44:06
Speaker
instantaneous decisions based upon the influences they face at that point in time. Do not look at it that we know today. You've got to look at it at the point that person made the decision. What did they know at that point in time? And that's hard sometimes because retrospective hindsight, right, is 2020. We know what happened, but they didn't know what would happen when they made that choice. That's right.
00:44:34
Speaker
John, you know, you talked a bit about your career at GE for 20 years, and now you're with Avant Grid. You're in an education role there as well, correct? Yeah, I lead a team of two that actually support the networks business, Avant Grid Networks. One is our LMS person, and she is very knowledgeable. I rely on her wholeheartedly 100%. She keeps me aligned with the LMS system that we
00:45:02
Speaker
have just recently implemented. She is an expert. And for people who aren't familiar, LMS means learning management system. And Avangrid is an electrical utility, correct? We are. We have eight operating companies plus wind farms that we operate and we are working on offshore. Avangrid is a subsidiary company of the Iberdrola company in Spain.
00:45:28
Speaker
But Avangrid is based up here in Connecticut in the great northeast and we are electric and gas utility.
Utility Safety Education at Avangrid
00:45:35
Speaker
So that's kind of where me and my folks reside in the networks business. And I have one person goes out and he does a variety of in-person training. There is a lot of local people that do the training too and there's technical training. And technical training is separate from those of us in EHS, but the technical trainers provide a lot of EHS training.
00:45:58
Speaker
In New York state, here in New York state, electric and gas has multiple sites around New York state. Rochester is pretty much residing around the Rochester area, but they've got a couple of subsidiary areas, I should say, that they cover. Central Maine Power is basically one area that's all contiguous to themselves, so there's no satellite areas, if I can put it that way, the same way with United Illuminating in Connecticut.
00:46:23
Speaker
Those technical folks do the safety training. Our health and safety specialists that work for our health and safety managers will provide training. They also do the event analyses and the operation side are the ones that actually present the events that they may have in their area to the executives. Every Thursday, there's anywhere from one to four.
00:46:51
Speaker
events that the operations folks have to present to the executive team. And they have to understand what happened and what the corrections are going to be. But the health and safety specialists help them work through that because they've been trained with a couple different types of event analysis. And we support that for them. Plus, we have public education that we do. It's a requirement in New York State by the Public Service Commission for the gas business to provide training to emergency responders.
00:47:21
Speaker
They have a team up in Maine. That's all they do is public education at county fairs, schools, public works, emergency responders, and various police and fire academies. So they're doing a great effort. Is that unique in the country, John, that New York has that requirement? I don't know about other parts of the country. I know Maine does not have that kind of requirement. It is a New York State Public Service Commission law.
00:47:48
Speaker
And part of that all goes back in all the states that we have our operating companies in here is the rate cases because it's what you're allowed to charge, what the state allows you to charge for your electricity or your gas, you know, for your budgeting and what you want to do. I know there's been a great effort with resiliency for vegetation trying, you know, reduce the amount of trees and vines around wires they're putting wire up that is not insulated for us, the people, but
00:48:17
Speaker
It helps when a tree limb gets on the wire to keep it from arcing out right away. It's just a plastic coating, shall we say. And that way we don't see the arcing and the glow. It helps protect from an outage until somebody can get there and remove the tree limb itself. So there's a lot going on behind that scene.
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah, it makes so much sense to do the public education. I mean, just when you're specifically even talking about the fire service and being a volunteer firefighter, all the years that you have, you know, having those opportunities to have that education from, you know, experts like yourselves. I mean, that's that's difficult in volunteer settings for them to learn all of those hazards that they're responding to. Yeah, you know, I got interested because I was a young person elementary school seeing a fire truck and I know
00:49:06
Speaker
somewhere along the line that we will have that influence to the younger generations also and I know it's happened also because folks that have come in over the years that I've been exposed to the fire service and I was like well they came to school or well I saw it well my uncle was in the fire service some of our volunteers have moved on to paid departments because they wanted to do it full time yeah that's great you know I mean you never know where it will lead and I always said that even to
00:49:35
Speaker
One of our chefs at GE's cafeteria is like, go take the education. You never know where life will lead you. And look where I have gone from growing up with construction stuff, riding on a bulldozer and back over with my uncles, who would probably be in jail today by OSHA because of the laws back in the 70s and 60s are different than they are today because there was no OSHA in the 60s, to, you know,
00:50:02
Speaker
Going into the fire service, like in electronics, moving to mechanical, becoming a civil, teaching engineering stuff to wastewater stuff, being an engineer, doing design, and moving to GE and training field engineers, and then moving to Avon Gritty Utility Company. I mean, I have not actively said when I was 18, 25, I'm going to work here until I retire. I have always just been lucky enough
00:50:30
Speaker
fortunate enough with the skill sets, the background, and I'll say the context. I wouldn't have gone to GE if the person I went to my school with didn't know about it or know about me. I mean, I've just kind of literally fallen into great careers along the way. And each one has built on the previous career and has gotten me to the point where I am today.
Career Reflections and Teaching Philosophy
00:50:53
Speaker
And I'm passing that along because of what my professor Tom Jewell taught me.
00:51:00
Speaker
trying to pass that along little by little in whatever I do, wherever I teach. Last Wednesday night, we had a total mutual aid drill with multiple departments on tanker operations. So I drove our tanker to the drill site. I dropped the first load of water. I said, okay, which one of you are going to take the tanker now? What? Well, look, I'm not going to be around forever. You guys need to learn how to do this. So one of you who is going through driver training,
00:51:30
Speaker
You take the truck, I'm here, you take it, let's get filled, bring it back, dump it. And again, trying to get the younger people, I could do it, I could do it, you know, in the heartbeat, I've done it for years, but these younger folks need to learn some of that skill set that they don't normally use. And the same way whether it's, you know, on the fire, in the fire service, at GE with the field engineers or here at Avon Grid, you know, it's teaching people how to learn
00:51:59
Speaker
give them the information that they need to make sure they understand it so they can go out there and do their jobs safely. And bottom line, go home at the end of the day. One of my little sayings I tried to tell the people, and it's not 100% encompassing, but two fingers, two toes, two eyes, one nose. Go home with everything you came to work with. It's not two toes, don't get it wrong, but two feet.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah, two ears, two eyes. You actually want to go home better if you can than what you came to work with. And you owe it to your family to go home. So the bottom line for me is I need to make sure I provide for them what they need to do that and be successful at it. John, you had said to me in our pre-podcast chat, I have a quote written down from you, there's a job for everybody. Yes.
00:52:55
Speaker
Tell me what you mean by that as we're closing our time out together today. Well, I learned this early on when one of my older firefighters in Altamont couldn't climb a ladder anymore. So he would take the air bottles to the local firehouse air bank because we only had one in the town at the time and fill the air bottles and bring them back so we could use them. There's some people that don't like to climb ladders so they can do the groundwork.
00:53:23
Speaker
Some people don't like to wear air packs and they can't because they're claustrophobic. Great. Help support the ladders outside. We need somebody at the bottom of the ladder. We need somebody to run the pumper. You know, there's always a job for someone in the fire service. Don't think because you can't put an air pack on and run into a building with an inch and three-quarter line that you can't be a firefighter. We got people that are fire police. They don't want to be firefighters. They don't want to go into a building, but they want to serve and help. We got people that just do support work.
00:53:53
Speaker
The same way here, you know, not everybody that wants to drive a bucket truck can drive a bucket truck. Not everybody that wants to be in linemen can go through the years of training. This is not something you sit through for a couple of weeks, couple of months, you become a line person. It's years, minimum of three. So it takes time. But if you're not a line person, you could also be a ground support person. You could be a stores person. You could be a logistics person.
00:54:22
Speaker
There's many different jobs, there's different things you can do to help support your organization, whatever it may be, fire service, Legion, church, doesn't make any difference what that organization is. There's always a job for somebody. It's what you're willing to do also. What are you willing to be exposed to? What challenges are you willing to take? You know, for me, I'm backing away from the hose going into the building because I'm older.
00:54:51
Speaker
The 20-something, 30-something should be doing that because that's what I did when I was 20s and 30s and 40s. Now I run the truck, the pumper, and make sure that they have what they need, like the water, to do their job. And if they don't, I make sure they know they don't have it so they don't go in and put themselves into a position where they will not be so fortunate. So there's always something that you can do to help your organization, your community, whatever it may be.
00:55:22
Speaker
to move forward, you know. Last question, John, you've been doing education for a long time. What keeps you excited and engaged to do it? The fact that people need to learn. I think that my mentality over the years, much like what I just said, there's a job for everybody. There's things you can learn.
00:55:50
Speaker
is making sure people learn from it. Well, I've gone to a couple of fires and I've had young officers and this one person had to go into the house that was on fire and went up to the second floor with another person. And she's a younger firefighter. She's actually an officer now. And I said, so after we got done, I said, so what'd you learn? I said, what'd you do in there? She goes, well, we took a line to the second floor. I sounded the floor with the ax. I said, you sounded the floor with the ax. Why'd you do that?
00:56:20
Speaker
because we always do that at drill. I said, but it's a concrete floor. She goes, yeah, but we're always supposed to sit on the floor before we go out on it. I said, that's muscle memory. That's why we do it in training so that you will do it in real life so that you don't fall through the floor. That's wood and not concrete. So and I said to her, like, what would you do different? What did you learn from it? Not that I'm learning from it, but when she's talking about it, she's retaining it. She's thinking about it. And I think for me that that's just
00:56:50
Speaker
I don't have a PhD in education. First to tell everybody I'm not a PhD in education, but you don't have to be if you know how to treat people with respect and how to get them to think. I think for me, learning how to get people to think and learn and express themselves was the biggest advantage for me in the classroom, on the fire ground, or wherever.
00:57:18
Speaker
so that they can walk away with a better level of knowledge for the next thing they will face. Beautiful. John, thank you so much for sharing your insight and your wisdom and for your public service all these years. Thank you, Jill. I appreciate it. It was a good time.
00:57:37
Speaker
It really was, thank you. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like John and I.
00:58:06
Speaker
Special thanks to Naeem Jourisi, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.