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Engineering Safety Communication
39 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, host Dr. Jill Fennell sits down with Mark Ligler, Vice President of Factory Automation Systems in Georgia and member of the Woodruff School Advisory board, to talk about the importance of communicating safety in engineering.
Notes and Timestamps:
- 00:54 Introductions and guest introductions
- 01: 33 Importance of safety to future engineers
- 04:32 Helping others communicate safety needs
- 08:04 Poor safety communication leading to issues
- 11:15 Building a safety culture
- 13:55 Effective safety communication
- 18:30 Leaders and Managers communicating the importance of safety
- 20:37 Safety communication in high vs low risk fields
- 22:45 Common mistakes in safety communication
- 24:46 Common mistakes in safety signage
- 28:18 Role of the engineer as a safety communicator
- 36:08 Challenges engineers can fix by anticipating them
- 40:48 Final thoughts and advice on learning engineering safety
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Podcast edited by Lee Hibbard.
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Transcript
Introduction to Safety Communication in Engineering
00:00:16
Speaker
of communication and engineering. Last season, we covered general topics that helped us examine why strong communication matters for engineers. This season, we're taking a deeper dive into practical topics such as writing best practices, visual communication blind spots, code commenting, and more, all tailored to help you navigate the new challenges of engineering communication.
The Role of Safety Communication with Mark Ligler
00:00:40
Speaker
Whether you're tuning in for the first time or returning for another season, we're excited to have
00:00:54
Speaker
Today we're discussing how engineers communicate about safety, why it matters, how it's done effectively, and what students can do to demonstrate their commitment to safety in their careers.
00:01:05
Speaker
Today's guest is Mark Ligler. He graduated in 1976 from mechanical engineering when he immediately went into manufacturing. He worked in engineering for 10 years before focusing on automation, co-founding Factory Automation Systems, an engineering company that specialized in creating and retrofitting safe systems.
00:01:25
Speaker
He is currently a member of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Safety Committee. Welcome, Mark. Well, thanks for having me. Today we're going talking about safety, and I think it's a good idea for us to start with the basics.
00:01:38
Speaker
Question number one, how important is safety to future engineers? would be very easy to say very important. But reality is in every design and application that they may do, as long as they stay in engineering, it's going to be important.
00:01:54
Speaker
Every design? Every design. Can you share an example of when safety communication played a critical role sometime in your career?
Challenges in Safety Standards Communication
00:02:02
Speaker
Sure. yeah One of the things that I got involved with was implementing industrial robots into manufacturing concerns.
00:02:10
Speaker
And their safety communication is very important because most of our customers, they either knew everything about safety involving a robot, which is probably one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment you can be around, or they didn't.
00:02:26
Speaker
And it's the ones that didn't, that it was very important to communicate. and And it becomes a little bit of a teaching experience as well as a communication. Of course, every time you talk, it's a teaching experience.
00:02:40
Speaker
But letting them know what the standards are for safety for industrial robots or move on to a different piece of machinery. What are the standards?
00:02:52
Speaker
And how do you apply them?
Teaching Safety and Designing Out Risks
00:02:55
Speaker
In your experience, throughout many years of engineering, did you find that as an engineer, you often had to teach others about safety? Absolutely.
00:03:03
Speaker
Absolutely. You go in hoping for the best. My standard question to a customer would be, have you got a safety committee? Have you got a safety standard?
00:03:13
Speaker
In the case of robotics, it was, do you have a robot safety standard? You'd be amazed how many times that was ah blank look. Oh. And so I knew where I needed to start.
00:03:25
Speaker
Right. Because I think maybe those who are new to engineering might be under the idea that someone else handles safety. i just need to get here and do the work.
00:03:36
Speaker
What would you say to that? I would say they have learning themselves to do, which I experienced over the years of being involved in the the running and technical review of an engineering company.
00:03:48
Speaker
We had 75 people, and every time you brought somebody in new, it's like, okay, here we go again. The more you had new people, the more you got used to exposing them to here's the standards, go read it.
00:04:00
Speaker
yeah Good bedtime reading, but then reviewing what it is. Because what's important in design that most young engineers do not understand is when it comes to mitigating or getting rid of ah safety risk,
00:04:17
Speaker
The number one selection is design it out, get rid of it. So that's why I say designs are very, very important. It's about anticipating user safety needs?
00:04:30
Speaker
Yes.
Applying Safety Standards in Engineering
00:04:31
Speaker
The company that you co-founded, Factory Automation Systems, can you talk a little bit more about how you helped others communicate safety needs?
00:04:42
Speaker
Well, we had to identify them. And one of the things is going in and evaluating a production line, a piece of equipment, reviewing something for a customer under the idea of, is what I'm doing safe?
00:04:58
Speaker
And safety, by the way, has become more important in the manufacturing environment. it ah It always should have been number one, and it was number one, but understanding of it and how to identify risks, how to mitigate those risks, is something that engineers have been doing for a long time.
00:05:17
Speaker
So you would have to start with, for example, when you have a meeting to identify safety issues and you find that you have to teach safety your customer things about safety.
00:05:32
Speaker
And there's always the apprehension of new people that you meet that, oh, this is their idea. What is it we should be doing? So you have to get into the standards that are out there.
00:05:43
Speaker
And there are not a whole lot of standards that are required by law. There are a few. The National Electric Code is required by law. It's an OSHA requirement.
00:05:56
Speaker
But you have to identify and talk about the consensus standards that are out there. So these are standards that are published by nationally recognized groups like ANSI, American National Standards Institute, or ASME, Society of Mechanical Engineers, or NFPA, which is the National Fire Protection Association, which sounds funny when you're talking about safety. We're not worried about a fire, but they are the people, they put out some pretty good documents, including that one I mentioned that's required by law, the National Electric Code.
00:06:34
Speaker
So if you were, say in in Capstone and you're getting ready to write your report, you might imagine that someone from one of these committees might be the reader of a particular section of that report so that you can anticipate the kinds of things that they are checking for in your design.
Building a Safety Culture
00:06:50
Speaker
Yes, you can. And being aware of those standards, not to get off on a on a different tangent, but I did teach Capstone one semester, and I had to listen to a couple of engineers tell me how what standards they hit me right off in their initial report, what standards they were going to use, and...
00:07:11
Speaker
I kept a straight face, chuckling inside, but told them that's great, but do you know that none of the standards you just mentioned are enforceable in the United States of America? That's not what you do in the United States. So it's a knowledge of what standards apply. Right. Just like in communication, you kind of need to know the context that you're working in to know if it's going to be effective.
00:07:33
Speaker
You need to know not only the context, but you need to you need to know your audience. Right. If your audience is a big international firm, yeah you better find out what standards they they utilize because a lot of international firms use international standards.
00:07:52
Speaker
But if it's strictly a U.S. stateside, a state-based industry, more often than not, they're going to go by ANSI. It's just got that word American in Have you ever seen poor safety communication lead to issues? Absolutely.
00:08:08
Speaker
One of the things that you do in evaluating safety in an industrial and environment is you do what's called a risk assessment. And it's kind of interesting that the methodology between what we do in the United States and what happens over in the EU is They differ.
00:08:28
Speaker
In the United States, we do a task-based risk assessment where we're looking at who gets around the equipment, who gets around, know, services it, maintains it, sweeps the floor.
00:08:40
Speaker
Those are all people that are important and you have to evaluate the tasks that they are doing And then are there safety risks? And some of them are very simple, slip, trip, and fall.
00:08:51
Speaker
Some of them are electrical lockout, you know, and I'm talking about how you mitigate them. But, and some, it's interesting that you identify ones that nobody thought about before.
00:09:04
Speaker
And especially when you're around a dangerous operating piece of equipment, any automatic piece of equipment. A robot, like I said, is probably the dangerous but you get around CNC machines.
00:09:17
Speaker
If you don't understand the risks that you have when you stick your hands into that machine and hope that someone has done the right mitigation to keep you from getting hurt, it's it's interesting. It's always an interesting discussion. But if that's done incorrectly,
00:09:36
Speaker
in In fact, if it's done very quickly and you miss half the points, and then you have a ah near miss or an unfortunate incident where someone gets hurt, that's where I've seen those incidents occur, where people didn't openly look at what tasks were being done, wanted to quickly go through it, but missed some of the obvious.
00:10:02
Speaker
What it sounds like is from your experience when you saw poor safety communication lead to issues, it's because it wasn't audience appropriate. they The people who they were communicating safety to perhaps weren't listening because they didn't think it pertained to them or it didn't pertain to the particular role that they had. Or when it was done, they were not invited to the review. Ah, I see. The audience was incorrect.
00:10:28
Speaker
That's why yeah whenever as whenever we went and did a risk assessment, we insisted on having someone from management, somebody from engineering, somebody from maintenance, somebody from operations, somebody from if they had a yeah ah group that was cleanup, somebody from that group, get all of them involved so everybody could add to it. and It's like anything else. If you do that, if you get buy-in with all those groups,
00:10:55
Speaker
You'll even get people that after you've put something in and we experienced this, they would say, oh, what about that task? We forgot about that one. So you just go back at it, discuss it, and make sure that what you've done and what you've done in your design is sufficient to minimize that risk.
00:11:15
Speaker
Speaking of buy-in, how do you build a safety culture? That's difficult. that's difficult you know you you You build a safety culture by making everyone aware.
00:11:30
Speaker
Somehow having a to to use the word corny as it sounds, to have a safety slogan. Not a mission statement, but ah safety a safety slogan of some kind. Something short and pithy. so something yeah my My dad worked for a company where their slogan was zero defects in everything that we do.
00:11:51
Speaker
So that covered not only safety, but it covered the engineering effort that they were putting in too. But something that comes to mind, you know, safety begins with me. You know, safety is job one. You know, just little things that if you can get people to buy into that, and it takes a company saying, this is what we're going to do.
00:12:14
Speaker
And it takes buy-in from all those levels I talked about when you reviewed. risk that it's a good thing.
Ensuring Safe Practices Through Engagement
00:12:20
Speaker
You build a safety culture by wanting people to report things that happen and not penalizing them because you did.
00:12:29
Speaker
yeah Near misses on in ah in ah in a manufacturing plant or any workplace are way more important then you know you had a great day because you learn by what you do and a near miss tells you that ah there's a problem here do we need to identify it you know a near miss could have been because someone wasn't following the safety protocols that have been established or you just have never you know it's a new task that you've brought into your workplace
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, or i feel like this is sometimes common among students is a near miss. They might think of, oh, that was just me. I just, you know, did something incorrectly. Whenever, really, if they report that, that could help us reassess the way that we are communicating safety to them so that we can help show them how people might make mistakes in the future.
00:13:27
Speaker
Even a near miss can even happen at home. If you do woodworking, I can yeah i know several stories of near misses that you know have a lifelong impact on the person that it did to happened to. And I can even tell you near misses that I've had because I'm um i' a gearhead. I work on cars, I have old cars, and I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my experience.
00:13:52
Speaker
I've been lucky, but I also try and learn. What are the most effective ways you've seen safety communicated in the workplace? Design reviews are very important. if you If you're doing engineering design work, having reviews and making a safety review a big part of that sends a message to the guys that work for you.
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh, they really mean this. It's important to them. And when you start, not always the same question, but when you start questioning, well, is this design safe? And even if you spot something that you know is not right, challenging them to look at that, all of a sudden they may buy in, oh, that was not a good idea.
00:14:37
Speaker
Let's change that. When you do a design on a, get back to a robot cell, you do your initial risk assessment before you've done the design.
00:14:48
Speaker
So that points to things that you need to look at and include in the design or things that you know, i just i need to rule that out. I need to totally protect that because there's no way to make that safe for somebody to operate around.
00:15:04
Speaker
Or I need to keep the operator, the person that loads parts, I need to keep them far enough away from the danger. So the design views review is probably the the best thing, but then there was an event that I did all the time. I called it MBWA, management by walking around and looking at what people are doing, stopping by somebody's desk, show me what you're doing.
00:15:31
Speaker
And not critiquing, but trying to lead them down a path of, you know, are are you doing the right thing here? have you considered this? That's where the thing that you can't replace that has to, is a learned thing. the The voice of experience, the eye of experience makes a big difference. I used to have engineers that hate to see me coming, but they learned. And, you know, even if they were making a mistake, making it a learning experience is what it's all about.
00:16:03
Speaker
From the communication perspective, it sounds a lot like one of the best ways to communicate safety is to be in a framework of anticipating safety issues constantly so that whenever you do get to that design review or perhaps you the the business that you had, you can have already solved some problems and you can spend that time more productively focusing on implementations or communicating to even the user about the safety needs.
Active Leadership in Safety Design
00:16:36
Speaker
That's correct. And when you're in the business of designing things, fabricating things, the worst thing you can do is discover a problem later on in the project where you have to redesign, you have to throw away things that you've had fabricated.
00:16:53
Speaker
So that's why from an engineering perspective, being careful looking at it as you go, being familiar with the standards. You can't apply something that you have zero knowledge of or or going to the the person, the the the gray beard, the perk guy with the gray hair that's been around still has all his fingers and asking questions.
00:17:18
Speaker
is important. And again, I'll get back to that's how you learn. Yeah. And, I think a great way that engineers can think about communication that can help them with their engineering is while they're in their design phase or while they're in their, um,
00:17:37
Speaker
fabrication phase, how are you later going to justify in your report or in your presentation the safety of what you've done so far? Before you finish that design, can you justify that safety at the end? Because if you can't do it at the end, you don't want to be spending time now doing something you're not going to be able to justify later.
00:17:59
Speaker
Making safety changes in a project after it is installed are very costly, time consuming, and embarrassing to be honest with you. And there's a constant battle that goes on as you do that.
00:18:14
Speaker
Space is a premium, space is expensive. And for some things you just have to have the space to make it safe. And that that gets back to the the education of your customer, making sure they understand where they're coming from.
00:18:30
Speaker
How have you seen leaders and managers communicate the importance of safety? doing the same thing that I've already talked about, making it not the number one, show me how you've implemented safety here, but in the back of your mind, looking at the design, is it safe?
00:18:49
Speaker
And this could be a mechanical design. yeah Geez, that looks like it's not strong enough. you know or not yeah and In the capstone class I taught, I had a mechanical engineer that designed this great structural piece but show me the design and I kind of chuckled and he said, well, what's wrong?
00:19:10
Speaker
He had diagonal elements, two parallel pieces and diagonal elements, but they were all the same way. I said, do yourself a favor, just swap every other one and go do your stress analysis on it. And to his amazement, he could he could make the materials lighter smaller and stronger by simply having a simple design concept and what i just went through there is nothing but experience telling you there but that's what good leaders offer yes so so you know how do leaders and managers do it by by leading by example you know you got to practice what you said and you have to go and enforce it
00:19:54
Speaker
It sounds like from your experience too that they they do active intervention. They don't just wait for the end, but they're checking up with their designers and manufacturers throughout the process. Have to. You have to actively, to use your word, actively active intervention.
00:20:10
Speaker
and And by the way, if you wait till the end and you knew something was wrong and spring it on them, they go yeah nobody's happy about that. But you have to make the design process. It's a continuation of the learning experience.
00:20:26
Speaker
And every engineer that you work around with has got a degree, some of them an advanced degree. So they just have to understand that you're still in learn mode.
00:20:37
Speaker
How does safety communication differ between high-risk environments and lower-risk
Consistency in Safety Communication Across Environments
00:20:42
Speaker
fields? It doesn't. It doesn't? Nope, not at all. The minute you do that, you will run into a problem.
00:20:48
Speaker
Can you talk more about that? Sure. yeah How do you know something's high-risk unless you really evaluate it? Okay. You can take something that everybody thinks is low risk in a manufacturing facility, a forklift driver, carry around a basket of parts and he's got to put it in the work cell you put it in. Sounds low risk, doesn't it? He's on this big you know industrial fork truck, he's protected.
00:21:13
Speaker
But then add the person that's standing besides the fork truck, waving his hand, saying a little bit more, a little bit more. And you add an element that people, again, people don't think about that.
00:21:26
Speaker
So what seems to have been a this is a simple task, yeah is potentially a disaster waiting to happen. Right. You can't just think about the operator, but everyone who is in the context of the operation.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yes. that's That's why I mentioned with ah with a risk assessment, you involve somebody from every department that's going to come ah into contact with that piece of equipment.
00:21:54
Speaker
It also reminds me of what one of our previous guests said, David Torello, that we were talking about code commenting and and how you you get to be an effective code commenter. And he said people have the false maxim that practice makes perfect, which is not true.
00:22:10
Speaker
Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect. And so i could see the idea that if you start communicating perfectly, less around safety in lower risk fields, then you're basically practicing poor safety communication standards. Correct. And that can make permanent over time. Correct.
00:22:29
Speaker
And again, you will be amazed at what you thought was, well, that's a simple task. It's safe. And when you evaluate it everything that's going on around it, it becomes something that attention needs to be paid to.
00:22:45
Speaker
Can you talk about any common mistakes engineers make when communicating about safety? They're too technical. Too technical. Or they can't speak. A good engineer, as a lot of people know, is not a good communicator.
00:23:01
Speaker
I would argue that's not always true, but that's a part of my job as well. There's always the exception. They may be a good communicator verbally, right but not they they can't take that and put it into words.
00:23:14
Speaker
It's really difficult to forget what you know. And i can see how if you're trying to communicate about safety and you're so immersed in this particular product or design, it's easy to use the technical jargon that is already at the top of your mind. It gets back to knowing your audience.
00:23:34
Speaker
you know If you're talking to a bunch of engineers or your experience, you can use the technical jargon and get get away with it. But as you're communicating, you've got to look at people's faces. And the minute you get one or two people that have the glassy eye or that I'm lost or you lost me back there, you need to tone it down, you need to go back, and you need to get those people on board and engaged.
00:23:56
Speaker
So that I don't think they teach that skill in engineering school. You have to learn it by being around people. that are good at doing it. being too technical, can you think of anything else?
00:24:09
Speaker
Yes, being too technical, not getting into the details that you should. you Maybe you're thinking at the 1,000-foot level. You're in the design and all that. But you've got people that you're trying to communicate with that their job, they're a manager or something. So they look at 25,000 feet.
00:24:27
Speaker
So what you're looking at as you discuss something is not the same view that they're looking at. So somehow getting in a common frame of mind is important. anticipating the way your audience wants to understand this information. Knowing your audience. Yeah, it all comes back to audience. Yep. Thinking a little bit more specifically, are there any common mistakes in safety signage that you've seen?
Effective Safety Signage
00:24:51
Speaker
Anything that can lead to confusion or lack of adherence?
00:24:55
Speaker
Yes, and it's the theme here. Too concise, too much technical jargon. yeah Caution, do not enter. There's a robot here. It could be it could hurt you.
00:25:07
Speaker
Versus stop, qualified people only. You don't need to explain it. yeah Or don't enter don't enter this safety gate unless you are authorized.
00:25:20
Speaker
But putting way too many signs on. It's like if you're driving down the highway. If you see overhead that there's 10 signs and you read nine of them, but you missed the 10th one, which was important to you because you're going 60 miles an hour, too much information.
00:25:38
Speaker
Information overload. Yes. You can't focus on everything, so it all just kind of becomes a blur. Keeping it simple is very important. All right, don't over. i think maybe with a safety signage, one of the...
00:25:51
Speaker
key elements is don't over communicate. I'm thinking about even the bulletin boards here and the MRDC where we're recording right now. If I'm putting up a flyer or something, i will take down all the ones that have the date has already passed.
00:26:07
Speaker
Because I know if I'm walking past and I see a bulletin board and there's not ah a single centimeter that is open of a space, I'm not going to there and look at all of them, try to see if any of them pertain to me. But if I'm walking past and there's one little flyer, I might quickly glance at it.
00:26:22
Speaker
And if the headers are like, oh, that's that sounds interesting, or oh, there's a prize or or something like that, then I might stop and read it. Yeah. If you put too much information in, the text becomes smaller. It doesn't grab your attention.
00:26:36
Speaker
versus one word, danger, or a simple phrase, danger, keep out. I saw some signage recently that I think might have been like some mandatory signage, but the print was so small and there was so much of it that I know it's not going to be effective.
00:26:54
Speaker
be And it's either the kind of thing where maybe they expect you to read it all your first time in, or if there's ah an incident, then you go and read it. But i can't see that actually being very effective or usable in real life.
00:27:07
Speaker
I think most of the time when we're talking about safety communication, especially signage, we're talking about just-in-time communication. What do I need to know right now? If there is a safety hazard with this machine, put the sign about it above that machine.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, and sometimes signage, you know, there's a reason some signs are different shapes than others. An octagon sign, what's yeah what comes to people's mind is stop. Make it intuitive. yeah make it intuitive. Or a triangle, you know, caution.
00:27:39
Speaker
But sometimes, you know, you have to be careful with signage. You think, oh, I'll make it a bright colors. Well, there's some color combinations that there are people out there that have trouble reading.
00:27:50
Speaker
So, you know, it needs to be, know, I don't think there's anything much better than ah black on white. The first rule in effective communication is people either need to be able to see it or hear it.
00:28:03
Speaker
And if you can't meet that barrier, it's not going to work. And then people will choose fonts that are difficult to read. And people, know, you make anything difficult to read, what happens?
00:28:15
Speaker
People don't. Not going to pay attention. Exactly. Moving on, let's spend a little bit of time thinking about the role of the engineer as a safety communicator.
Proactive Safety Communication and Ethical Responsibilities
00:28:26
Speaker
Engineers are responsible for designing safe systems, but what is their place in actively communicating safety at large? Most engineers do not realize that when they're around people that may look up to them as an engineer, you're educated, you know all this stuff, you tell me what you see.
00:28:47
Speaker
I've been with many young engineers when we go into a manufacturing plant, we're going to the middle of the plant. And as you walk through the plant, observing their eyes, There are some that are laser focused. Here's the walkway that aren't looking around.
00:29:01
Speaker
And there's some that you got to stop and wait to catch up because they're looking. You got to be observant and you got to ask questions. And you have a of responsibility if you see a problem to say something about it.
00:29:17
Speaker
There's been a lot of litigation in history that people get... in trouble because, well, you have this document that says you're a safety expert. You walked right past this thing where Joe had his hand cut off the next week. That's interesting. you say litigation and you know that connotes legal responsibility.
00:29:40
Speaker
i was going to ask if engineers are obligated to say things about safety, but I was coming more from like a sort of ethical standpoint. What is your view on that? Ethically, I think it's important that they do.
00:29:52
Speaker
But to cover ones behind, it's important to also. Because if you send a letter, an email, or or even a note to somebody, hey, I was walking around your plant and I saw this, just wanted to make you aware of this issue.
00:30:09
Speaker
If there is an issue that occurs, and it's kind of like you just fired off a disclaimer. you You have the the paper trail in case anything happens. A paper trail to say, hey, I saw it. up I went to your manager about it.
00:30:23
Speaker
I actually talked about this to our students just last week in class about... the fact that you know the English language has so many words. The word you choose needs to be exact.
00:30:33
Speaker
If something isn't optimal, don't call it optimal because it is not at all uncommon for engineering documentations to be subpoenaed. And next thing you know, you're on stand having to explain why you used that word or didn't write something down. Well, that's ah yeah another key point there is don't write down everything that you're thinking.
00:30:54
Speaker
Right. keep some of it to your yourself or put it in a discussion because, you know, I always told people as we would look at a project, look safety, know, just being customers, you there's certain things I'm not going to put down in black and white.
00:31:09
Speaker
Okay. And they look at me and say, why? Well, if it's black and white, if it's printed someplace, guess what it's called? Something discoverable. You say you're going to take care of this. I trust you. I'm not worried about it.
00:31:24
Speaker
But you're aware of it now. It doesn't need to be necessarily written down. How does that pertain to safety? Probably more so to safety than anything else because, believe it or not, there's, well, easy to believe, there's a lot of liability associated with safety.
00:31:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm. yeah For an example, i I've talked about earlier equipment that risk assessments are done, whether it's a robot cell or some complex piece of automatic equipment. If you did a ah proper risk assessment by the ANSI standards,
00:31:59
Speaker
And if there's an accident, and if OSHA gets involved, the first thing and the OSHA person's going to ask when they come to investigate is, can I see the risk assessment on this piece of equipment?
00:32:11
Speaker
If you have a risk assessment and, oh, well, you missed a task or maybe you interpreted this wrong, that's one thing. I like to say that may be a slap on the wrist and get it fixed.
00:32:22
Speaker
But if you say, what, a risk assessment? It's way different. Because it just you just proved that you you aren't even reviewing safety.
00:32:35
Speaker
You didn't take the expected steps to mitigate safety issues. you you didn't You didn't go down the steps of evaluating the design to see if there were any inherent dangers to the people that have to work around it.
00:32:51
Speaker
Were you insinuating that there are some things that you don't want to put in black and white, like you don't want to communicate or write down? Yes, I was indicating that only because, you know, getting back to the engineer as, you know, what are your responsibilities?
00:33:08
Speaker
You know, do you want to take responsibilities on that you may not want to? You do need to make people aware, but you don't necessarily need to make them aware of every detail to the ninth degree. Okay. Oh, and this operation over here in the corner of your plant, this doesn't look right. You should look into that.
00:33:27
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But if you write a technical paper on what you just saw, it won't go anywhere. Yeah, I see that. The communication that you choose, verbal, email, report, needs to correspond to the the need of the safety issue.
00:33:45
Speaker
If you want to report technically as that and you want to engage me as a safety expert, let's get that over with first. Then I will take the liability, of what I might put down or what I may say, but I'm not doing it for, you know, there's a quid pro quo for it.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just not volunteering. I am telling you, you got a problem, you need to look into it. Okay. But the the end takeaway here is that if you see something, say something. Right. And saying that you may want to take this operation over here in the corner in black and white, I don't think that's a problem.
00:34:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But saying, oh over in the corner, you've got this and this and this and this down to details. Yeah, that's where people will challenge you, unfortunately, if it comes down to any kind of litigation.
00:34:38
Speaker
ah Challenge you, well, how did you know that? How come you saw that and they didn't see that? Right, you don't want to put something and down in writing that you just assumed. Right. haven't actually investigated yourself. and And you have to understand in the thought of safety,
00:34:54
Speaker
When we talk about the the the safety risk assessment, when you do mitigation, whether it's putting a fence around something or guarding or a certain level of controls that are redundant, the person that has to decide, have we mitigated the risk down to a reasonable level is not you.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's the people that own and operate the piece of equipment. Hmm. a level of mitigation that's that they're acceptable with. I have done risk assessments in the past that there was no solution.
00:35:30
Speaker
Really? And the problem existed that day where they were before any automation got applied. And we just left it on the list.
00:35:42
Speaker
We didn't say, oh, take it off. We left it on the list and yeah management was going to take it up. That was a comment we put down. That's all you can do. That's all you can do and And this kind of gets to some of the things that we've been talking about in this podcast too is what is the job of the engineer and what's not the job of the engineer when it comes to communication. In this instance, you've done your due diligence and that's the end of your role.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. What challenges do engineers face when translating technical accuracy and accessibility into safety communication? I feel like we identified this as an issue, but digging in a bit more, can you think of any specific challenges that engineers can know already exist so they can start anticipating how to fix them?
Translating Technical Information to Accessible Communication
00:36:30
Speaker
Well, engineers, in my experience, are not good communicators, especially when it's put it in black and white. It's hard enough to get them to do a design to put all the detail that's needed for the machine shop to make the part or the electrical shop to wire the panel or even assemble it.
00:36:50
Speaker
But translating that, yeah and and by the way, with technical things, it's hard to get a creative writer involved. It's got to be a blend.
00:37:01
Speaker
One of the things that I often tell students that i'm working with them is that as the engineer, they're the ones who have to make a lot of the communication decisions. I can help them refine that.
00:37:13
Speaker
I can help them talk about the different communication choices that they have in front of them and which one is best for their situation, but they know the material. And so they really need to be able, part of the important part of communication as the engineer is figuring out what needs to be communicated.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yes, very much so. And someone like yourself that's skilled in writing can add a lot to engineers trying to say something. And and sometimes engineers, not knowing the audience, may over, over explain it.
00:37:48
Speaker
And they didn't need to. For example, there should be an executive level summary, very general. And then it gets a little bit more detailed. And then you get down to the level that engineers in the facility that you're doing the work in, they can understand. They don't they don't even read that top page. They don't want to see the the fluff, as it's called. They go straight to the section that pertains to their work. That pertains to their work, that they can understand because they're familiar with But not everybody can do that.
00:38:17
Speaker
Thinking about over communicating with safety too, I can see how as the engineer you have this obligation, perhaps both legal and ethical, to explain whatever safety issues might occur in the different situations in which they might occur.
00:38:32
Speaker
But that you would want to do that in a very straightforward, concise, and clear way and not over communicate them as ah way of over emphasizing issues that actually might not be that much of an issue, but just by the amount of words that you use to focus on it could connote to the reader, wow, this is a really big issue.
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's very interesting. Probably the longest risk assessments assessment I ever did took two and a half days. Oh, really? these were eight-hour days. And it was in a manufacturing plant.
00:39:08
Speaker
that had a interesting piece of equipment. And everybody in that room, except me, was naysaying day one. Day two, they're a little bit more serious. And by right after lunch on day two, somebody came to the conclusion, I see why we really need this.
00:39:27
Speaker
So the whole tone changed. Because you you get one person to start understanding what you're trying to get at, then all his buddies.
00:39:38
Speaker
you know will also perk up and get with the plant. But it's communicating it properly. It's starting it's starting with a not slam, this thing's not safe.
00:39:49
Speaker
Let's take a walk back. let's The education part I mentioned early on in the conversation. I've done several risk assessments where knowing the audience, starting with the discussion, why are we here and what is it we're trying to do?
00:40:05
Speaker
raises some interesting questions. And then if you've got the the fundamentals, the standards, well, let's go through why this we're doing this. This isn't my opinion.
00:40:18
Speaker
This is the, in this consensus standard, which is industry sponsored. This is your industry saying these are the things that we need to look at. And it's amazing when you educate people in safety, how soon they understand.
00:40:36
Speaker
And they all understand the risks involved and the liability involved. And all of a sudden they decide they don't want to get caught up in it and they'll do the right thing. Moving into our recap, it sounds like audience, understanding your audience and understanding the context that your audience wants to be able to use this information in or could use this information in is really at the crux of effective safety communication. That is correct.
00:41:06
Speaker
Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to add? You know, it's interesting for the people still getting their degree or the young engineers that might you listen to to what we're discussing.
00:41:18
Speaker
This may sound like, well, where do I learn that? Well, believe it or not, you will learn it in the environment that you're working in. you know And yeah asking questions of yeah what safety standards do we follow, just knowing that some basic questions to ask.
00:41:39
Speaker
paying attention not just i have to complete this safety measure before they'll let me use the invention studio but why why was it designed this way yes why understanding the basis for that makes a big difference well thank you so much for your time for appearing on the podcast you have some amazing experience so i know our audience will benefit from listening well thanks for having me