BREMERTON, Wash. –
He stared into the room before entering. Eight feet away, a co-worker lay sprawled across the floor. Andrew Gorton, supervisor, Shop 06, Maintenance, quickly called out.
“Hey! Are you OK? Do you need help?”
When an answer didn’t come immediately, Gorton quickly began to find help and let others in the area know what was going on.
From the other side of the room, Idrese Manning, waterfront safety advocate, Code 900S, Waterfront Safety, quickly stepped in.
“Time. That was good. Can anyone add anything else?”
It's the second day of the "1001 Steps Supervisor/Work Leader Course" at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. Manning, and four supervisors from various shops and codes, have been practicing scenarios in an industrial training area in Building 460. As Manning heard feedback from students about the exercise, others in the class chimed in with things they noticed.
“While building the course I also took input from upper management branch managers, zone managers, project managers and shop superintendents because I needed to know what their thoughts about safety and accountability were,” explained Manning.“ I tried to put together a program that creates safety leaders early in their careers.
Helping leaders develop habits that focus on safety and worker welfare, in addition to meeting deadlines and getting projects out ahead of schedule, required input from workers at all levels, according to Manning.
“Everyone wants to be safe,” he said. “I never spoke with anyone who wanted to work dangerously or put others in danger." There can be times when information doesn’t flow down to the deckplates, or when workers might get complacent as they get busy, Manning said. This course is designed to help get front line supervisors engaged and offer better accountability.
To accomplish that, Manning focused on a four-step teaching process to help leaders assist their employees to improve safety in the five high hazard areas of PSNS & IMF. The process of "tell them, show them, observe them and then correct them" helps workers understand the dangers in confined spaces, helps them recognize when and how to utilize fall protection, how and when to conduct hot work, how to work around hazardous energy control, and proper protocols for handling high-risk chemicals.
After they complete the five-day course, Manning hopes that participants will be able to effectively communicate safety management policies to employees, learn to engage employees from any shop or code in a professional manner to correct safety deficiencies, gain a better understanding of their role in the command's safety management system, and the metrics to see how that role can be successfully achieved. In addition, participants will have the tools to successfully influence safety habits and behavior.
It's a lot to teach in five days, but Manning believes these lessons will have more impact for shipyard employees coming from their supervisors and managers.
“With safety, leaders making it a priority is important,” he said. “It allows a new person to feel empowered when they see a situation... because they know their manager will support them.”
That support, according to Manning, can make all the difference when it comes to avoiding accidents.
“Knowing what you should be doing to be safe and correcting someone, are two different things that maybe a new employee would feel uncomfortable doing,” Manning said. “When everyone is being safe — and looking out for one another — it makes the situation less intimidating and makes it easier to say something. That’s what we're hoping to create here.”
In addition to teaching safety, the class also allows supervisors to share their experiences and teach one another.
“Some of these situations just don’t happen in the bulk of the work we do, but it’s good to know what to do in case it happens,” said Gorton. “I think a class like this is important. Having been through it, I think the information is invaluable and could change how someone reacts in a bad situation.”