How producers are prioritizing jobsite safety today

The following transcript was edited from a Jan. 25 discussion at the Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference. The conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.

PIT & QUARRY: For the producers here, how would you characterize your relationship over the last year with the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA)? Is it better, worse, or about the same as the years prior to 2021? Are you currently stressing any specific safety and health areas to employees? And how has your approach to safety and health changed of late? For the suppliers here, how are you supporting producers in their efforts to operate more safely?

NICK PEARMAN (ROGERS GROUP): Safety is our top priority as a company. We drive a safety culture into our employees, and we haven’t changed that in the last few years. We continue to improve upon it and try to drive that into the culture of the company.

As far as MSHA goes: We take MSHA’s comments very seriously. We take MSHA’s actions very seriously. It’s a goal of ours to get a ‘zero’ inspection every time. We go through citations as a company. It’s very important to know what has been found and why it wasn’t fixed.

MSHA is there for a reason. Sometimes it gets a little difficult, but we take it very seriously. The safety of our employees is definitely our top priority.

JAMEN MCDERMOTT (SENSATA TECHNOLOGIES/PREVIEW RADAR): Speaking for the radar side of the business specifically: If you took the what, how and why out of our mission statement, it will be safety. That’s really what it is. The product we provide is for safety. It’s to show what you can’t see.

Somebody mentioned perception is reality [during the Roundtable discussion], and that’s absolutely true. What you can’t see needs to be seen, and that’s what our product provides. That’s all we do.

DAMIAN MURPHY (PECKHAM INDUSTRIES): ‘We’re obligated to protect our family and friends’ is the phrase we use in our business. We look at MSHA as our minimum-compliance standard. We certainly would look for MSHA to be more of a coach than the umpire and the policemen that they are today. I think they’ve got some work to do in that regard, for sure.

But we do use their data. We use their information. It’s truly about engagement with our workforce and having them take responsibility. We provide the training. We provide the process and the procedures. But it’s up to each individual. We focus on that engagement to deliver our results and safety.

RONALDO DOS SANTOS (ANDERSON COLUMBIA CO.): We were extremely proud last year that we had zero lost-time accidents in our operation. That is one of our main goals, along with zero citations in all of our sites.

We know that it’s challenging, but that’s what we aim for. We have developed some initiatives to create the safety committees to involve more employees. With COVID, we kind of got away from meetings. But now we are resuming them, not only at the managerial or supervisor level, but with operators and everyone involved. We’re assessing risks and asking someone to speak up if they see a condition that is not ideal. We will take it seriously.

PIT & QUARRY: Labor is something we discuss regularly as an industry. In a lot of instances where there’s a fatality or an accident of some sort, it’s because the experience isn’t there. In some cases, the person involved is a first-year or a second-year employee. So, what impact does the industry’s labor shortage have on safety?

BILL DORAN (OGLETREE DEAKINS): The last three fatal accident investigations that I’ve done within the last year all involved some component of safety. In two of those cases, we had people who were very inexperienced. They’d had the training but not necessarily the experience with the equipment. Ultimately, that played a huge role – not only in the things they were doing, but also in how other people were working with them.

Training is so crucial. I know everybody knows that. But task training and a focus on making sure people have a good foundation for what they’re doing plays a huge role in getting people ready to work safely.

DAMIAN MURPHY (PECKHAM INDUSTRIES): Bill knows this better than I do, but in my career, it’s been supervisors and leaders in the business who actually are causing the injuries because they’re jumping in and taking risks. In the last 10 or 15 years, the training has improved considerably in the industry, and we’ve come a long way. But we’ve still got to get our leadership focused on safe work as opposed to quick work or dynamic work. Work has to be safe.