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You can always learn from what others outside of healthcare are -- or aren’t -- doing

Hospital Safety Insider, April 18, 2018

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Editor's note: This was originally published on Steve MacArthur's blog, Mac's Safety Space.

I think we’ve hung out together long enough for you to recognize that I have some geeky tendencies when it comes to safety and related things, sometimes straying beyond the realm of health care. And this is (pretty much definitely) one of those instances.

Over the weekend, while listening to NPR, I happened upon a story regarding safety concerns at the Tesla factory out in California and how operating at the brink (cusp?) of what’s possible can still fall victim to some time-honored realities of the workplace. The story, coordinated by The Center for Investigative Reporting and aired on their program Reveal, aims at shedding some light on some folks injured while employed at Tesla.

While I can’t say that there’s the figurative “smoking gun” relative to decisions made, it does seem to fall under the category of “you can make the numbers dance to whatever tune you’d care to play.” I thought it was a very well-done piece and while there may not be specific application to your workplace, I figure you can always learn from what others are (or aren’t) doing. At any rate, I can’t tell the story as well as they have, so I would encourage you to give the corresponding podcast, which lasts about 55 minutes, a listen. The SoundCloud link is about halfway down the page.

One other quick item for your consideration: We chatted a few weeks ago about the shifting sands of compliance relative to emergency generator equipment and I wanted to note that I think it would be a pretty good idea to pick up a copy of the 2010 edition of NFPA 110 (it’s not that large a tome) or, at the very least, go online and use NFPA’s free access to their code library and familiarize yourself with the contents.

Much as I “fear” will be the case with NFPA 99, I think there are probably some subtleties in 110 that might get lost in the shuffle, particularly when it comes to the contractors and vendors with whom we do business. Recently, I was checking out an emergency generator set that was designed and installed in the last couple of years and, lo and behold, found that the remote stop had not been installed in a location outside of the generator enclosure.

Now I know that one of the things you’re paying for is a reasonably intimate knowledge of the applicable code and regulation, and emergency power stuff would be no exception (by any stretch of the imagination) and it perturbed me that the folks doing the install (not naming names, but trust me, this was no mom-and-pop operation that might not have known better) failed to ensure compliance with the code. Fortunately, it was identified before any “official” survey visits, but it’s still going to require some doing to get things up to snuff.

I have no reason to think that there aren’t other “easter eggs” lurking in the pages of the various and sundry codified elements brought on by the adoption of the 2012 Life Safety Code®, so if you happen to find any, feel free to give us all a shout.

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