Improvement is Wisdom

Improving is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The primary difference between the two words is that wisdom involves a healthy dose of perspective or context and the ability to make sound judgments about a subject, while knowledge is simply knowing. Anyone can become knowledgeable about a subject by reading, researching, and memorizing facts. It’s wisdom, however, that requires more understanding and the ability to determine which facts are relevant in certain situations. Wisdom takes knowledge and applies it with discernment based on experience, evaluation, and lessons learned.

How do we apply the knowledge or learning gathered from our Safety Team to result in wisdom and improvement? One method is through communication.  We can utilize our safety newsletter for near misses to systematically look for similar situations. In safety programs, this is also known as a conditions review (or a verbal data collection). The lesson is shared with different project groups with the instruction to review and discuss the lesson on their project, identify similar situations, and report back on those situations. This exercise helps work crews to digest the lesson and reporting back allows the organization to see how big a problem the issue is; from there we can then determine how best to address the issue in moving forward. For example, one of our Safety Teams found inadequate 911 reception on parts of their project location to be a problem. How extensive are 911 reception issues? Is the problem limited to just this project? Is it in certain regions? Is it only with certain cell phone coverage equipment? What needs to be done to correct this situation? At the least, maybe the project groups can begin considering emergency response requirements as part of planning future projects.

Yes, all these questions were resolved and in working with local emergency management, the project now has adequate emergency response coverage as they move toward a safe and productive project.

As Applied Safety continues to learn and improve, the results are beginning to show.  You can see these strides through the monthly newsletter, our Learning Management System (LMS), our website, etc.  Our communication through these systems has proven to be effective through the feedback from our employees.   

My point is if learning is hard, improving is 10 times harder. The amount of condition reviews, conference calls, etc. is a step toward turning learning into improvement. Good communication is the key to saving lives and having a safer project.


September Near Misses

I had stopped to pick up some cones to place by a cable that was across the road and when someone yelled, I turned around and saw that my vehicle contacted a vehicle in front of where I had parked. Damage was to the 2 front bumpers. Fortunately, no one was injured. Rules were set in place that non-essential vehicles were to park at the edge of the work area, well out of the construction area, relieving parking brake is to be applied.

Today we were stringing pipe with a sucker hoe, and we were down to the second to the last row of pipe on the truck. Operator picked up the 40’ piece of 12” .250wall pipe and started tracking backwards, the track hoe backed into a very low indentation on the ground and made the pipe sway just a touch and causing the Vacuworxs unit lose suction without any warning. This machine is designed to give at least a 3 second or more, verbal warning before losing suction. The machine failed to do so, and the pipe took a fall from about 5’ above the bed of the semi. It did very little damage but could have been a very bad deal.

Approached an Xray truck with the technician sitting in the truck. I realized that the source was exposed, the technician was in the truck and the boundary monitor had left the area. The area was barricaded but they did not have their High Radiation Sign in place. Job was stopped, crew was coached on the requirements of performing Xray on the site.

A scrap metal vendor was attempting to pick up an unbalanced load and underestimated the soil softness so while in motion of dragging the roll off up on the truck the entire load started to tip. This motion was caught by the spotters and the load was set back down to be shifted balanced so that a safe load could be made.

I noticed that at the bottom of a steep hill section, multiple skid sets were knocked out or were compromised to the point that they could slide at any moment. I stopped work that was being conducted on hill side and had contractor fix and reset skids before returning to work.


We are pleased to announce that we have partnered up with Boot Barn to offer all Applied Consultants inspectors a 15% discount on all purchases “work related” from the Boot Barn, Nation Wide. Be sure to tell them you work for Applied Consultants and use the key word: “Safety First” to receive the discount. 


API1169 Test Dates:

December 4 - 18, 2020
Registration Deadline: October 2nd, 2020


September Winners

If you have been selected as newsletter Q&A winner, please click this link and select your prize(s) from your winning category.

Curtis Parr - Platinum
Daniel Breaux - Gold
Glyn Franklin - Silver
Kris Haraldson - Bronze
James Glass - Bronze