Safety: Learning to Think the Right Way
Dec 2, 2020 8:00:00 AM
During the course of any day at a chemical process plant, workers have to make decisions that are often small and seemingly mundane, but in a rare occurrence an incident breaks out and the right response has to happen. And it has to happen now.
How can those involved make the right decision?
“We must invest in allowing our workers to make better decisions,” said Jennifer McDonald, EHS – process safety at W.R. Grace during a session at the 2020 Virtual AIChE Spring Meeting & 16th Global Conference on Process Safety entitled “I Just Didn’t Think” – Improving Situational Awareness. “We must invest in teaching employees to make safer decisions.”
McDonald, who gave one of three presentations on the topic, pointed out the National Safety Council (NSC) said a worker is injured on the job every seven seconds. The lack of hazard recognition and poor decision making are some reasons why that happens.