APM Team,
Our Fall outage season has brought us a lot of work.
Our Fall outage season has brought us challenges – specifically Safety challenges. We have 7 significant injuries – 7 APM craft persons leaving our jobsites hurt and needing medical attention.
5 of the 7 injured had <4 years experience with APM.
4 of the 7 injured are Apprentices.
5 of the 7 injuries are Line of Fire events.
With the safety challenges in mind, I again exhort you – and I expect you – to run the plays we called at the Safety & Quality Leadership Training this summer. Specifically,
Life Saving Rules: Post them in your work areas. Specifically review the Line of Fire commitments with your crews. See attached.
Mentorship: Every apprentice & crew member with <800 hours APM experience must have a mentor. If you cannot run this play, elevate immediately.
Standards: Follow the Field Procedures, Live Outage Checklists, and other documents that guide your work. If you cannot run this play, STOP work and elevate immediately.
The Fall outage season has also brought us successes. We continue to perform well in a lot of ways.
Quality escapes and events remain at 00 for the Fall.
We are collectively engaged, with 1,889 Open Reports + 655 Hazard Hunts + 47 STOP Moments
Continued 5*CX scores with comments like “APM was a shining star in this outage.”
What leads to success? We asked Scott Ranaldi, our Quality Director, to share a brief message on his reflections.
As we proceed into the 2024 Fall outage season, I am empowering all our team leaders to follow the basic steps for completing tasks successfully: Plan, Communicate, Follow Up, and Document.
Planning starts with reviewing steps and checklists to be performed for each task with your FE. Are prerequisites met; do any steps require modification; collect data sheets, visual management, other documentation; do we have the tooling are some of the questions to figure out first.
Pass this information onto the crew and ensure they understand the goals and expectations form the pre-task brief.
Follow up during the task to strengthen the expectations of peer checking, Leave Your Mark, verification of readings, parts identification, orientation. Your presence in the field should foster a questioning attitude and allow you to do spot checks as the tasks are being completed. This is an excellent way to QC as you go.
Frequently check the status of the procedures and checklists and document as the tasks are completed. On more complex tasks it is a good practice to do this often enough to be able to a more thorough QC due to space limitations. Ensure turnover notes reflect the status of tasks accurately. Don’t assume tasks are complete, verify.
Most importantly - If a problem arises during a task, STOP Work, and use the proper escalation process to correct the situation and continue. STOP Work is a responsibility for everyone on the site.
~ Scott Ranaldi