This time of year, there is a heightened sense of alert due to the rise in electrical contact incidents during the summer months with increased exposure. “Let’s keep that conversation alive,” said Dwight Miller, Senior Director of Safety Training and Loss Prevention at Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives.
Miller emphasized that as exposure increases, incidents naturally rise. He questioned why the reduction of exposure is rarely discussed as a legitimate safety strategy in high-hazard work environments. “Because it stealthily activates the most effective strategy in the well-known hierarchy of controls, which is elimination,” he noted.
He highlighted that some of the most effective tools for safety programs often get overlooked. These include system hardening, line relocation, aggressive ROW programs, animal protection programs, an effective hazard ID program, and a robust maintenance program. All these measures contribute to outage reduction and minimize the need for employees to work under hazardous conditions such as adverse weather or busy highways.
“There is no person or organization that does these things better than rural electric cooperatives because our employees truly care,” Miller stated. He pointed out that while these benefits are easy to miss, rural electric cooperatives consistently do the right things for the right reasons, enhancing the safety of lineworkers.
Miller called for maintaining a positive relationship between operations and safety departments to ensure safe operations as one integrated unit. “We simply operate safely as one healthy unit, integrating the units together, each appreciating the strengths that the other has to offer,” he concluded.
“We hope you enjoy this quarter’s edition of SAFELINES.”
Dwight Miller, CLCP, CUSP: Senior Director, Safety Training and Loss Prevention
Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives
