It’s a new chapter year!
 
There are so many things going on in our world that it seems like time is just a blur. While still with us, the response to the coronavirus has stabilized, and we are now back to in-person meetings! We had a great safety conference last October with some great speakers—although the bulk of the activities were online. Despite all challenges of operating in such an environment, our chapter has done well and pulled through.    
 
Surely, we must recognize our members for staying the course and adapting to an ever-changing safe work environment. Changes by the Center for Disease Control, the Oregon Health Authority, government regulations, personnel changes, etc. have all been a challenge to navigate. The flow of change seemed endless. Our members have gone through a lot, and it is such a blessing to see how they have succeeded.   
 
As we roll into the new chapter year, I want to thank those who have stepped up to continue the chapter legacy of success! Take a look at this list of outstanding people who have taken on roles to support this chapter and its members. 
 

I can see that our chapter is in good hands for the future! Without question, this team was handed an outstanding chapter that was headed up by these people who gave it their all:  David Hanson was the back-to-back president whose efforts really did carry our chapter through the pandemic. There are no words that will do his commitment, work ethic, and success justice. Patti McGuire, this year’s vice president, held the treasurer position for many years. Again, as with all of the team, there are no words to do her service justice. She is an amazing person, and I can say this for sure: We have not had a better treasurer and supporter of our chapter. Mike Hill will still be doing meticulous work on the 2022 safety conference just as he has done for several years now with past conferences. What an inspiration. He has done such an awesome job at running our conferences, you would think it was his profession! Yet, like all board members, he volunteers his time! Kyle Valley did such a great job of keeping the chapter newsletter going and getting personnel involved. It may be like the proverbial herding of cats, but he stayed the course and knocked it out of the park. (That was for him—many of you may not know that he was once a professional baseball player!) Our monthly programs were still first-rate because we have a true professional named Jen Killpack who was the program director. Again, the professionalism she brought to the table was nothing short of outstanding. Karrie Hyde Bogart was running our chapter operations effort and did such a great job of jumping into that role despite being in another challenging volunteer role. Again, when I get beat down by the mental rigors of day-to-day safety, I think of folks like her, and I find myself being inspired to step up even more. We had some vacancies in positions throughout the year and we found some excellent people to stand in the gap. These outstanding professionals (Jeff Mook, Nilda Martinez, and Shyra Vaughn) helped the board finish the year in style! And the good news: these three awesome individuals volunteered to stay on for this new chapter year. 
 
As you can tell, I really do admire all these dedicated professionals! It takes dedicated folks such as them to make this chapter a success, but it takes really special people to stay the course when you consider the challenges we have seen over the last couple of years.
 
When you are out and about and see any these folks, please take the time to help us recognize them for their efforts. They deserve it without hesitation.
 
Chris Lawrence
 ​

As high temperatures continue throughout the summer, OSH professionals should be prepared to protect employees who will be exposed to heat and wildfire smoke. Oregon OSHA adopted new permanent rules designed to protect workers from the dangers of exposure to wildfire smoke and heat.
 
The permanent heat rule went into effect June 15th, 2022 and the wildfire smoke rule on July 1st, 2022. These rules are designed to prevent heat-related illnesses and exposure to wildfire smoke, both of which have the capacity to be relentless during Southern Oregon summers.
At 80°F, the heat rule calls for employers to provide water, shade, the ability to communicate, and training. Once the heat index reaches 90°F or higher, there are further requirements, which include frequent cooling breaks and an acclimatization plan. A written plan is required for the heat rule, which is also required to be located at each work site.
 
When implementing the wildfire smoke rule, it is important to understand the basics, such as learning about AQI (Air Quality Index) and what the various numbers mean. With the wildfire smoke rule, the rule takes effect when the AQI reaches 101 and filtering face piece respirators need to be made available for voluntary use.
 
When the AQI reaches 251, employees exposed to wildfire smoke are required to wear a filtering face piece respirator in accordance with Appendix A in the rule. When the AQI reaches 501, Appendix A is no longer applicable, and you will need to implement a Respiratory Protection Program (i.e. medical evaluation and fit testing).
 
You can read more about the new requirements of the heat and wildfire smoke rules here:
https://osha.oregon.gov/OSHARules/adopted/2022/heat-wildfire-smoke-rule-summary-2022.pdf.
 
In safety, the first and best line of defense is to remove the hazard whenever possible. When possible, rescheduling work for the coolest part of the day is a great idea. For many professions, such as public works, law enforcement, etc., this is not always feasible. Setting up misting tents, providing cooling packs or vests, and my personal favorite for law enforcement: Cool Cop Body Armor Air Conditioning. As temperatures increase, this is must for police officers who are running call to call.
 
There are so many great ideas out there that Southern Oregon employers are putting together on how to keep folks cool at work. Please join us for the August meeting and get to know what other employers are doing to keep employees cool. See you then!
 
Heather Ashwill

Save the Date
The 2022 Southern Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Conference is coming to Southern Oregon on October 18-20 and will feature a mix of in-person and online training sessions this year. Please watch for our flyer coming out soon.
 
Professional Development Workshop
Tuesday, October 18th will feature an entirely in-person event including a 4-hour professional development workshop led by retired colonel Jeff Crapo of Ethos Academy. “Leadership is influence,” Jeff quotes John Maxwell. Jeff also quotes the Army leadership manual, “Leadership is the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.” Jeff will lead us through his model of leadership training and help us better understand how purpose, direction, and motivation all work together to make you a more effective leader. You won’t want to miss it!
 
Special Session Banquet
Following the Leadership Workshop, we will have a special luncheon speaker. Dr. Nancy Knechel will present her sleep science research on how a person with three or more sleep risk factors has a 70% increased risk of on-the-job injury. This is profound research for safety professionals and a new layer of focus that can have a lasting impact on worker safety.
 
Award Ceremony
Next on the agenda, we will host our annual ASSP Award Ceremony featuring Craig Hamelund from Oregon OSHA. This year, we are bringing back the Bertak Award for Safety Committee Recognition, and Craig will recognize leaders and committee members for their hard work and accomplishments. Along with the Bertak Award, we will once again honor the Lundberg Award winners, as well as Business Leader Who Gets It Award, Safety Committee Champion Award, and Chapter Safety Professional of the Year Award. Award applications are posted on our website at: www.soassp.org/conference. Apply to recognize your safety leaders today!
 
Networking Mixer
Lastly, we will bring back our popular Networking Mixer celebration free to all ASSP Members and Conference registrants. We will offer food and beverage along with a no-host bar. The committee is putting together a fun opportunity to get to know other safety pros from our community, and it’s always a great time.
 
Online Safety Conference
The next two days, October 19-20 will be entirely online with dynamic speakers hosted live from our local region and around the country. We are offering three keynote sessions from Jeff Crapo of Ethos Academy, Linda Tapp of Safety FUN-damentals, and Jake Mazulewicz on Psychological Safety.
 
We will also offer three breakout tracks including the safety and health track, the safety committee series, and we are bringing back the construction track. The safety and health track will offer such sessions as Safety Technology, Ergonomics, Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention, Safety Management, and First Aid Playbook. The safety committee track will offer SC101 Safety Committee Introduction, COVE Visual Literacy, Seven Secrets to Root Cause Analysis by TapRoot, SC201 Safety Committee Toolbox, and SC301 Safety Committee Engagement. We believe this will be our best safety committee series ever so bring your team and give them the tools and inspiration they need to accelerate your safety program. Our construction track will feature five sessions including eToolbox Safety Apps for Construction, Focus 4 Hazards in Construction, Excavation Inspections, Suicide Prevention in Construction, and Silica Awareness.
 
We look forward to seeing you in October!
 
Enthusiastically,
Michael Hill
SOSAFETY Conference Chair
www.sosafety.org
www.soassp.org/conference

The systems approach to learning why something went wrong (or went well) focuses on the interrelationship between four main system element categories: Management, Employee, Equipment, and Environment elements. Everything that happens at every organization, happens because of the way these elements work together. Good organizational learning practices will focus equally on each of these system elements in order to learn how this works and why sometimes things don’t work.
Todd Conklin and Bob Edwards teach us that blame is the enemy of organizational learning. It is often pointed out that blame halts any learning that could occur. But how do we know when blame is occurring? Focusing on each of these elements may put decisions made by individuals under the microscope. When those decisions are identified as errors, is that blame? I would answer with a “no.” Conklin and Edwards tell us that human error is normal. When leaders understand that error is normal, recognizing human error is not blame.
In my opinion, blame has a lot to do with perception. If an employee that made an error sees that the only system element that is being discussed is the Employee element, that will be perceived a certain way. It will be perceived as blame, and the learning will stop at that point unless something changes. If the information being provided is only being used against the employee, it is natural to expect that the information stream will stop, and then we will be stuck with incomplete information.
          An employee that made an error, may even want to take full responsibility (and blame) for an event that went wrong. They may be disappointed that they fell into the human error trap and made a predictable and preventable error. Leaders, managers, and supervisors will be tempted to accept the apology and allow the employee to take more than their share of the blame. This is the easy way out. No organizational learning can occur if you let this happen, and there is a good chance that the error will occur again.
Instead, use this opportunity to learn about what happened, why it happened, and what else could have happened. There is a story about the work being done around this mistake that everyone needs to hear and understand before real solutions can be found. Provide support to the employees that could make that error again and find out what solutions can be implemented to make the human error less likely or less damaging. Focus on all four major work system elements of an organization and look for multiple solutions. Get input from employees that do that work and understand it. We should never lay blame when we are trying to learn, but we should also never allow someone in our organization to steal the blame in lieu of organizational learning.
 
 
Sincerely,
​
David Hanson, CSP
President, ASSP – Southern Oregon Chapter
Senior Safety Management Consultant, SAIF Corporation

​OSHA is proposing to amend its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping regulation to require certain employers to electronically submit injury and illness information to OSHA that employers are required to keep under the recordkeeping regulation.
 
The agency proposes to amend its regulation in two key ways:

1. Require establishments with 20 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries to continue to electronically submit Form 300A, the annual summary information once a year to OSHA.

 

1. Require establishments with 100 or more employees in the highest-hazard industries to submit Form 300 Log and Form 301 incident report information once a year to OSHA. These establishments would continue to be required to electronically submit information from their Form 300A annual summary.

In addition, establishments with 250 or more employees not in designated high-hazard industries would no longer be required to electronically submit recordkeeping information to OSHA.
 
You can submit comments electronically by May 31, 2022, to Docket No. OSHA-2021-0006 via the federal rulemaking portal. For more information, please see the Federal Register notice.
 
You can learn more on OSHA’s injury and illness recordkeeping and reporting requirements website.

​Special thanks to Jon Sowers, our chapter member from the Roseburg area, who graciously stepped in to serve as the nominations and elections committee chair and did such a phenomenal job by recruiting new nominees and by filling the election slate.
 
According to our bylaws (https://www.soassp.org/uploads/2/5/8/5/25852043/southern_oregon_assp_bylaws_signed.pdf), we need to post the election slate of officers at least 30 days before our election which is to be held the first meeting in May. This is being posted on our website and sent to all members to fulfill those requirements.
 
Please carefully look over the slate of nominees and we invite you to consider supporting it and be ready to vote at our May meeting. This notice is to also serve to allow anyone who would like to be added to the slate to do so by following the steps of our bylaws as described below.
 
Chapter members may submit a signed petition nominating an individual for elective office. The petition will require 7 signatures to be valid.  The petition shall be accompanied by a written acceptance by the nominee(s) and shall be submitted to the Chairperson of the Nominations & Elections Committee 15 days in advance of the election. 
 
Thank you for your membership in our chapter and we look forward to our new Executive Committee members to be voted into office in May and to begin their service on July 1st, 2022.
 
Michael Hill
ASSP Southern Oregon Chapter
Conference Chair

​Very little rain this winter and early snow melts on Mount McLaughlin herald a potentially disastrous summer for Southern Oregon. I put together some tips to help you start now, so that when things do get bad this summer, you will be more prepared to stay safe.
 
Things to do:

• Continuously monitor emergency service conversations on scanners so you know about problems early.
• Inventory your valuables. An easy way to do this is to walk through your home and scan your belongings. When you turn in damages to your insurance company, you can specify makes and models of valuable items and be compensated at an appropriate level.
• Stock your vehicles with water, inexpensive tools, bed rolls, tents, phone chargers, shoes and N95 dust masks.
• Have 72-hour kits ready to go. Include rain gear, clothing, easy to prepare food and extra cash. Consider a roll of coins so you can access goods in vending machines in areas that have been evacuated.
• Look for flammables on your property and clean them up and keep them away from your home.
• Maintain your landscaping around your home and keep vegetation short.
• Consider landscaping materials that are less flammable such as rock or concrete.
• Back-up your digital documents onto a USB drive or two and keep these in your 72-hour kit.
• Coordinate evacuation points with family so that if you are separated you have a couple places you can meet.
• Never let your gas tanks go below ¾ of a tank. Fill your tank.

 
 
Things to get:

• Consider having a trailer or truck bed outfitted with gear for when you need to evacuate the area.
• Radio scanner so that you can monitor emergency disaster services effectively and know about problem areas to avoid.
• Have radios or satellite communication options for when cell service collapses.
• Get fire resistant document carriers and keep them in an area where you can access them quickly, preferably near your 72-hour kits.
• N95’s or R95’s particulate masks
• Work gloves
• Bed rolls and tents
• Fire extinguishers
• Water
• First aid kits and emergency blankets
• Hand sanitizer

 
This is not a complete list, but hopefully it gets you thinking about ways you can prepare for disaster in 2022.
 
David Hanson, CSP
President, ASSP – Southern Oregon Chapter
Senior Safety Management Consultant, SAIF Corporation

The history of the safety profession is no stranger to innovators. From the Heinrich’s pyramid to the Five Principles of Human Performance, we are constantly looking for newer and better ways to think about the daunting task of keeping people safe at work. I’ve never been one to dismiss a new safety philosophy because it helps me to think about the topic in a different way. There is a tendency to re-imagine the older approaches as being archaic and the newer approaches as being more innovative. C.S. Lewis used to call this sort of approach, “chronological snobbery.” We should remember that when each approach is placed in its proper perspective, there is always something we can learn. 
 
This brings me to the ideas proposed by American engineer, W. Edwards Deming. When I first learned about his approaches to statistical process control, I was more interested in using the techniques to measure and maintain quality products. His landmark book Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position was the most important under-noticed book of the early eighties. As my career began to steer toward safety, Deming’s messages resonated in my attempt to manage safety as well. As it turns out, Deming’s approaches could easily be applied to the management of any measurable attribute, especially safety.
 
Dan Peterson, in his famous ASSP book on Techniques of Safety Management, a Systems Approach, draws a parallel between Deming’s “Obligations of Management” and translates these into some familiar safety concepts:

• concentrating on long-range, permanent solutions rather than short-term reductions in incident rates
• all injuries are unacceptable
• injuries are a function of the system at work; reduce fear in an organization by encouraging employees to point out problems that need solving
• design safety into our projects to prevent injuries long term
• eliminate incentives that inhibit actual injury reduction and examine work for accident traps

 
Closer investigation reveals that recent safety management innovations resonantly echo Deming’s Total Quality Management principles. What can he still teach us about keeping people safe on the job? I think it’s time for another fresh look at the management concepts that Deming taught us years ago.
​

​David Hanson, CSP
President, ASSP – Southern Oregon Chapter
Senior Safety Management Consultant, SAIF Corporation

​By David Hanson, CSP
 
Some call it a JHA; others call it a JSA. It is a Job Hazard Analysis or Job Safety Analysis, respectively. Often maligned and dismissed by some, this simple tool can be integral to your success at keeping employees safe on the job.
 
What is it?
In its basic format, JHA/JSA lists the attributes of a task: 1) What the task is; 2) Hazard: what can hurt us; 3) Controls: what we do to prevent injury or exposure to the hazard. This is a tool that is used to train new operators and remind experienced operators of the best practices that have been learned over time.
 
It is simple and it is easy. It is also never fully complete. But that is okay. In some ways the fact that a JHA is never really finished is actually a strength in itself.
 
Important OSHA rules that a JHA can help you comply with:
 
1)hazard communication standard
2)PPE hazard assessment
3)periodic safety inspections where behaviors and conditions are observed
4)incident investigations
5)fulfilling the general duty requirement of taking the necessary steps to furnish employment that is safe.
 
If you are not using JHAs, you may need to implement other techniques to assure safety compliance. In my opinion, the JHA helps you cover so many different elements, it has always seemed like a natural first choice for achieving compliance and excellence.
 
Advantages of the JHA
 
1)Workers, supervisors and managers alike can help update JHAs when they review them periodically.
2)SOPs must always be up-to date. JHAs seldom are. For this reason, a JHA can be updated more often without the need to be comprehensive.
3)A JHA can help identify different approaches and help your organization identify the best practices and standardize as a team.
4)The JHA can easily reference current standard operating procedures.
5)The JHA can be an integral part of continuous improvement at your company.
6)The JHA can be a great tool for training new employees and a great way to maintain concepts learned by experience.
 
I remember one time during an OSHA inspection when one of the inspectors asked a machine operator about the safety rules for his machine. The operator instantly pulled out a Job Hazard Analysis and began walking him through the basic safety elements. I was so proud of all our efforts to keep using the simple but mighty JHA!
 
David Hanson
 

Please welcome our newest Executive Team members: Nilda Martinez and Jeffery Mook. Nilda Martinez is our new Government Affairs chair. Nilda works for Oregon OSHA and recently passed her ASP exam. Jeff is our new Membership Coordinator chair and works for Boise Cascade. If you get a chance, please thank them for taking on these new responsibilities. We are fortunate to have them on our chapter executive committee!
 
On February 1st, we have Bruce Hollcroft joining us for our chapter meeting to discuss Risk Management. Mark your calendars because the first day of the month often sneaks up on us. This program will be a good one.
 
We are moving the starting time of our ASP-CSP & SMS study group to 4:30 PM on third Tuesdays for about an hour. Our next study group event will be on February 15th. Please let me know if you would like to join our study group. It is free, and most of the topics we cover also apply to elements of the SMS certification (Safety Management Specialist). If you are working on your SMS certification, let me know and we can focus some of our study on topics that overlap. Our chapter is always looking for ways to help support your work in the safety profession.
 
It probably goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has not made anyone’s job easier, which is just one more reason I am so grateful for the outstanding service that your executive committee members provide. If you get a chance, could you please thank them for all they do to help our chapter? Because of their efforts, our chapter achieved the Platinum Chapter status for the 2020-2021, and we were recently recognized by Society for this achievement.
 
With the completion of our first virtual conference well behind us now, the planning for the 2022 conference has begun. Mike Hill will be our conference chair again this year, and he will need a team to help him put together a great conference. It takes a lot of input and work from representatives in our community to help put together these world-class conferences. We can really use your help. Please consider joining our winning conference planning team!
 
I look forward to 2022 being a good year for our chapter, and I want to thank all of you that participated in the survey we sent out last month. Your input helps your executive committee provide the best programs and events possible.
 
Happy 2022!
 
Sincerely,
David Hanson