Safety Moments: The Value in Sharing Lesson Learned
Joe Whiteman, director of safety services  1-2021

One of the many great benefits of being an ASCC member is the knowledge base that comes with it. We pride ourselves on the quality of our members and the professionalism they bring to the association. Whether it be experience with technical knowledge, operations, or means and methods, each member has their own specialty and experience with a certain topic. We at ASCC strive to do our part to share and provide members the opportunities to utilize each other as trusted resources. One great way we have been encouraging members to do this is the Safety Moment, an agenda item for all ASCC meetings. The Safety Moment kicks off every ASCC meeting. It sets the tone and reinforces ASCC’s commitment to safety by showing the priority of safety as being the first topic discussed. The Safety Moment provides everyone in the meeting an opportunity to share a near hit, incident, close call or learning moment. It allows the member to share what happened, potential contributing factors and corrective or mitigating efforts they have implemented. This provides tremendous value to others in the meeting as they are made aware of all the factors pertaining to the Safety Moment, along with the “Cliff's Notes” on what they need to do to ensure the same thing does not happen to them. Sharing this knowledge is tremendously helpful and impactful. As part of the Safety and Risk Management Council’s (SRMC) strategic plan, a strategy currently being implemented is sharing those Safety Moments with all members, not just those in attendance at the meetings. To do that we will be making those available on the website. I would like to encourage all members to share their Safety Moments. As I mentioned earlier, we are each other’s best resource and can learn so much from one another without having to learn it the “hard way.” Please feel free to reach out to me through the safety hotline or email me at jwhiteman@ascconline.org to share your Safety Moment. Stay tuned as we develop and update the website; Safety Moments will be a new feature on the safety page.