Four Seconds to Safety

Perhaps the best tool to come along in industrial construction (at least as far as safety is concerned) is the Job Safety Analysis. This is a tool that makes everyone stop and think about the different risks associated with the task. Crews normally gather and write out the JSA before doing a job. This exercise greatly reduces the number and severity of injuries where this is done.

Simply take a four-second “reset”. Take four seconds before starting some new familiar task. This act of refocusing has been shown to reduce the probability of an injury by more than 90% versus not taking the four seconds. You may have done the task you are about to perform thousands of times before. In your mind, you know that you could do it with your eyes closed. It is usually not the task itself but some small thing you did not anticipate that causes the incident.

It is easy to imagine the different activities we do every day and how this applies. For example, getting in a forklift and having a quick look around. We change our thinking from where we are going to focusing on the area, road conditions, and other vehicles and so on. This is the “reset” we are talking about.

Believe it or not, four seconds is all it takes. Get in this habit of taking four seconds and you significantly reduce your chance of injury. If you get into the habit of taking chances or simply cruising from job to job, you will eventually be injured.