Before becoming the director of corporate environmental health and safety for Therma-Tru Corporation, a company specializing in the manufacture of state-of-the-art metal and fiberglass entry doors, Rick Goodman focused his career on operations and engineering.
A large, sophisticated safety department and a strong concern for operational safety at one of Canada’s major utilities were not enough to avert several fatalities or avoid multiple major injuries—one resulting in a double amputation. “They were under serious regulatory pressure to bring their incident rate down, but they had really done everything they could do, except for the behavioral approach,” says Grainne Matthews, Quality Safety Edge (QSE) behavioral safety consultant.
“Think of looking at the U. S. map and in your mind go from Houston up through Louisiana, to the right through Mississippi, through the middle of Tennessee, part of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and up to New York. That was the pipeline when we started out,” says Anthony “Corky” Carter, certified safety professional and principal safety representative.
E-SAFTE at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility stands for “Environment and Safety Actions for Team Excellence.” Lockheed Martin strives to instill the mindset in all employees that accidents and injuries are preventable and avoidable, which is a mainstay of the behavior-based safety (BBS) initiative started in 2004 as part of the organization’s overall safety initiative. “I volunteered to participate in an E-SAFTE team because I’ve been injured,” explains Lewis Love, the BBS site coordinator. “I wanted to be accountable to myself and my teammates to prevent further injuries.”