Career Path > Safety
Safety
kevarc:
Sorry to dig up an old post.
To be Safety, I agree you better have a thick skin or they will eat your alive.
To management you are the guy who is making them spend money and slow things down.
To the workers you are the guy telling they have to wear something or do something they do not want to.
You always have one joker who wants to know why he has to do something when OSHA may not state it clearly. That is when your eyes roll, your eyelid twitches and then you fall back on the General Duty clause.
There are days when you feel like you are adult daycare.
Already Gone:
But it's a good job if you can get it :)
Some of y'all jes need ta keep on swangin' that thar meter, though. It is sadly true that you can get pretty far (but no farther) with an RO-20 hanging off your shoulder even if you are still waiting for your first clue.
Chimera:
T Tarbox's comments would help explain why one almost never sees a safety person anywhere near the job - which would account for having to research an incident that happened two days ago. Yanno, all that paperwork can be hard on the butt.
I'm not picking on you, T Tarbox. I don't know if I've worked with you on the same job. But I do know spotting the safety man on the job is almost as rare as spotting UFOs. That might help explain why that lowly RP Tech with his RO-20 hanging from his shoulder seems to get stuck with enforcing the safety rules more often than not. The safety guy must be busy advancing beyond that "but no farther" point in his career.
No hostilities towards anyone intended - just an observation from 30+ years on the job.
Already Gone:
These are rather astute observations. The sorry truth is - especially in nuclear plants - that the money and resources are not allocated to the place where they do the most good (actually, to where they avert the greatest harm).
I'm a little spoiled in that I usually work on the turbine floor only. I get to spend the majority of my time right where the work happens. It is a luxury that most safety specialists do not have, and many do not appreciate. While I get to dedicate my time to a smaller group who are all working in one place, my counterparts have hundreds of people working all over the site.
While there are RP's at hand at every work location to keep that 100 cpm of loose contamination off your ankle, there is one safety specialist tasked with supporting crews who are simultaneously working everywhere from the switch yard to the cavity to the intake to the S/G's. They are spread pretty thin and can't always spend the time with their people that I can with mine.
There also seems to be a mentality among some companies that the site will provide the safety oversight so they don't even staff that position, or they add it as an additional responsibility for their ALARA staff. Either way, they are making a mistake.
So, why do RP's end up carrying the ball for us so much? Well, for one thing, you're there. For another, you are pre-disposed to be aware of hazards and are compliance oriented. Not to mention the fact that most of you are capable of the job we are doing because you are already doing it in one specialized area.
Out of the 40 Safety Specialists in my company, 13 of us are former RP Techs. That "but no farther" point in your career is anywhere you choose to put it. If your attitude is:
--- Quote from: MeterSwangin on Jun 15, 2009, 11:28 ---
The Safety guys come in two flavors: 1) the burned-out looking to quietly cruise into retirement without ever again doing anything useful, and 2) busy-body hero wannabees too lame to actually get into the fire department.
After 2 years group 2 loses steam and merges into group 1.
Ponder deeply: Can I get passionate about chinstraps? Will proper earplug use fulfill my purpose on earth? Can my kids really be proud of daddy's new parking lot speedbump?
--- End quote ---
then that point is evident for all to see.
MeterSwangin:
Out of the 40 Safety Specialists in my company, 13 of us are former RP Techs. That "but no farther" point in your career is anywhere you choose to put it. [/quote]
Safety guys are good people. Just not into carrying the ball. Or receiving, blocking, or snapping. Or taping ankles on the sideline.
Content in the 5th row yelling "blitz....blitz!." Then out early before the traffic gets thick.
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