Pictured left to right (Kirk Thompson, Timmy Brown, Joe Dooley, Mindy Himes, and James Cole)
The 2023 Behavioral Based Safety conference theme was Be your Brothers and Sisters Keeper.
The conference is held to build the BBS culture, which is a union lead program where brothers and sisters work to keep each other safe. IBEW Local 15 attended the Behavioral Safety Conference in Irving, Texas the week of December 11th.
There were approximately 600 attendees during the 3-day BBS conference. Local 15 representatives presented during the breakout informational sessions. These sessions included a live lab near miss presentation given by Mindy Himes and James Cole from Local 15 Kincaid Station, showing the dangers of trapped chemicals in piping. This live lab was presented to help show the importance of reporting near misses so they can be used as a learning tool to keep workers safe. Tim Brown and Joe Dooley gave a presentation about the history of our safety culture and how it has evolved over the years. The presentation was a small glimpse of how our safety culture has changed from the start of the industrialized revolution to what we share in today’s workplaces. They shared how companies and workers have fought to hold control over safety standards throughout the years. They also shared how our new culture has helped to improve injury rates, and how it is more about learning from events than blaming people for a mistake. They discussed how we continue to build onto this culture through BBS and some of the key principles of this culture.