Welcome back to Teaching the Unteachables where we dive into teaching and learning
methodologies for professionals like you. As instructors we have the responsibility
to teach our students how to take care of themselves. Learn more about personal
safety at OSHA.com.
All right welcome everyone thank you for joining Did You Know? the ESCO HVAC
podcast. So we are hanging out with JR Cock. JR how are you doing my friend? I'm
doing good how are you? I'm doing extremely well and I know we're starting
the school season back up and I know you're as busy as can be. So I really
appreciate your time today. Absolutely. Now one of the things that we've been
we've talked about before we wanted to dive into is safety and I would almost
say the lack of safety training in many of our programs. Would you say that
it's relatively consistent in the industry? This is true. And a lot of it is
because we don't have the formal training or we don't have the curriculum
for doing classes like say OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 in the classrooms. So let's dive
a little bit into safety in the classrooms and tell us a little bit about
your background especially in safety. Well I've been doing out of high school
I went into a two-year technical program for HVAC and I didn't think
about safety probably for the first three years or so that I was out. Until you hurt something.
Until I hurt myself. And I got a finger here that doesn't string now. Oh okay so that was the thing that started it.
Yeah yeah a little bit of a sawzall. Mine was a wire wheel strand in the eyeball.
Yeah. People get on me all the time now because I'm like Mr. Safety and I'm like
it's for a reason a very good reason. When you impale something onto your body
you think twice about it the next time. Funny how pain does come with that too.
I always say the best lessons are the ones we learn. Exactly. So I'm fairly young you know I'm
just out of high school I go to your tech school. I worked three years in the
industry and like residential and then I get hurt. The fact that I had gone to
tech school when I the next job I went to I was able to walk into a place and
they said hey what about supervising some installations. I've done that at the
residential level. Sure. And so I started supervising on commercial sites just
managing the job site and once it became someone you know other
people were I was in charge of other people. You're reliable for other people's
safety. Exactly. So I won't say that the first few years that it was you know
that I even knew where they asked questions at you know. Exactly. It was
something that okay well we started to have you know we have toolbox talks you
know weekly talks and stuff and so I learned over time. Of course I'm working
a lot of union jobs and I got the possibility of people showing up and
people giving you bad advice like go out the back door if OSHA shows up. That
doesn't work out really well. Right. And so it's much better to just do something.
Be prepared. Right. What really got me involved is after I'd done the
commercial installs I got to working at a college in facilities around when
Virginia Tech happened and we we started doing you know active shooter training
and other types of it just built our safety program up and then I've I've run
into situations over the years where we needed some leadership in that area and
I've always sat on safety committees since that day since those times. Okay
so like from your experience if we're looking at our program and we're
looking at the the safety topics that our students should be exposed to where
would you start me what are the fundamentals that we need to embrace?
Well we talked to you mentioned curriculum do we know do we know where
to find curriculum? Yeah exactly where do you go for it? Um we can hit that as a
separate topic but there's this thing called it's focus for the OSHA and the
focus for is you can go right to OSHA's website and type in focus for into their
into their search engine and it'll come up with focus for and they that is one
area where they've already written a bunch of curriculum for you. Okay
excellent. There is actual tests and everything that are on there if you type
in focus for and the focus for are the areas where OSHA has identified the most
incidents have taken place in the industry and those would be falls
electrocution, caught in and caught between so trapped you know in
some areas. The mention could fall into caught in. Yeah caught between you'd be
like getting crushed between a piece of machinery or something you know a
forklift or stake you could fall into those area. So those are those are
definitely no-brainers those are you start with those and and then you know
we spent time out in the field and we kind of learned that there's some other
areas that maybe we were lacking in ourselves and I've built upon that. I've
of course touch on PPE in class. Yeah exactly. Material handling. Yeah oh I got
my sheet metal scars. Stitches even. Definitely lockout tag out which would
fall into like an electrical area. Hascom you know SDS sheets. Yep.
Confined space okay here here's one that we often as HVAC people is being in a
cooling tower a confined space. Oh man all right. Definitely addicts and crawl
spaces. And then one that I like to throw in there is rigging. I spend some time
students learning how to rig. I know as a commercial installer first time
helicopters flew over my head and I've done that it's not like we did that all
the time but I've written that and they walk you through it when you hire
someone to do that for you but you know still very intimidating situation
especially if you've never you know learned how to do any kind of rigging
before. So we spent some time doing rigging in class. So when we think about
like our students and preparing our students for for training what are some
of the dangers that are faced by students when we start getting into you
know safety education? Well there's definitely barriers to barriers to doing
things that are safe. Like to think about the students some of the barriers
are within ourselves. I mean I've gotten hurt and even teaching safety I
continue to get hurt sometimes. Many of us are I'm a bull in a china shop and I
mean that in that I have to get if there's a task that's at hand I have to
power through and get that task in hand. I guess I'm not saying I'm bull in a
china shop as far as clumsy or something like that but I've got to get a
task done and sometimes very often. Yeah very often and that can that can get you
in a lot of trouble. I mean if you're not willing to wait for the proper material
lift to lift something in fact instead you're like oh I'm still strong I'll put
that up there in that up in that attic or whatever you can get yourself hurt
that way. So we create some of our own. Of course there's also employers pushing
for the time getting things done in a certain amount of time.
Sure. And there's ignorance just not knowing what question to ask and then
I'd say the other thing is complacency. Once you know how to do something
safely will you continue to do that or will you get comfortable enough where
you're not paying attention. I see so many motorcycle riders out there right
now and I think you know everyone's safe riding that motorcycle as
they first get out on the road and then if you you know then it starts becoming
like driving a car once they figured out all the controls and over time maybe
they don't think about things the way they should and you know it's the same
way and that I've worked you know on a job site for a lot of our students so so
you know teaching them to identify those things is something that we need to do.
And out of that many of those have become regulations that we are required
to follow. Well yeah that's where OSHA comes into place. I mean that we you
know regulation comes from the things that you know can hurt and kill us. Right.
So we get into talking about well OSHA and how OSHA came about.
And OSHA came about in the 1970 the OSHA was passed and the OSHA set up what we
we see as OSHA now regulations have built from that. There's four main group
classifications of that we can train in. There's general industry which you could
think of as like a facility setting or you know an office setting. There's
construction and the construction is slightly different than general
industry because everything's set up in a temporary set setting. I mean some of
the you know guardrails and things like that they're slightly different just
because it's in a temporary setting or you or how you're going to assemble that
structure could be. And then there's a maritime you can get authorized to train
in a maritime and then our agriculture is its own little area of classifications.
Now it can be a little bit different between states and regions in accordance
to federal regulations is that right? This is true we have we have I think it's
ten regions federally but many states before 1970 had regulations safety
regulations okay safety offices and so when OSHA the OSHA came in OSHA came in
the place and we started having federal jurisdiction a lot you were they allowed
states to keep their own shoes yeah keep their if they were more stringent or was
it a well it's gonna be like any code like the International Fuel Gas Code
right those codes it's gonna be the minimum exactly exactly so so you're if
you're gonna if you're a state entity and you're working on your own not only
are you gonna have a federal office probably in your state or in your region
and you're gonna be part of a federal region like Washington next door to us
and Idaho they have their own OSHA offices but they also have federal
offices okay so so they do their own thing but it's got to be more stringent
than what OSHA OSHA is gonna be the minimum sure so OSHA is the the
fundamental and we see that in our own you know HVAC regulations you know you
can have certain requirements at a state level but you may have a city or a
county that has more stringent requirements you still have to meet all
the basics of the state but you dive a little bit deeper so it's kind of the
same way with OSHA from the federal perspective you still have to meet this
everywhere but you may be required to dive deeper into your own region or your
own state so it's very important to know what those requirements are in your area
especially if you're moving from one region or one state to another exactly
awesome all right so let's talk about the classes right so where and how could
one get authorized by OSHA to provide OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 training and the
cards that go along with them okay well I'll tell you what I did and I had a
background in safety because I ran I was on safety committees so so I went to my
regional office OSHA office and that's in Washington and they have a training
facility there Pacific Northwest OSHA yeah I'm looking up at my card right now
Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center of University of Washington gotcha that's
the regional yeah and so so in the Pacific Northwest if you're in if you're
listening and you're in Idaho Washington Oregon or Las Vegas and and actually you
might have there's a few more of them but that was one to me and and first off
they're gonna they're gonna ask you to like document over your experience
experience the in safety and you and so I don't know what the threshold level is
there but I was able to document enough experience with my safety committees
that I've been on and so forth that say this is a certain percentage of my job
I had to present it to them as a certain percentage of my career job okay and
once that's approved then you get to go in and take a train the trainer course
I think it's OSHA 500 and 510 is occupational safety and standards one that
kind of goes through the standards book and you got to have a standards book
this primary source right right there's the code that you're you got to get you
got to at least know how to look something up right at least be able how
to find it yes so so you take the you take a train to train a course and you
take that and then you and then you're authorized and that's the term terminologies
that they use I have my cards that I'm authorized to provide training in
construction you have to pick one of those four that we talked mentioned
earlier oh okay so doesn't it's not a blanket coverage for all the different
sectors exactly exactly I was just on a trip and I ran into someone from another
state it was oh you're an OSHA trainer and I said yeah where you live and oh
that's too far away to help them out but sure he's looking for somebody that's in
that specific area right the train so okay so yeah so you get authorized to
train in a certain area you've got a certain set of curriculum if I check for
a 10-hour or 30-hour card there is gonna be a certain amount of curriculum that
you have to teach according to OSHA standards and then you get some leeway
in some other areas so I can kind of tailor the rest of the content of the
content for my little bit more specific to the application right and there's
nothing where that says that if we're talking about rigging I can't focus on
rigging for HDAC yeah exactly you know so and so forth and what about testing
then do you become like a proctor for testing no I hold all my own tests I can
write my own tests okay so there's no standard OSHA tests that I have to
include I have to teach the content right I do have to prove their their
knowledge competency the big one is if this is the hardest for me as an
instructor of a two if I do a 30-hour card that's almost two weeks content
yeah exactly that's a lot to fit in yes definitely will the students show up
every day right because OSHA makes you maintain a log of your time's there of
who's there they have to sign it and if they're not there that day one day out
of that two weeks then they don't qualify for their card okay so after
after meeting the requirements of your say we're doing an OSHA 10 and we've
met our 10 hours of physical classroom time what's the procedure for acquiring
your card then at that point I submit in a report to the University of Washington
in my case yeah University of Washington in my case I submitted a report that
says that these people completed it and I pay a fee I think it just went up to
like ten dollars a card for me so it's not super expensive so even you within
my just pay for it out of my budget exactly but you can have your students
pay for it I suppose and then then it's pretty quick I usually get the cards
back in about a week or so and then you take I have to I have to take a picture
of the front and back of each card and keep that for my records and I can hand
them out to everybody they come with a test so I know it's a lot to add
particularly for doing like that he said the 30 hour that's a lot of physical
class time but now we're talking about you know introducing safety into our
curriculum as well and I'm sure any school administration is going to look
that go well yeah it's definitely an important curriculum to have within our
portfolio but what if it's something that we're looking for what if our
advisory board is asking for our students to acquire their OSHA 10 or
their OSHA 30 before going into the field but we're not going to be
equipped or maybe we don't have the additional hours to introduce that
curriculum into our program what are other ways that the students can get
their 10 and 30 hour training I try not to name drop but it's just something
that I'm working with right now and I'm working with the interplay publishers
and other terms have the same deal but you a lot of them have agreements to
provide OSHA training virtual online style training yeah so you could make it
you could have it as part of that those readings or whatever that you guys a
requirement for home training or is home assignments nothing like the hands-on
though we all know that well we should be doing hands-on when we're in the lab
no matter what our curriculum is right so I mean you know they're gonna have
their safety glasses on and maybe I have mine update SDA even if I wasn't doing
OSHA cards they'd be up to it they know what an SDSG is and stuff
I'm sort of that I mean we all have experience in the field we've all I mean
we're HVAC people yeah oh we know what won't kill us I can tell you that and
you know I found over the time that the students really respond well when you
share those experiences life lessons are top curriculum content so no you know
you don't need a you don't need to hand out cards that teach safety
it's nice yeah fantastic well JR I really appreciate your time and we hope
that anyone that is interested in adding OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 safety to their
programs now have a little bit better direction we sure appreciate your time
today absolutely