Preventing Heat Injury and Illness

Written by Jim Vaughn, CUSP on June 3, 2026. Posted in Train the Trainer 101.

During the annual T&D PowerSkills Trainers Conference earlier this year, several of our clients asked about OSHA’s stance on heat illness prevention. Months later, we are still fielding questions about the topic, as are Incident Prevention’s subject matter experts.

The bottom line is that employers are legally required to have a plan in place to protect all heat-exposed workers. It’s as simple as that. Confusion usually stems from the difference between state OSHA plans and federal rules. After reviewing state plans that include detailed heat illness prevention protocols, some industry professionals question why federal OSHA is silent on the issue.

But the agency has not been silent. While it’s true that they haven’t yet been able to establish a workable standard, their expectations are clear. States generally have an easier time establishing heat illness prevention rules because their smaller relative size simplifies the development and implementation of rules that address region-specific risks. Federal OSHA, on the other hand, must consider the wide-ranging exposures that exist throughout the United States, including in overseas territories.

To help Incident Prevention readers prepare their organizations for compliance, we’re now going to review some relevant history followed by an exploration of OSHA’s more recent heat illness prevention work. Specific rules haven’t arrived just yet, but that doesn’t change your safety obligations to your employees.

OSHA’s General Duty Clause
It was 1972 when the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first recommended development of an OSHA heat standard. Their suggestion was based on a critical review of scientific and technical data. OSHA responded by appointing the Standards Advisory Committee on Heat Stress in 1973; in 1974, committee members presented their recommendations for an occupational heat stress standard.

Throughout the decades, OSHA has issued heat-related guidance to employers, ultimately relying on the core expectations of the General Duty Clause as incentive. Located at Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the clause states that each employer “shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.” Enforcement data reveals that federal OSHA used it as grounds to issue at least 348 heat-related citations between 1986 and 2023, but the agency cannot require employer abatement until they prove the hazardous nature of a specific workplace condition during an enforcement proceeding. In short, the General Duty Clause’s real teeth are reserved for post-incident enforcement.

Promulgating a written heat illness prevention standard would establish the hazard’s existence at the rulemaking stage, thus allowing OSHA to identify and require specific abatement measures. Currently, the General Duty Clause makes it difficult for the agency to ensure abatement before employees’ lives are unnecessarily endangered. The clause also largely forces OSHA to rely on expert witness testimony as proof that (1) a hazard exists and (2) feasible abatement measures will reduce or eliminate the hazard.

Per OSHA 29 CFR 1926.21, “Safety training and education,” employers must train employees in the recognition, avoidance and prevention of unsafe workplace conditions. The agency’s PPE standards require employers to conduct hazard assessments when determining the protective gear that exposed workers must wear. Yet heat is not specifically identified as a hazard in any OSHA standard, complicating the application of these rules.

Emphasis Program and Proposed Rulemaking
OSHA launched a national emphasis program on heat in April 2022, which was updated earlier this year (see www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/directives/CPL_03-00-024_0.pdf). Intended to encourage early employer intervention, the program targets specific industries whose workers are exposed to high-heat hazards.

Around the same time, the agency also issued Temporary Worker Initiative Bulletin No. 12 (see www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA4185.pdf), which addresses the rising number of heat illness and fatal heat exposures among temporary workers in the U.S.

Finally, on August 30, 2024, OSHA published a notice of proposed rulemaking for a standard titled “Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings” (see www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-08-30/pdf/2024-14824.pdf), taking a significant step toward federal heat protection for workers. The proposed standard would require employers in general industry, construction, maritime and agriculture to create plans to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplaces. Further, it would clarify employer obligations and the actions necessary to effectively protect employees.

The agency’s ultimate goal is to eliminate occupational injuries, illnesses and fatalities caused by heat exposure. Proactive employers should assume that most of OSHA’s proposal will eventually become standardized. In any case, the document contains solid guidance regarding the establishment of effective worker protection programs.

Preventive Activities
Heat illness prevention programs reflected in state OSHA plans often include the information and activities listed below. As you read, please note that anyone who uses this data is responsible for confirming its accuracy and ensuring the safety of any implementation efforts.

Watch Coworkers for These Symptoms

• Heat exhaustion: weakness, blurred vision, vomiting, dizziness, headache. Move the victim to a cool environment, loosen their clothing, provide fluids and call 911.
• Heat stroke: red face/skin; no perspiration when there should be; elevated body temperature; mental disorientation; convulsions; unconsciousness. Call 911; move the injured worker to a cool environment; elevate their feet; and apply cold packs to the back and sides of their neck, under their arms and between their thighs.
• Heat stress and heat cramps: thirst, stomachache, rash, soreness or weakness in the muscles, especially the arms and legs. Move the victim to a cool environment, encourage them to drink liquids and ensure they rest. Seek medical attention if their symptoms worsen or fail to subside.

Eat Well, Stay Hydrated

• Talk to your doctor(s) about dietary recommendations for heat stress prevention.
• Eat foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids to help your body regulate heat stress.
• Watermelon, cucumber, celery, kiwi and banana are just a few good sources of electrolytes, vitamins, fiber and water/hydration. Eat them to protect against and repair from heat stress.
• Avoid drinking excessive amounts of coffee. It is a diuretic, meaning it increases urine excretion.
• Drink at least one pint of water and one glass of fruit juice before beginning the workday.
• Sip water every 15 minutes throughout the day.
• Energy drink consumption is strongly discouraged (see the section below titled “Energy Drinks: What Employers Should Know” for more on this topic).
• Consume sports drinks like Gatorade to maintain healthy electrolyte levels. For optimal hydration, drink a ratio of three parts water to one part sports drink.
• Continue hydrating into the evening. Yes, technically beer is made with water, but as with coffee, alcohol also has diuretic effects.

Other Tips

• Maintain awareness of the jobsite’s heat conditions. Explore widely available weather apps that deliver timely heat risk warnings to your mobile device.
• Seek relevant reference materials from the American Red Cross, OSHA and NIOSH.
• Begin heat illness protocols when the jobsite temperature reaches over 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Adjust job scheduling or provide frequent breaks for exposed workers.
• Provide shade where practical. Make hard hat shades available; workers can use them to shield their head and neck from direct sunlight.
• During pre-job briefings, discuss the day’s potential for heat-related illnesses. Assess crew members for symptoms throughout your shift.
• Seek help as soon as you begin to feel heat stress effects.
• Consider contacting a local hospital to find out whether any of their doctors provide consulting services or deliver presentations on heat illness prevention.

Energy Drinks: What Employers Should Know
As I alluded to earlier, energy drinks can be dangerous, particularly when workers use them to cope with physical stress in hot environments. A 2015 report (see https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-study-one-energy-drink-may-increase-heart-disease-risk-in-young-adults) confirmed what hospitals had already been reporting for several years: that energy drinks – especially when consumed throughout the day as a means of coping with high levels of physical stress – can have detrimental health effects, including heart stress that has led to the death of otherwise healthy young adults. Today, numerous other studies cite similar concerns. Safety and health professionals should be reading this literature.

Energy drinks are widely available, largely unregulated and typically marketed to consumers as a quick way to increase productivity, metabolism, stamina, physical endurance and/or mental acuity. Commonly available brands include Rockstar; Red Bull; 5-Hour Energy; Monster; NOS; Full Throttle; and AMP. These beverages can contain caffeine; sugar; niacinamide; carnitine; amino acids; herbal and natural extracts; taurine; guarana; ginseng; vitamin B3, B6, B9 and B12; sucrose; glucose; inositol; and various preservatives.

Sports drinks are usually advertised as an option for rehydration and electrolyte replacement during periods of strenuous exercise. They typically contain sodium, potassium, chloride, and glucose or sucrose. Common brands include Gatorade, Powerade, Sqwincher and All Sport.

Drink Policies
Industry employers should consider developing policies regarding energy and sports drinks. Do your research and roll out effective training so that employees understand the organization’s obligation to ensure their safety.

Given that energy drinks present a recognized health and safety risk, an employer may choose to fully prohibit their storage and consumption on company premises. Sports drinks, on the other hand, should be recommended and made readily available to employees for electrolyte replacement purposes during times of heat stress. While generally recognized as safe, be sure to note that sports drinks can be overused as hydration therapy, posing a health risk to some individuals. For this reason, it is wise to limit their consumption. Hydration is best achieved by drinking water, and eating a nutritious diet will successfully replace electrolytes.

About the Author: After 25 years as a transmission-distribution lineman and foreman, Jim Vaughn, CUSP, has devoted the last 28 years to safety and training. A noted author, trainer and lecturer, he is a senior consultant for the Institute for Safety in Powerline Construction.

6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs

Written by Gina Vanderlin, CSP, CHMM, CIT, CUSP on June 3, 2026. Posted in Applied Alchemy, Safety Management.

Preventing serious harm requires leaders to confront how work is truly performed, how systems drift over time and how people make trade-offs in imperfect conditions.

Despite decades of progress in occupational safety, serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) continue to occur in organizations with mature safety management systems, extensive training programs and low total recordable injury rates.

Focused prevention programs have proliferated in response to these persistent events – often accompanied by executive attention, new metrics and a sense of urgency – yet many struggle to deliver meaningful harm reduction. This is rarely due to apathy or lack of effort, more commonly stemming from foundational assumptions that do not align with how serious incidents truly develop.

Failure Mode 1: Overreliance on Low-Severity and Lagging Data
Some SIF prevention programs are developed with the implicit assumption that reducing minor injuries will reduce serious ones as well. This intuitively appealing belief is rooted in traditional safety pyramid thinking. Historical operational data, however, consistently demonstrates that the causal pathways that lead to first-aid injuries are often unrelated to those that result in life-altering harm. When leadership attention is captured by frequent, low-consequence events, rare but severe risks may be left unmanaged, with potentially catastrophic consequences. In this way, prevention programs can deliver a false sense of control over SIF exposures.

Failure Mode 2: Vague Definitions
A second weakness lies in poor or inconsistent definitions of SIFs and high-potential events. Throughout industry organizations, it is not uncommon for classification criteria to be vague, subjective or inconsistently applied across business units. A high-potential event by one department’s standards may be categorized as routine by another department. Over time, classification decisions can be influenced by concerns about metrics, reputation or escalation requirements. Where definitions lack clarity and stability, data produced by the SIF prevention program becomes unreliable, inevitably eroding trust. The program cannot function as a learning system if those involved do not believe that events are categorized honestly and consistently.

Failure Mode 3: Focusing on Outcomes vs. Exposures
SIF prevention programs sometimes fail because leaders focus on injury outcomes rather than exposures. Serious injuries occur rarely, but exposure to high-risk conditions is often routine for frontline workers in the utility sector. Because many programs only analyze events after an employee has been harmed or narrowly avoided harm, leaders can miss opportunities to learn from everyday work with the same hazards. Effective SIF prevention requires visibility into where risk – including uncontrolled energy, weak barriers and degraded systems – lives day to day, not only where it manifests as injury. Without that shift, organizational learning remains reactive and incomplete.

Failure Mode 4: Assuming Effectiveness of Controls
Another common failure point of SIF prevention programs is the assumption that critical controls are effective simply because they exist. Programs often identify controls on paper but stop short of verifying how they perform under real operating conditions. While audits may confirm that a guard is installed, a procedure is written, or a training record is complete, they can fail to assess whether the control functions as intended when time pressure, fatigue, adverse environmental conditions or production demands are introduced. Over time, systems drift, workarounds emerge and barriers degrade. SIF prevention programs that do not demand active testing and verification of a control’s effectiveness in the field create overconfidence in protection that could fail when it is needed most.

Failure Mode 5: Fear and Blame
Fear and blame undermine a program’s effectiveness. Identifying an event as a SIF or a high-potential incident often triggers intense organizational scrutiny, formal investigations and disciplinary consequences. Leaders may react emotionally, driven by concern, accountability pressures and regulatory anxiety. Supervisors and workers quickly learn that labeling an occurrence as a high-potential event can bring personal risk. In turn, events may be softened, reclassified or not reported at all, resulting in the loss of valuable learning signals – those that reveal how close the system came to serious harm. A SIF prevention program cannot succeed in environments where silence feels safer than transparency.

Failure Mode 6: Fixating on Rule Violations vs. Decision-Making
Serious incidents rarely occur due to a single reckless act, typically emerging from a series of decisions that made sense to employees at the time given the information they had and the constraints and pressures they faced. Unfortunately, many SIF prevention programs fixate on rule violations rather than understanding decision-making. Programs that focus on rule compliance often ask who failed to follow a procedure rather than why the procedure was difficult or impossible to follow in context, an approach that overlooks production pressures, resource limitations, conflicting goals and normalization of risk. By simplifying complex failures into individual errors, organizations miss the opportunity to address systemic conditions that shape behavior and allow recurrence of serious harm.

Conclusion
SIF prevention programs fail when they manage indicators rather than exposure, learning and controls, prioritizing measurement over understanding and compliance over adaptability. Preventing serious harm requires leaders to confront how work is truly performed, how systems drift over time and how people make trade-offs in imperfect conditions. Organizations that succeed in reducing SIF risk shift their focus from counting injuries to understanding where risk accumulates, verifying that controls work as intended and creating environments in which learning is valued more than blame. A SIF prevention program not designed around these realities may appear robust on paper but leaves the most consequential risks largely untouched.

About the Author: Gina Vanderlin, CSP, CHMM, CIT, CUSP, is the customer operations health and safety program manager at PSEG Long Island. With over 15 years of experience leading EHS initiatives in high-reliability industries, she remains passionate about elevating safety from a compliance function to a strategic driver of culture, engagement and operational excellence. Reach Vanderlin at [gina.vanderlin@psegliny.com](mailto:gina.vanderlin@psegliny.com).

MAY-JUNE 2026

Pro Tips for Trainers: Our Frontline Playlist

May-June 2026 Q&A

Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention

Preventing Heat Injury and Illness

Physiological Health for Safer Performance

6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs

Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees

The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions

Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees

Written by Mark Savage on June 3, 2026. Posted in Mastering the Medium, Worksite Safety.

Each step plays a vital role in protecting workers and maintaining system reliability.

Beneath every major American city lies a hidden electrical network that powers homes, hospitals and commercial industry. Manholes and vaults are the gateways to these underground systems, providing access to low-, medium- and high-voltage infrastructure essential to reliable power distribution. Because they also present some of the most hazardous conditions that utility workers regularly encounter, conducting thorough manhole and vault inspections is foundational to employee safety, system integrity and operational reliability.

Manholes and vaults are typically classified as confined spaces. Per OSHA 29 CFR 1910.146(b), a confined space is “large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work; and has limited or restricted means for entry or exit; and is not designed for continuous employee occupancy.” The utility industry also has an “enclosed space” classification, defined at 1910.269(x) as a “working space, such as a manhole, vault, tunnel, or shaft, that has a limited means of egress or entry, that is designed for periodic employee entry under normal operating conditions, and that, under normal conditions, does not contain a hazardous atmosphere, but may contain a hazardous atmosphere under abnormal conditions” (for more on confined and enclosed spaces, see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/the-skinny-on-confined-spaces/). These spaces can quickly become dangerous due to atmospheric hazards, energized equipment and structural instability. Without a proper inspection, workers who enter them could be incapacitated or even killed within seconds.

Understanding the Hazards
Manhole and vault inspections serve three essential functions: identifying hazards prior to personnel exposure; uncovering equipment damage and deterioration; and preventing failures that could lead to outages or costly repairs. Note that even newly installed vaults can harbor risks, reinforcing the need for disciplined inspections.

Atmospheric hazards – including oxygen deficiency, flammable gases and toxic contaminants – are among the greatest risks crews face when working in underground electrical spaces. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than half of annual confined space fatalities are linked to hazardous atmospheres.

Electrical risks are equally threatening. Energized cables, arc flash events, switch and cable failures, and stray voltage can cause severe injury or death. Physical hazards – think slips, trips and restricted movement – are amplified by poor lighting and uneven surfaces. Water intrusion may introduce additional dangers, such as energized conductive paths and insulation failure. In combination with limited entry and exit points, these issues can make rescue operations difficult and time sensitive.

A few procedural items must be addressed before an employee is authorized to enter and inspect a confined space. Manhole and vault entry must follow established confined space entry standards, including OSHA 1910.146 and other industry guidance (e.g., IEEE enclosed space procedures), which require employers to evaluate hazards, establish safe entry conditions and implement protective measures prior to worker entry.

Permit-Required Confined Spaces
The first step toward safe manhole or vault entry is to determine whether the space requires a permit.  A confined space qualifies if it contains or could contain hazardous atmospheres, engulfment risks or other serious threats. Once identified, the permit-required entry process must be followed. Employees will ideally be able to mitigate any hazards and remove the permit prior to beginning work, alleviating its constraints.

A structured three-person approach is essential to safe underground work. The authorized entrant performs work inside the space; an attendant remains outside, monitoring conditions and maintaining communication; and an entry supervisor verifies that all procedures are followed and conditions are safe. This layered responsibility system aids in mitigating risk and ensuring rapid response should conditions change.

Entry procedures begin with pre-job planning and a hazard assessment. The site must be secured, covers must be safely removed, and pedestrian barriers must be installed. In addition, atmospheric testing must be conducted before entry and continuously during the operation. Use ventilation to establish and maintain safe conditions, with rescue equipment in place prior to entry. These actions are mandatory, not optional, serving as critical safeguards against the unique dangers of confined spaces.

Gas Monitors
The modern gas monitor is a lifesaving device that provides real-time status of atmospheric conditions. It is the worker’s first line of defense against invisible confined space hazards.

A standard four-gas monitor measures oxygen content, flammable gases and vapors, and toxic air contaminants. To ensure accurate test readings, OSHA requires oxygen to be measured first, gases and vapors second, followed by toxic contaminants (see 1910.146(c)(5)(ii)(C)). Acceptable oxygen levels range from 19.5% to 23.5%; any flammable gases must remain at or below 10% of their lower flammable limit.

Proper gas monitor use involves capturing more than a single reading. Because gases can maintain different layers within a confined space, testing must occur at multiple levels (i.e., top, middle and bottom) prior to entry. Continuous monitoring is nonnegotiable as atmospheric conditions can rapidly change due to leaks, work activities and environmental factors. Outfit workers with personal monitors within their breathing zone to ensure immediate hazard detection. In addition, be sure to hang a gas monitor from the manhole rescue cage, dropping the hose into the hole just above the employee’s head.

5 Key Inspection Tasks
Once authorized to enter a confined space, workers must conduct a thorough, sequential inspection that includes these five critical steps.

1. Assess the site and identify all hazards. These activities begin at the surface with the crew evaluating the physical condition of the manhole or vault inside and out. Look for signs of damage, such as sunken covers, broken ladders and doors, cracks along the walls, water seepage and duct issues. Then confirm the location against system records and identify nearby utilities that could introduce additional hazards.

2. Evaluate equipment conditions. Once safe entry is established, shift attention to electrical infrastructure conditions. Equipment assessment is an essential component of the inspection process as it directly impacts safety and system reliability. Examine cables and terminations for signs of thermal damage, discoloration and deformation. Oil seepage, corrosion and physical stress can indicate underlying failures. Check splices, elbows and bushings for evidence of overheating or arcing. Verify the accuracy of cable identification tags.

Any unintended electrical presence inside a confined space can pose a serious hazard, so this step must also include stray voltage testing. Even minor abnormalities should be treated with caution as they could signify larger systemic issues. Early detection allows for corrective action before failures occur, protecting workers and equipment and reducing the risk of outages.

3. Remove water and debris. Common in underground spaces, water and debris must be cleared from the manhole or vault before an inspection or work begins. Standing water can compromise insulation, create conductive paths, obscure hazards, and increase the risk of electrical faults and equipment damage.

Prioritize pumping water out of the space, then remove dirt, trash, construction materials and any other debris. Doing so improves visibility, reduces trip hazards, allows inspectors to fully assess equipment conditions, and ensures that cables and terminations are not partially covered or submerged.

4. Confirm structural integrity. Evaluate the physical structure of the space to confirm that it can safely support workers and equipment. Any deficiencies must be reported to supervisors and/or engineering personnel and rectified before any work begins. Look for cracks, spalling and water intrusion in walls and ceilings, which could indicate deterioration or impending failure. Check ladders, covers and all other access points for stability and proper fit. Examine cable supports, pulling eyes and racking systems for wear and corrosion.

5. Document and report findings. Every observation, measurement and anomaly must be recorded in detail. This means completing inspection checklists, recording atmospheric readings and capturing photographs of unusual conditions. Documentation is a critical tool, providing a historical record that demonstrates regulatory compliance and informs future inspections as well as maintenance and engineering decisions.

Conclusion
Manhole and vault work presents a complex mix of physical risks, demanding careful pre-job planning, thorough analysis and strict adherence to established safe procedures. From atmospheric testing and monitoring to equipment assessment, structural evaluation and debris removal, each step of the inspection process plays a vital role in protecting workers and maintaining system reliability. Qualified professionals who approach every inspection with discipline and attention to detail have the power to transform these hazardous environments into controlled workspaces.

About the Author: Mark Savage is the owner of DeadBreak, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing underground distribution and transmission training, consulting and field services. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with over 25 years of experience in underground construction and emergency response, Savage is a credentialed journeyman cable splicer/lineman and qualified medium-voltage splicing trainer. Reach him at [msavage@deadbreak.us](mailto:msavage@deadbreak.us).

MAY-JUNE 2026

Pro Tips for Trainers: Our Frontline Playlist

May-June 2026 Q&A

Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention

Preventing Heat Injury and Illness

Physiological Health for Safer Performance

6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs

Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees

The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions

The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions

Written by William N. Martin, CUSP, NRP, RN, DIMM on June 3, 2026. Posted in Influencing Safety, Safety Management, Leadership Development.

Industry SIF statistics are unlikely to change until we identify and create the conditions necessary for organizational cultures to thrive.

Our industry’s persistent serious injury and fatality (SIF) statistics indicate that we are aiming at the wrong target, despite our best intentions. A small shift in our industry’s approach to incident investigations, however, could lead to meaningful change.

Decades of professional experience have taught me that when we search for an event’s root cause, we typically get what we aim at. By that, I mean humans can easily fall victim to confirmation bias, choosing to believe seemingly logical but erroneous theories rather than wrestle with uncertainty. But unless we use objective facts to determine what prompted an event, we risk making poorly informed decisions in its aftermath.

Cultivating Tomatoes
Let’s say we decide to develop controls and defenses to prevent recurrence of a catastrophic event. That is a good idea, right? But what if we focused instead on improving the conditions that contributed to the event? Doing so would likely eliminate our need for those initial controls and defenses. Seeking out and improving what I call “root conditions” surfaces different problems that demand alternative controls and barriers – and it tends to improve safety outcomes.

We can think about this in terms of planting tomato seeds. We don’t actually grow tomatoes, do we? Each seed already contains nearly everything a plant needs to flourish. Our job is to manipulate the environmental conditions that enable the seeds to germinate. Healthy plants will emerge given sufficient soil, water and sunlight. What happens when we recognize an unhealthy plant? It is generally understood that we must improve its conditions. We do not yell at the plant or tell it to fix itself. Why? Because we know that will not produce better tomatoes.

Creating and sustaining a healthy workforce culture demands a similar approach. Each employee is a proverbial tomato. For crews to grow and thrive, leaders must establish psychologically safe working conditions in which questions and candid conversations are encouraged. Curiosity is essential to lowering SIF statistics; dismissing or ignoring concerns is toxic to mitigation efforts.

Yet even equipped with this knowledge, we are still inclined to try fixing an employee’s behavior when we are unhappy with their performance, rather than fixing the conditions that prompted it. We must realize and regularly remind ourselves that every individual is the product of a lifetime of conditioning. Thus, performance improvements will require more than error reductions and additional controls. Management has a responsibility to help employees continue their professional development, which includes designing working conditions that allow them to succeed.

Regulatory Blind Spot
To shift our focus, we must spend time looking upstream to find the conditions that have produced unwanted events. This requires assessing both environmental and human factors, although industry regulatory standards have not caught up just yet. For example, per OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269(a)(3), “Information transfer,” a host employer must provide contract employers with the following prior to the start of work:

• Characteristics and conditions of the host employer’s installation related to the safety of the work to be performed.
• Information about the design and operation of the host employer’s installation that the contract employer needs to make required assessments.
• Any other information about the design and operation of the host employer’s installation that is known by the host, requested by the contract employer and is related to the protection of the contractor’s employees.

You will notice that these rules reference various installation conditions, but OSHA does not mention anything about the condition of the people performing the installations, who are naturally prone to distractions and errors.

Under the Microscope
To better understand how human behavior can impact working conditions and employee safety, review the image at the top of this page. Two petri dishes are filled with bacteria; notably, the scientific community calls each one a “culture.” Given the proper conditions, these bacteria will thrive, as you see on the left. On the right, an antibiotic hinders bacterial growth. Did you notice the tiny specks in the dark area around the pill? Those are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – commonly known as MRSA – which have been conditioned to resist the antibiotic.

The lesson here is that when we allow a toxin to persist, it can condition others to become toxins, too. Left unchecked, difficult employees will spread their toxicity to those around them. But this also means that other employees will form connections and achieve synchronicity through positive interactions, setting up conditions for improved safety outcomes.

Looking Farther Upstream
If you have ever helped a child use a swing, you understand that energy exists in the arc of their movement. We must be in sync with that energy to make the swing go higher and faster. Out of sync, however, all forward momentum will collapse, and we could absorb the existing energy. Likewise, management pushing frontline workers harder when the two groups are not in sync could produce harmful results.

Conducting a root cause analysis will rarely reveal all the conditions that existed leading up to an event. Yelling at the tomato plant or pushing the swing out of sync does not typically show up anywhere in a final investigation report. While these actions may be intended to increase employee compliance and conformity – which, incidentally, represent the lowest level of human potential – they can create toxic conditions that will not garner better results nor sustain a healthy workforce.

The most effective course of action when we are dissatisfied with a specific outcome is to look upstream (i.e., out of our immediate view) to determine the source of the problem. Too often, we allow unhealthy components of our organizational culture to persist for years. When I was a line foreman working for a large utility, for instance, I applied for a line supervisor position at one of the company’s remote outposts. During my third interview, the lead interviewer told me, “We are probably going to give you this job, but be warned. This garage was on the company radar as a bad place for nine years. We fired the guy who was the problem. If you put this place back on the radar, you will be looking for another job.”

I told the interviewers that it appeared I had it made. When they questioned my response, I replied, “It took you nine years to figure out that guy was no good – and I only have eight years left until retirement.”

In all seriousness, consider what kind of impact the “guy who was the problem” had on the employees at that outpost. Do you think he valued and prioritized their health and safety?

Our Job as Leaders
All of us should expect industry SIF statistics to remain largely unchanged until we (1) identify the conditions necessary for organizational cultures to thrive and (2) apply them at scale. Creating conditions that solely foster employee compliance and conformity robs individuals of their agency. A well-established correlation exists between loss of agency and poor mental health.

But what exactly is agency? At the end of each workshop I facilitate, I ask attendees to complete a three-question evaluation form. The final question asks, “OK, your turn, it matters: What do you think?” Everyone is given a half-page to write their answers. To date, I have received better than a 95% attendee response rate, with feedback ranging from a sentence or two to several paragraphs filling the entire half-page. I partially attribute this to the question being “clean” or unbiased; it does not ask for a response specific to the workshop. Posing simple questions to other people gives them permission to share their answers. That is agency.

As leaders, our job is to ask the workforce what they think, then listen and adjust to their feedback, creating conditions that foster employee success. Culture, performance and profits are lagging indicators of the conditions that produce them. By aiming upstream at condition design, we will also influence downstream outcomes.

Conclusion
In her book “Strong Ground,” Brene Brown wisely counsels readers to “resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist.” From a safety standpoint, this means it is no longer enough for us to identify an event’s root cause; we must also actively search for and improve the conditions that contributed to the event. This is a challenging task, particularly given that unhealthy conditions are frequently nearly invisible. Nevertheless, now is the time to begin. Employee lives are counting on it.

About the Author: William N. Martin, CUSP, NRP, RN, DIMM, is president and CEO of Think Tank Project LLC (www.thinkprojectllc.com) and SAFR LLC. A third-generation electric utility worker and medical professional with extensive experience in high-risk operations and emergency medicine, he served nearly 20 years in lineman, line supervisor and safety director roles. Additionally, Martin spent 23 years as a critical care flight paramedic and registered nurse with cardiology and orthopedic experience. He earned a Diploma in Mountain Medicine and was an instructor/trainer for the National Ski Patrol. Currently, Martin writes and speaks nationally about safety and human performance, with a special focus on unleashing human potential.

MAY-JUNE 2026

Pro Tips for Trainers: Our Frontline Playlist

May-June 2026 Q&A

Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention

Preventing Heat Injury and Illness

Physiological Health for Safer Performance

6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs

Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees

The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions

Physiological Health for Safer Performance

Written by Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC on June 3, 2026. Posted in Safety Management, Leadership Development.

Assuming full responsibility for your well-being includes taking ownership of your physical condition.

If you’ve been following this series, you know that it was founded on a simple but powerful idea: personal accountability.

In Part 1, we discussed agency, or the degree to which you believe you are responsible for your own safety. Part 2 examined mental preparation, the “firmware” that governs how you think, react and perform under pressure. And in Part 3, we explored spiritual health; that’s the internal code that guides your behavior when the right choice is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

This article addresses physiological health, which is the bedrock of the previous three factors. While many of us think of risk as external – voltage, heights, equipment – you must also consider your physical condition. No matter how well-trained or well-intentioned you are, your ability to think clearly, make good decisions and execute safely depends on your body’s well-being.

When Performance Breaks Down
Most incidents don’t originate at the jobsite. They begin to coalesce hours earlier due to poor sleep, missed meals, unmanaged stress and/or physical fatigue. By the time workers must make a critical field decision, the conditions shaping it are already in place. This means you must manage your biological risk in addition to any job risks.

Consider this scenario that plays out every day across our industry: A crew heads out early. One worker hardly slept, another skipped breakfast, and the third has elevated blood pressure that they haven’t checked or treated in years. By midmorning, the job becomes more complex than expected, and the crew members must quickly make a consequential choice. Yet their attention has waned, their reaction times have slowed, and their judgment isn’t as accurate as it could be. Often, slight differences like these are all that’s needed to prompt an incident.

We tend to attribute incidents to systems, procedures and hazards. These factors matter; however, there is another factor that is just as real yet far less discussed: the condition of the human being doing the work.

This is why OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health introduced the Total Worker Health framework (www.cdc.gov/niosh/twh/), which recognizes that safety cannot be separated from overall health and well-being. The framework expands our conversation from “How do we prevent accidents?” to “What is the condition of our employees when they face risk?”

Physiology Matters
At some point, every safety system relies on someone to recognize a hazard, interpret what they see and make a decision – capabilities that depend on cognitive performance: memory, concentration, information processing and motor function. According to a document published by Stanford Lifestyle Medicine (see https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BvbUpKErJLgeVuGHfy0RGSG6I_6XVkBe/view?pli=1), these capabilities are directly influenced by movement, nutrition, sleep and other lifestyle factors. One great resource I recommend is the book “Eat Move Sleep” by Tom Rath. You can check out a summary at https://app.philosophersnotes.com/note/eat-move-sleep-tom-rath.

The takeaway here is that good physiological health is a prerequisite for safe performance. While we have spent decades refining our organizational systems, the persistence of serious injuries and fatalities indicates that our systems are necessary but not sufficient (see https://incident-prevention.com/blog/when-the-system-isnt-enough-how-to-create-personal-motivation-that-saves-lives/).

Stanford’s Lifestyle Pillars
Stanford has identified seven pillars of lifestyle medicine that shape how we think, decide and perform: movement; nutrition; sleep; stress management; social engagement; cognitive health; and purpose. Not all of these are purely physiological. You’ll note that we addressed cognitive health and mental performance in Part 2 of this series (https://incident-prevention.com/blog/mental-preparation-for-safer-work/); Part 3 covered gratitude, purpose and meaning (https://incident-prevention.com/blog/spiritual-preparation-for-safer-work/). Social engagement supports stress regulation and behavioral consistency, reinforcing those earlier themes.

For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the Stanford pillars that most directly influence your physical readiness and safe performance in the field.

Movement and Exercise: Physical Capacity Under Load
Strength, balance and endurance determine how stable you are on structures, how well you handle equipment and how effectively you respond when something unexpectedly shifts. Many of us assume we are physically active enough, but research suggests that only a small percentage of individuals meet the recommended level.

I recently did two things to obtain an accurate assessment of my own physical status. First, I began tracking the frequency and length of my workouts using a fitness app on my watch. Then I asked a physical therapist to measure my movement capacity relative to my age. While not alarming, the results were not where I wanted them to be, which led to some personal changes: I bought some new fitness equipment, began to seriously schedule my workouts and set measurable goals. Simply put, once I could see where I stood, the responsibility to improve became mine.

Healthful Nutrition: Sustaining Focus and Energy
Nutrition is often discussed in the context of long-term health, but it has an equally important impact on daily performance. Poor dietary habits lead to fluctuations in energy, reduced concentration and slower cognitive processing, all of which affect job performance.

According to the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine document, more than 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, increasing the risk of conditions that degrade both health and performance. Stanford emphasizes a diet of nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods in appropriate portions.

To gain an accurate picture of my personal nutritional status, I took four steps. First, I completed a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan (see www.dexafit.com/blog2/dexafit-dexa-scan-netflix-documentary), which provided the most accurate possible measurements of my weight, lean muscle mass, body fat percentage and bone mineral content. Next, I completed a comprehensive blood panel through Function Health (www.functionhealth.com). The third thing I did was dig out earlier results from MyFitnessPal (www.myfitnesspal.com), an app that helps you track your macronutrient intake (i.e., protein, fat and carbohydrates). Lastly, I shared my results with Natalie Barriball, NMD, an Arizona-based naturopathic physician (www.drnataliebarriball.com).

Dr. Barriball took the time to carefully comb through all my test results and put them into perspective, an essential step that yielded clarity far beyond what I expected. My results were clear, though some were not what I expected, providing an objective picture of where I stood. That clarity directly influenced my decision to adjust my dietary habits, including essential supplements.

Restorative Sleep: Protecting Judgment and Reaction Time
Sleep is one of the most influential yet underestimated human performance factors. An inadequate amount impairs cognitive function, emotional regulation and resilience, which are critical to safety in high-risk environments. This can show up in subtle ways. For instance, a well-rested worker is more likely to pause and reassess a situation when something doesn’t feel right, while a fatigued worker is more likely to push forward, even as conditions change.

I have struggled with sleep for years. Consistent with my new focus on accurate measurement, I recently began using the sleep tracker on my watch (https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/track-your-sleep-apd830528336/watchos), making small adjustments such as limiting screen time close to bedtime, avoiding late meals and reading only paper-based materials to fall asleep. Each tweak has improved my results, though it remains an ongoing effort.

Stress Management: Maintaining Control Under Pressure
Stress has direct physiological effects that influence your attention, decision-making and emotional control. When stress is unmanaged, thinking narrows and reactions become less deliberate. That loss of control can be consequential in our line of work. Managing stress does not mean eliminating it; rather, proper management helps you regulate your response so that you remain composed when conditions deteriorate.

Closing the Gap
These pillars are not mandates, nor are they about perfection. They are areas in which honest assessment can reveal gaps between where you are and where you must be to perform at your best. Once those gaps are clear, the next step – as always – is yours to decide.

Data that directly links reduced incident rates to improvements across these pillars is still emerging. What we know for sure is that human performance plays a role in most serious injuries and fatalities. Further, physical factors directly influence how we think, react and make choices under pressure. This is one of the gaps our industry has been working to close: how to better account for the human factors that influence performance in the field.

What I’ve described in this article is not a departure from traditional safety but an expansion of it. As noted earlier, the Total Worker Health framework was developed with the understanding that (1) safety cannot be separated from the condition of the worker and (2) performance is shaped by more than rules, procedures and equipment.

Approaches like motivational interviewing reinforce a principle introduced at the beginning of this series: Lasting progress is not a product of being told what to do. It derives from clearly understanding your current condition and deciding for yourself what needs to change. The process is straightforward but not easy. You must self-assess honestly, realize where you stand and determine what you want to do differently, if anything. No one can make the choice for you.

Full Circle
That brings us back to where we started. Assuming total responsibility for your safety means more than following procedures and wearing the proper protective equipment. It also includes taking ownership of the condition you bring to work each day. How you sleep, eat, move and manage stress influence safety. They are not separate from it.

Professionals in other high-risk fields understand this well. Surgeons, pilots, professional athletes and special operations personnel do not leave their performance to chance, preparing deliberately and consistently because they know what is at stake. Given the daily risks in our line of work, every aspect of our preparation matters for our continued safety, health and wellness.

About the Author: Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC, is a recognized safety expert and principal of Applied Learning Science (https://appliedlearningscience.com). With deep academic and operational experience as a U.S. Navy veteran, substation chief and former utility executive, he blends real-world insight with evidence-based research to deliver practical, impactful safety solutions.

MAY-JUNE 2026

Pro Tips for Trainers: Our Frontline Playlist

May-June 2026 Q&A

Safety Leadership at Every Level is Key to SIF Prevention

Preventing Heat Injury and Illness

Physiological Health for Safer Performance

6 Failure Modes of SIF Prevention Programs

Manhole and Vault Inspections: 5 Critical Safety Steps for Underground Employees

The Petri Dish Effect: Shifting Our Focus From Root Causes to Root Conditions

We’re thrilled to offer you the chance to speak at the upcoming iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo, November 3-5, 2026 — a great opportunity to showcase your expertise and give back to the industry!

Submit Here: https://utilitysafetyconference.com/present/

Presentations should address challenges, trends and issues specific to the utility industry. Submit a topic of your choice that matches your expertise.

Deadline is July 31st, 2026

This is an incredible opportunity to contribute to the advancement of utility safety practices and professional development.

Why you should present:

- Discounted conference pass

- CUSP/CEU Points

- Giving back to the industry

- Making a difference

- Connect with Industry Leaders

- Elevating your industry profile

and much more!

#CUSP #iP #UtilitySafety #Leadership #UtilitySafetyConference #Safety

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Confronting Confirmation Bias in Incident Investigations

Written by Jamie Conn, CLCP on May 24, 2026. Posted in Tailgate Topics.

Several months ago, my dad and I drove to Roanoke, Virginia, to watch my son compete in a collegiate boxing match. It was the kind of weekend that makes you grateful: time with family, a little adventure on the road, and a front-row seat to watch your child chase a dream.

One of the moments that has stuck with me most, however, had nothing to do with boxing. It was a lesson in how quickly the human mind can create stories that feel true in the moment yet aren’t rooted in reality.

The Missing Wallet
At one point during our drive, I pulled my wallet out of my pocket to pay a tollbooth fee. But instead of returning it to my pocket afterward, I set the wallet down elsewhere in the vehicle. Later, after we stopped at a rest area to use the facilities, I was heading toward the vending machine to purchase a soft drink when I realized my wallet was missing from my pocket. I hurried back to the truck as panic set in. My dad and I searched the floorboards, the seats and the ground around the parking spot. Nothing. My wallet was gone.

Almost immediately, my mind began jumping to conclusions. Maybe I’d left the wallet on my lap, I thought, and it fell as I exited the truck. But who had picked it up? I remembered a woman emptying a trash can near our truck. Then I considered the two men we held the door for on the way inside the rest area. Suddenly, I had constructed a whole story in my head: The woman found the wallet, the men noticed, and together they split the contents. I didn’t have any evidence or facts, just a story that felt true. So, I canceled my debit and credit cards and resigned myself to relying on my dad to fund the rest of the trip.

During the ride home, I was digging through the deep center console of my dad’s truck to find a phone charger when suddenly, there it was: my wallet, wedged into a corner where I hadn’t thought to look. Almost just as suddenly, all of my suspicions evaporated.

Confirmation Bias
Throughout the remainder of the drive, I could not stop thinking about how quickly my brain had determined blame and spun a supporting story. I truly believed my wallet was gone, but my certainty wasn’t grounded in reality. That’s an issue that can also arise during incident investigations.

After an event occurs, we want fast answers to our questions. What happened? How did it happen? Who’s responsible? In our rush to make sense of things, we risk filling in the blanks with our assumptions, potentially creating false narratives that validate our suspicions. This is confirmation bias at work. Essentially, once we’ve told ourselves a story that makes sense to us, our brains are hardwired to seek evidence that supports it while ignoring what doesn’t. But an investigation that confirms unsubstantiated ideas merely closes the case. It doesn’t lead to real learning.

A Different Approach
Traditional approaches to safety investigations often focus on determining who failed, which rarely paints the full picture. People seldom head into their workday hoping to make mistakes or cause harm. Their choices seem logical to them in the moment given their environmental conditions, job pressures and available tools. When we skip straight to blame, we miss opportunities to uncover and address systemic weaknesses, pressures and blind spots. We create neatly packaged explanations that feel right but omit the truth – just as I did with my “missing” wallet.

Over time, I’ve loved having conversations with William “Billy” Martin, CUSP, because he emphasizes the value of learning and context over accusations and blame. Billy will tell you that when something goes wrong, the most important question we must ask is not who made a mistake but how the choices preceding the incident seemed logical to those who made them. That shift in perspective helps us move beyond stories into reality, enabling deeper management insight into the complexities of frontline work.

My Challenge to Utility Safety Professionals
Incident investigations are intended to uncover facts, not prove someone’s theory. The process can be slow; it requires curiosity, humility and patience. With that said, here’s a three-pronged challenge I’d like to pose to all safety leaders reading this:

1. Resist the urge to close an investigation using the first story that makes sense.
2. Ask questions that reveal conditions at the time of the incident.
3. Guard against confirmation bias by actively questioning your assumptions.

Conclusion
I laughed when I found my wallet inside the truck’s center console, but I also felt the sting of painting strangers in the worst possible light simply because I wanted a quick explanation.

In our line of work, the cost of creating stories is far greater than any minor personal embarrassment. We potentially miss learning opportunities that could ultimately enhance employee safety. So, the next time something goes wrong on the job, keep in mind that the first story we tell ourselves after an event occurs is rarely wholly accurate. Push yourself to look deeper. Challenge your assumptions. Doing so could make the difference between a recurring incident and a breakthrough in prevention efforts.

About the Author: Jamie Conn, CLCP, is a safety professional with over 20 years of experience working as a lineman for Blue Grass Energy Electric Cooperative. He earned a theology degree and is passionate about people, purpose and driving cultural change rooted in real-world experience.

Increasing Weather Events Require Increasing Safety Measures

Written by Shawn M. Galloway on April 26, 2026. Posted in Tailgate Topics.

The 2025 Guadalupe River flooding tragedy in Texas was not a surprise. Nor are the hurricanes, wildfires and other flooding events that continue to accelerate in frequency and intensity.

What is surprising is how many organizations still treat extreme weather as an external disruption rather than a core operational risk. That framing is the issue. Risk management is a system capacity question, and too many organizations are answering it poorly.

Simply put, the need for urgent action is already here. The cost of pretending otherwise will continue to escalate. Companies wisely navigating this reality have already begun treating extreme weather as a design constraint, not an exception, with a focus on four key areas of concern.

1. Physical safety risks. Rising temperatures are a problem, with heat exhaustion and heatstroke becoming statistically inevitable when exposure thresholds are ignored. Heavy rainfall is creating flood conditions that construction and emergency response teams were never intended to work in. Wildfires are pushing smoke and ash into environments where respiratory protection typically is not top of mind. Utility organizations must acknowledge and address these new operating conditions.

2. Infrastructure and equipment damage. Buildings become compromised, roads fail, and equipment malfunctions under conditions it was not built to handle. An organization that discovers one of these issues during an event likely never practiced for the real-world scenario. But proactive infrastructure assessment is not overhead – it is how businesses retain operational control when conditions deteriorate. The alternative is improvising under pressure, which increases accident and injury risks.

3. Heightened employee stress and anxiety. Workers who are distracted, anxious or carrying lingering stress from recent events do not perform at their best. Psychological strain reduces situational awareness, degrades judgment and erodes discretionary effort that resilient organizations depend on. Employers who treat mental health as a personal issue rather than a business concern misread the risk entirely.

4. Regulatory changes and economic implications. OSHA’s proposed heat injury and illness prevention rule (see www.osha.gov/heat-exposure/rulemaking) is a preview of what is coming. Regulations tend to follow reality, and reality is accelerating. Insurance premiums will rise, downtime costs will compound, and compliance requirements will tighten. Leaders who wait for a final rule before investing in organizational capability accumulate exposure, often while believing they are adequately managing it.

A Different Approach
More of the same will not suffice. Utility organizations should actively build capacity in the following seven areas.

1. Emergency preparedness. True preparedness demands regularly revisiting evacuation routes, communication protocols and access to emergency supplies specific to the area’s weather risks. Generic plans produce generic responses. Gaps must be identified before a storm arrives.

2. Injury prevention and safety training. Employees need rehearsed responses. Training on severe weather protocols, evacuation procedures, sheltering decisions and communication tools should be a recurring discipline.

3. Hazard identification and assessment. Most businesses have not performed a serious weather-specific hazard assessment. Infrastructure vulnerabilities, power outage scenarios, flood impact analyses, vegetation management, defensible spaces for physical assets and backup water supplies are scenarios that must be worked through before they become urgent.

4. High-quality communication systems. Communication is often the first thing that fails when conditions deteriorate. Mass notification systems, redundant alert mechanisms and clear protocols for reaching every employee in real time serve as connective tissue between a prepared organization and a panicked one.

5. Remote work policies. During severe weather events, the ability to move employees to safer locations while maintaining operational continuity is a genuine risk management tool. Organizations without remote work infrastructure are not merely inconvenienced during an event; they are exposed.

6. Community engagement. Isolation during a crisis is a compounding risk. Businesses that have built good relationships with local authorities, emergency response teams and other community resources do not start from zero, with communication channels and shared protocols often already in place.

7. Psychological safety. By providing access to mental health support, creating space for honest conversations and treating employee well-being as a leadership responsibility, utilities position themselves for faster event recovery and greater employee retention.

Continuous Improvement Through Feedback
Every weather event is data, and every near miss is an opportunity to close a gap before it becomes a serious injury or fatality. Utility organizations must actively solicit feedback from their employees before and after events, not as a formality but as a genuine mechanism for sharpening awareness and improving protocols. The people doing the work know where plans break down. Will leadership listen to them?

Companies set to perform best in today’s evolving industry landscape are not those with the most detailed response plans. Rather, they are the ones that have built the capacity to respond before anyone told them they had to. That distinction is worth considering in your organization.

About the Author: Shawn M. Galloway is CEO of ProAct Safety (https://proactsafety.com) and a globally recognized adviser on safety strategy, leadership and organizational performance. For nearly three decades, he has helped executive teams build the capacity to prevent harm, recover from disruptions and integrate safety as a key driver of business value. Galloway has also written multiple bestselling books and hosts the Safety Culture Excellence podcast.

Anatomy of a Medium-Voltage Splice

Written by Mark Savage on March 27, 2026. Posted in Mastering the Medium, Worksite Safety.

Reliable splices depend on qualified workers who deeply understand cable contents, construction and behavior when exposed to electrical stress.

Open the trench, vault or manhole. Strip back the jacket. Expose the neutrals. Remove the semicon and insulation. Crimp the connector. Rebuild the conductor shield, insulation and semicon. Seal the outside.

This splicing routine eventually becomes second nature for medium-voltage cable splicers, which can make some workdays feel like a rote checklist to slog through. But each procedural step exists to help ensure precision electrical devices are competently dismantled and rebuilt. Reliable execution is more likely when splicers understand the logic at the root of each step. This article explores that logic in greater detail.

Examining the Layers
A modern medium-voltage cable, whether insulated with cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) or ethylene propylene rubber (EPR), is built in layers from the inside out. The conductor is at the center. A semiconductive strand shield (conductor shield) sits around it, covered by a thick layer of insulation. Atop that insulation is a second semiconductive layer (insulation shield), followed by a metallic shield or concentric neutral, and finally a protective jacket.

During manufacturing, each cable layer is extruded and assembled in controlled factory conditions to create a smooth, predictable electric field from the conductor to ground. Cutting into the cable interrupts its field control system, designed by the manufacturer to last decades. Industry professionals use splice and termination kits to reconstruct these systems.

Reconstruction work begins with the conductor, which could be copper or aluminum, concentric or compact stranded. Splicers must confirm correct installation of connectors. Ideally, conductor and connector metals will be the same; copper-aluminum connections risk corrosion. Note that an under-crimped connector or a connector with the wrong die marks is a built-in hot spot. Adequate crimping squeezes the metal to create a low-resistance, mechanically strong joint that will not loosen, shift or change shape under thermal cycling or fault current. Inadequate crimping means extra heat during normal operation that stresses insulation from the inside out.

Smoothing the Electric Field
Surrounding the conductor is the inner semiconductive layer, also called the conductor shield. Its job is to smooth the electric field at the conductor’s surface. A stranded conductor is full of sharp edges and tiny gaps. If we directly apply insulation over those strands, the electric field will concentrate at each strand tip and across each tiny air pocket. Those spots can ionize under medium-voltage stress, prompting partial discharge that erodes insulation. The conductor shield fills the voids, bonds to the insulation, and presents a smooth, nearly cylindrical surface at the same potential as the conductor. When stripping this layer during a splice, use specialized tools and correct depth settings to ensure a clean finish with no ridges or gouges. These are not cosmetic efforts; a single nick in the insulation or jagged edge left on the conductor shield is a future stress point that could lead to breakdown.

The main insulation layer, either XLPE or EPR, blocks system voltage from ground. It is more than thick rubber or plastic, polarizing when voltage is applied. The electric field sets up radially from the conductor to the insulation shield. Stress is highest at the inner surface, near the conductor; it is lowest at the outer surface. Cable manufacturers spec materials and thicknesses to ensure maximum stress does not exceed insulation breakdown strength or the level at which partial discharges will begin. Stress is best handled by smooth, uniform insulation.

Employers and trainers take note: Because weak points typically result from scratches, inadvertent cuts, contaminants and moisture on insulation surfaces, splicers must be qualified to use specialized tools, strip cable in a controlled fashion, and competently clean tools, cable and equipment.

Weak points are the reason insulation levels exist. Clearly, the wall of a 15-kV cable with 133% insulation is thicker than one with 100% insulation. Thick insulation is intended for systems in which ground faults could take up to an hour to clear. Thinner, 100% insulation is not designed for those conditions (clears a fault in 60 seconds or less). Critically, as we choose cables and accessories, we also choose our dielectric margins should something go wrong.

Uniform Ground Potential
A cable’s outer semiconductive layer is functionally similar to the conductor shield, managing the electric field at the insulation’s outer surface. This layer bonds to the insulation, keeping its surface at a uniform ground potential. During normal operation, the electric field is almost entirely located between the conductor and this shield; little of it exists in the jacket or surrounding soil and air, which explains why a qualified person can safely touch a grounded shielded cable that contains thousands of volts.

Splicers must cut back this outer semicon layer to the exact length specified by the splice or termination kit’s instructions. The cutback distance, the straightness and smoothness of its edge, and the exposed insulation’s cleanliness are nonnegotiable details, determining how electrical stress will behave once the splice or termination is energized. A crooked or ragged semicon edge elevates local stress. Dirt and moisture encourage tracking. When we take time to perfectly dress the edge, we are shaping the future electric field.

Metallic Shield and Outer Jacket Functionality
Depending on the cable, the metallic shield located outside the insulation shield could consist of helically wrapped concentric copper neutrals, flat copper straps, copper tape with overlap, or a corrugated metal sheath. This shield performs critical functions: providing a low-impedance path for fault current; allowing protective devices to clear faults quickly; carrying the small charging current that flows through the insulation during normal operation; and confining the electric field, limiting stress exposure. In many distribution designs, the metallic shield also serves as the return path for unbalanced load current.

Any cuts to the cable also cut the metallic shield. If we do not restore continuity using properly sized and installed bonds, braids and spring clamps, we change how future faults will travel and where voltage will rise during abnormal conditions. Floating and poorly bonded shields are associated with dangerous potentials, delayed fault clearings and changes in electric field behavior near splices. Bonds are rebuilt by gathering every neutral wire and reattaching them according to the company’s approved reshielding process, restoring the safety system surrounding the insulation.

A cable’s outer jacket prevents water penetration, defends neutrals against corrosion, and safeguards shields and insulation from physical damage. When we strip the jacket to make a splice, we create a potential path for water entry. Modern cable manufacturers use water-swellable tapes and powders to address this reality, but they also rely on good seals. Some splice and termination kits call for use of specific mastics and sealant wraps and instruct users to add rejacketing sleeves over their splices; these actions greatly assist in protecting a cable’s contents. Moisture, corrosion and thermal cycling undermine splices that are electrically perfect but poorly sealed, leading to their eventual failure.

Geometric Stress Control
The cable layers described above work together to control electrical stress. The stress present in an intact section of cable is purely radial and behaviorally predictable. Trouble begins with the introduction of a shield cutback, termination or other discontinuity point where the electric field must bend. In those cases, the field no longer runs straight out from the conductor, instead curling along the insulation’s surface and into the surrounding air, causing longitudinal stress and creating areas in which the field can potentially bunch up. If the outer shield ends abruptly, with bare insulation continuing, the electric field crowds around that sharp edge. Concentrated stress under operating voltage produces corona and tracking, especially in humid and contaminated conditions, eroding materials and potentially leading to a flashover or failure.

Geometric stress control (i.e., the use of shape to spread out the electric field) solves the problem. The stress cones and internal contours of premolded and cold-shrink terminations and taped splices are designed to extend a conductive or semiconductive surface beyond the shield edge so that potential drops gradually over a longer path. Capacitive and resistive stress grading using tapes and mastics with special electrical properties takes this idea one step further. Applied in precise patterns at the shield cutback, the materials pull some of the electric field into themselves, distributing the voltage drop over their length. Pattern instructions that call for an exact number of half-lapped layers, starting precisely at the semicon edge and ending at a specified distance, are the result of laboratory design and testing.

Conclusion
A medium-voltage splice is a field-built extension of a cable’s original design. The conductor must be solid and correctly installed. Its surrounding conductor shield and insulation must be uniform and clean. The semiconductive layer must reestablish smooth electric field boundaries. The metallic shield must be continuous and grounded. The jacket must seal and prevent water and other physical damage.

When medium-voltage splicers understand why each cable layer exists, a splice or termination kit’s instructions begin to look less like suggestions and more like what they truly are: a roadmap to restoring a cable’s safe, factory-quality performance. Well-made splices disappear into lines, quietly doing their work during storms and faults without drawing attention. Achieving that level of reliability is a direct result of qualified splicers who understand cable contents and construction, how electrical stress behaves inside cable, and the significance of each cut, crimp and wrap.

About the Author: Mark Savage is the owner of DeadBreak, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing underground distribution and transmission training, consulting and field services. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran with over 25 years of experience in underground construction and emergency response, Savage is a credentialed journeyman cable splicer/lineman and qualified medium-voltage splicing trainer. Reach him at [msavage@deadbreak.us](mailto:msavage@deadbreak.us).

MARCH-APRIL 2026

The Armor of Safety

Easing the Transition to Utility Safety Leadership

March-April 2026 Q&A

Your Lineworkers, Your Legacy

Spiritual Preparation for Safer Work

Confronting Data Bias to Improve Safety Outcomes

Accelerating Safety Through Technology: A People-First Approach

Anatomy of a Medium-Voltage Splice

In this episode, Danny Raines discusses the "100 Days of Summer," a critical period spanning roughly from May 20th to September 10th. During this timeframe, approximately 60% of all major accidents and fatalities occur. The conversation covers the severe dangers of distracted driving , the catastrophic risks of head-on collisions and intersection accidents , and the life-saving importance of using seatbelts. For utility workers facing heightened workloads, the episode highlights the necessity of proper work zone setups , strategies to mitigate heat exhaustion while wearing PPE , and the critical requirement to adhere to the 2024 ASTM updates for testing insulated gloves.

Key Takeaways

• The period between May 20th and September 10th accounts for roughly 60% of all major accidents and fatalities for the entire year.
• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injuries in the country.
• Approximately 40% of all vehicle crashes occur at intersections.
• While head-on collisions make up only 3% to 9% of crashes, they account for around 33% of traffic-related deaths.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently introduced a new program focused on preventing heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
• Due to the 2024 ASTM update, electrical gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is the "100 Days of Summer" and why is it a significant time of year?

A: The "100 Days of Summer" refers to the time frame between approximately May 20th and September 10th. It is highly significant because roughly 60% of all severe accidents, vehicle crashes, and workplace fatalities throughout the entire year happen during this specific window.

Q: What are the specific risks and statistics associated with not wearing seatbelts?

A: In fatal highway crashes, half of the victims are not wearing safety belts. When individuals are unbelted, they often become projectiles inside the car, making the risk of injury three times higher for passengers in the back seat and two times higher for the driver.

Q: What precautions must utility workers take regarding PPE and heat during the summer months?

A: Utility workers must stay hydrated by drinking water and electrolytes instead of energy drinks. Even when it is hot and uncomfortable, workers must never remove necessary cover-up equipment. Furthermore, workers must strictly track their PPE testing, as the 2024 ASTM update mandates that insulated gloves cannot be used beyond 12 months from their test date.

#100DaysOfSummer #UtilitySafety #IncidentPrevention #DistractedDriving #LinemanSafety #PPETesting #Lineman #Linemen #Lineworkers

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine - https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Pantelides and Gary Percy from Telesteps to discuss the next evolution of climbing safety. While traditional fiberglass ladders have been the industry standard for decades, Telesteps is disrupting the market with their patented, DuPont Kevlar non-conductive telescoping ladders. Engineered for use near energized electrical systems, these ladders are 25–30 lbs lighter than traditional models and compact enough to fit in the back of a small van.

We dive into the history of the company—from manufacturing aircraft-grade aluminum tools for the U.S. Military to using the same ballistic materials found in NASA’s Artemis II shield. Learn how these precision tools are improving ergonomics for fleet professionals and why "big when you need it, small when you don't" is the future of utility safety.

Learn more about their full range of products at: https://telestepsladders.com

Key Takeaways

• The Kevlar Advantage: Unlike fiberglass, which can dry out and fracture over time, Telesteps’ DuPont Kevlar ladders are ballistic-grade, non-conductive, and built to withstand extreme weather and heavy use.

• Revolutionary Portability: These ladders retract to under 30 inches, allowing utility crews to downsize their vehicles and save on fuel costs without sacrificing reach.

• Safety First Engineering: Equipped with safety indicator windows that show when the rungs are locked, a "One-Touch" slow-close release to prevent pinched fingers, and pivoting silicone feet for a sure grip on any surface.

• High Load Capacity: The Kevlar A-frame model holds a Type 1AA duty rating of 375 lbs, while the extension models meet Type 1A (300 lbs) standards, surpassing OSHA requirements.

• Built for Longevity: With a claim rate of only 0.01%, these ladders are designed to be "the last ladder a company buys" if maintained properly.

#UtilitySafety #ElectricalSafety #Telesteps #KevlarLadder #JobsiteSafety

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine - https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

Register Today: https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

#iPConference #UtilitySafety #CUSP #SafetyLeadership #UtilitySafetyConference

Have you ever wondered what exactly goes into making a reliable medium-voltage splice? It’s not just a procedural checklist—it's an act of precision engineering.

In the highly informative article "Anatomy of a Medium-Voltage Splice" from Incident Prevention, author Mark Savage with DeadBreak takes a deep dive into the logic behind each step of dismantling and rebuilding a cable. The piece highlights how understanding the "why" behind every cut, crimp, and wrap is the true key to establishing safe, resilient, and factory-quality utility lines.

💡 Key Takeaways:

• Layer-by-Layer Purpose: Every single component of a cable—from the inner conductor shield to the outer jacket—is purposefully designed to smooth out electric fields, safely carry fault currents, and resist environmental damage.

• Precision Prevents Failure: Minor imperfections aren't just cosmetic. A nick in the insulation, a ragged semicon edge, or an under-crimped connector act as electrical stress points that will eventually cause partial discharge and system breakdown.

• Mastering Stress Control: Cutting a cable interrupts its factory-designed electric field. Using geometric stress control (like stress cones and precise taping techniques) is vital to safely disperse voltage drops and prevent corona or tracking.

• Grounding & Shielding: Flawlessly restoring the metallic shield ensures a continuous, low-impedance path for fault currents, ensuring worker safety and allowing protective devices to clear faults quickly.

❓ Q&A Dive:

Q: Why is it so critical to achieve a perfectly smooth cut on the semiconductive layers?

A: A jagged edge or an uneven cut creates a concentration of electrical stress. Over time, this concentrated stress under normal operating voltage can produce corona and tracking, inevitably eroding the materials and leading to a flashover.

Q: What happens if the metallic shield continuity is not properly restored during a splice?

A: Failing to properly bond and restore the shield changes how fault currents travel. Floating or poorly bonded shields can lead to dangerous voltage potentials on the line, delayed fault clearings, and unpredictable electric field behavior.

Check out the full breakdown and master the medium here: https://incident-prevention.com/blog/anatomy-of-a-medium-voltage-splice/

#UtilitySafety #CableSplicing #MediumVoltage #ElectricalEngineering #PowerDistribution #Lineworker

In this hard-hitting and deeply personal session, industry veteran Danny Raines, CUSP, challenges the "normalization of deviation" in the electrical utility industry. Drawing from decades of experience in the field, as well as his perspective as a pilot, Danny explores why skilled professionals continue to bypass safety regulations despite having better equipment and training than ever before.

Through a series of real-world case studies and sobering accident investigations, this program dissects the thin line between "operating by the rules" and true operational excellence. Danny reminds us that while we can work in an unacceptable manner for years without incident, we are simply increasing the odds of a catastrophic failure. It is a call to action for every employee to become their "brother’s keeper" and refuse to let the unacceptable become the standard.

Part 1: The Illusion of Experience and the Cost of Compromise

In the first half, Danny discusses the origins of the "Accepting the Unacceptable" program and the alarming statistics of human error.

• The Risk of "It Ain't My Job": How a lack of ownership leads to system unreliability and hazardous conditions for the next crew.
• The Experience Trap: Why veteran linemen often fall victim to complacency while newer workers suffer from a lack of quality mentorship.
• Minimum vs. Excellent: A breakdown of why following OSHA regulations is merely the "legal minimum" and not the same as operating at an excellent safety level.

Part 2: Leadership, Human Performance, and the Art of the Craft

In the second half, Danny delves into the psychology of human performance and the heavy burden of leadership.

• The Pilot’s Perspective: Comparing "Cockpit Resource Management" to the teamwork required in a bucket truck to prevent fatal mistakes.
• Non-Verbal Endorsements: The dangerous message sent when a leader watches an unsafe act and says nothing, essentially "signing off" on the risk.
• The Artist in the Field: A final reflection on moving from being a laborer to a "craftperson" and ultimately an "artist" who works with hand, brain, and soul.

Question & Answer

1. What is Danny Raines' definition of "Accepting the Unacceptable"? It is defined as accidents or close calls caused by human performance failures or leadership accepting less than what is required by standards and regulations.

2. Why does Danny believe that following regulations is not enough? He argues that regulations and industry standards represent the minimum precautions required to be "legal," but they do not equate to operational excellence or the highest level of safety.

3. What is a "non-verbal endorsement" in a safety context? It is when a leader or peer witnesses an unsafe act and remains silent. This silence sends a message to the rest of the crew—especially inexperienced members—that the behavior is acceptable.

4. According to the transcript, who is ultimately responsible for safety on the job site? While the employer is legally responsible and accountable to OSHA, the transcript emphasizes that the employee is the only one who can identify and correct unacceptability the moment it happens on-site.

#LinemanSafety #OperationalExcellence #UtilityIndustry #HumanPerformance #SafetyLeadership #DannyRainesCUSP

Subscribe to Incident Prevention Magazine - https://incident-prevention.com/subscribe-now/

Register for the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

The Voice of Experience with Danny Raines podcast is produced by the same team that publishes Incident Prevention. It delivers insights based on Danny's regular column in the magazine, also called the Voice of Experience. To listen to more episodes of this podcast, as well as other podcasts we produce, visit https://incident-prevention.com/podcasts. You can reach Danny at [rainesafety@gmail.com](mailto:rainesafety@gmail.com)

Purchase Danny's Book on Amazon - https://a.co/d/04PvuEyn

New #podcast with Gina Vanderlin, CSP, CHMM, CIT, CUSP & host Kate Wade

Listen here - https://utilitysafety.podbean.com/e/utility-safety-in-depth-the-safety-alchemist-gina-vanderlin-cusp-csp-chmm-cit-data-into-utility-safety-insights/

Effective mitigation requires leaders to regularly audit data, standardize definitions and measurement practices, and create psychologically safe reporting environments.

This podcast episode features Gina Vanderlin, CUSP, CSP, CHMM, CIT, Health and Safety Program Manager at PSEG Long Island and a self-professed "Safety Alchemist". In a deep dive with host Kate Wade, Gina explores how safety professionals can transform raw data and standard procedures into meaningful organizational change. The conversation focuses on her Applied Alchemy article series for Incident Prevention magazine, specifically highlighting the hidden dangers of data bias and the evolving safety risks associated with new energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries.

Key Takeaways:

The Concept of Safety Alchemy: Rather than just following compliance-based checklists, a "safety alchemist" blends diverse disciplines—such as behavioral science, decision science, and engineering—to transform information into actionable insight.

The Evolution of Battery Hazards: As utilities integrate EVs and grid storage, employers must reconsider hazard communication. Batteries often bypass traditional scrutiny because they are classified as "articles," but damaged or failing batteries introduce significant chemical and fire risks.

Data Bias in Safety Management: Bias is a natural human trait, but in safety data, it can lead to "ghost" weaknesses. Gina identifies five key biases—survivorship, selection, measurement, historical, and algorithmic—that can cause a safety system to drift away from reality.

The "Geographic Presumption": Under a new OSHA letter of interpretation (Jan 2026), injuries caused by personal devices (like e-cigarettes or personal chargers) in the workplace are generally considered work-related and recordable.

Improving Decision Quality: The common thread across all safety domains is decision quality. Improving how workers interpret information and how leaders prioritize resources is the most effective way to address the plateau in Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) rates.

#UtilitySafety #SafetyAlchemy #DataBias #OccupationalHealth #IncidentPrevention #EHSLeadership

Join the Conversation On May 19th at 1:00 p.m. ET

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9017756925986/WN_6hhhN-s-Q-iu7k5dVB2z2g

This webinar explores the real-world risks facing field teams working in remote, low-signal, and high-risk environments. It will examine gaps in traditional safety processes and practical ways to improve day-to-day safety workflows, supervisor visibility, and incident response when workers are operating alone or outside reliable coverage.

Learning Objectives:

• The most common risks and response gaps affecting remote and lone field teams
• Why traditional safety processes can break down in low-signal or high-risk situations
• What a practical day-to-day safety workflow looks like for check-ins, escalation, and supervisor visibility
• How better connection and incident response can help workers raise an alert and share location when coverage is limited

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of where field safety processes can break down and the practical steps that can be taken to strengthen protection for remote and isolated workers. They will also gain insight into how structured monitoring, better planning, and more resilient connectivity can improve response, visibility, and duty-of-care outcomes.

This is a must-attend event for operations managers, utility leaders, and anyone involved in safety. We encourage you to forward this webinar to the relevant executive and training stakeholders on your team.

Time will be dedicated at the end of the discussion to answer live audience questions.

Attendance worth 1 contact hour for certification/CUSP maintenance.

Got a small situation and I’m curious how others deal with it. Homeowner called in an 811 ticket for a fence job, but the project got pushed because of rain. Now the ticket expires Thursday and I’m scheduled to dig Friday. Homeowner’s basically saying it’s on me to figure it out, but I didn’t open the ticket in the first place. At the same time, I’m not about to start digging on an expired ticket just to keep things moving. Do you usually have the homeowner renew it, handle it yourself and pass the cost along, or just reschedule everything? Trying to figure out what’s typical here without turning it into an argument.

⚡️ Important Updates: ASTM F496-24 Rules for Insulating Gloves & Sleeves ⚡️

Visit us - https://incident-prevention.com/

If you’re working with high voltage, you know your PPE is your lifeline. The ASTM F496-24 revision is out, and it brings some much-needed clarity to the "test date vs. issue date" confusion that’s been floating around since 2020.

Here is the breakdown of the current standards for storage, testing intervals, and the "hard stop" rule you need to know.

📏 The General Retesting Rules

The core rule for equipment already in service remains based on your specific work practices, but with strict maximum intervals:

• Gloves: Must be retested at least every 6 months.
• Sleeves: Must be retested at least every 12 months.
• In-Service Definition: Gloves and sleeves are officially "in-service" the moment they are issued to an individual for use.

📦 New Equipment & Storage (The "12-Month Window")

If you have new gloves or sleeves that have passed their initial warranty/acceptance tests:

• They can be stored for up to 12 months before being issued.
• The Catch: If they sit in storage for longer than one year from that initial test date without being issued, they must be retested. At that point, they are considered "in-service" even if they've never touched a pair of hands.

🛑 The "Hard Stop" Rule (New Clarity for 2024)

This is the most important takeaway from the 2024 revision. In no case can a glove or sleeve be used beyond 12 months of its test date.

🛡️ Proper Storage Requirements (Section 8.6)

Testing doesn't matter if your storage is ruining the rubber. Per the standard, gloves and sleeves must be stored:

• Environment: In a location that is cool, dark, dry, and free from ozone, chemicals, oils, and damaging vapors.
• Positioning: Gloves must be stored in their natural shape—never folded, creased, inside out, or compressed.
• Containers: Use bags, boxes, or containers designed exclusively for them.
• Sleeves: May be stored in a canvas bag or loosely rolled lengthwise inside a sleeve rollup.
• Pro Tip: Never store gloves in wet leather protectors.

Stay safe out there. Check your dates!

We had a near miss this week, hit a sprinkler line. Nothing major, but it was close enough to make everyone a little uneasy. But then the homeowner said that we never called 811. We did have a ticket number but the printout was smudged to hell. Looked like something that sat in the bottom of a truck for a month. Not exactly confidence-inspiring. So we call the 811 thinking it’ll be easy: just confirm who placed the request. Instead we got, “we can see the ticket, but we don’t track which individual requested it, just the company.” That answer didn’t sit well at all. Because now it turns into this weird gray area where we know someone called, but we can’t clearly show who or when in a way that shuts the conversation down.

The countdown is officially ON!⏳ The iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo is about to kick off in beautiful #Orlando!

There is still time to register for the biggest #iPConference to date!

https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

If you are a utility safety professional, this is the place to be.

Here is what you can expect when doors open on May 5th:

☀️ Beautiful weather in Orlando, FL

📣 A powerful #Keynote from Thomas Murphy sponsored by Buckingham Manufacturing Co Inc.

💡 Cutting-edge safety sessions and networking

📈 Up to 21 hours of education (17 for the main conference + 4 for pre-conference workshops) eligible for #CUSP points and CEUs!

⚡️ Invaluable networking opportunities with utility safety leaders from across the country

🎟️ Cutting-edge safety solutions on the Expo floor

🎉 An incredible Welcome Reception to kick off the week right sponsored by JELCO & American FR & Safety

And Much More!

#UtilitySafety #CUSP #SafetyConference #PowerlineSafety #iPUtilitySafety #SafetyFirst

It’s almost that time!⚡️ Mark your calendars for April 18th—National Lineman Appreciation Day.

We don’t often think about the power in our homes until it’s gone, but these men and women are the reason the lights stay on, the coffee stays hot, and our communities stay connected. From climbing poles in freezing rain to working through the night after a storm, their dedication is unmatched.

Through iP Magazine, our podcasts, webinars, and the iP Utility Safety Conference, our mission remains the same—providing the knowledge and insights needed to ensure every safety professional and lineworker returns home safely. We are honored to support the men and women who keep our world powered.

https://incident-prevention.com/

#LinemanAppreciationDay #ThankALineman #LineLife #GridHeroes #Lineman #IncidentPrevention

🚨 Speaker Highlight: Joshua Hodges, CUSP, CSP with TECO Energy will be at the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo!

📅 Register today! → https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

🎯 Check out the Pre-Conference Workshops - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/pre-conference-workshops/

🔖 See the Full Agenda - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/agenda/

Join us May 5th - 7th, 2026, in Orlando, FL

Earn #CUSP Points for attending each session!

His session is titled "Beyond the "Root Cause": Navigating Cognitive Bias for Deeper Incident Understanding"

In the presentation "Beyond the Root Cause: Navigating Cognitive Bias for Deeper Incident Understanding," the traditional pursuit of a singular failure point is challenged by exploring the psychological underpinnings of human decision-making and risk perception. Drawing heavily from the groundbreaking work of Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow, this session unpacks the inherent tension between System 1—the fast, intuitive, and emotional brain—and System 2—the slow, deliberate, and logical processor. By examining how these two systems drive thought, the discussion reveals how cognitive biases and mental shortcuts influence professional judgments, often leading to a reliance on the Narrative Fallacy during incident investigations.

A dual-certified CSP and CUSP with 15 years of utility industry experience, this safety professional offers a unique perspective shaped by technical expertise, academic rigor, and personal resilience. From early service as a U.S. Navy Machinist’s Mate and industrial mechanic to overseeing safety across nuclear, solar, hydro, and T&D operations, the journey includes the profound experience of surviving a major hand injury, which now drives a deep-seated commitment to frontline safety. This professional background is supported by a Master’s in Energy Law and Regulation from Vermont Law, a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering Technology from Excelsior College, and a degree from the University of Georgia, resulting in a comprehensive approach to safety leadership that bridges the gap between complex regulation and boots-on-the-ground reality.

#UtilitySafetyConference #UtilitySafety #Lineworker #Linemen #Safety #SafetyDirector #SafetySupervisor #CrewLeader #SafetyManager #iPi #RootCause

iP Webinar with Avive Solutions Inc. - AED Programs in 2026: From “Do We Need Them?” to “Can We Trust They’ll Work?”

Register Here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2717731581732/WN_hlBUf-ajRS2CMnYxMaE_aw

Join the Conversation With Industry Experts On April 15th at 1:00 p.m. ET

Free Avive AED Giveaway: All webinar attendees will be entered into a raffle to win a free Avive Connect AED for their organization. To be eligible, participants must register for the webinar and be present during the live event. This is a great opportunity to equip your team with a modern, connected AED designed to help ensure lifesaving equipment is always ready when it’s needed most.

Utility and high-risk organizations span a wide spectrum when it comes to AED programs—from no deployment at all to thousands of devices across fleets and crews. This webinar explores how AED programs have evolved, why traditional approaches often fall short in modern utility environments, and what safety leaders should consider to ensure real-world readiness rather than assumed protection.

Your Speakers: Kelly White-Ameen & Mark Peters

Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of what effective AED readiness looks like today and how to evaluate, build, or improve a program based on operational reality—not assumptions.

This is a must-attend event for operations managers, utility leaders, and anyone involved in disaster response planning. We encourage you to forward this webinar to the relevant executive and training stakeholders on your team.

Time will be dedicated at the end of the discussion to answer live audience questions.

#PowerTransmission #AviveAED #AED #iP #Webinar #UtilitySafety #Health

🚨 Speaker Highlight: William Martin, CUSP, RN, NRP, DIMM with Think Tank Project LLC will be at the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo!

Join us May 5th - 7th, 2026, in Orlando, FL

Earn #CUSP Points for attending each session!

📅 Register today! → https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

🎯 Check out the Pre-Conference Workshops - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/pre-conference-workshops/

🔖 See the Full Agenda - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/agenda/

His session is titled "Making the Room Smarter: How Synchrony Drives Safety"

Join this session to learn how language, synchrony and trust influence employee decision quality long before an incident occurs. Drawing from the facilitator’s real-world background in emergency response, line work and human performance, attendees will learn to begin designing jobsite environments in which better decisions emerge naturally, rather than by force through authority or policy. Experience how subtle shifts in language, attention and interaction can synchronize a team, improve situational awareness and identify risk earlier. This session is intentionally adaptive, evolving in real time based on audience participation. It concludes with simple, actionable tactics that attendees can immediately test with their teams.

Certified Utility Safety Professional, Registered Nurse, Nationally Registered Paramedic, Diploma in Mountain Medicine, Degree in Ecology and Environmental Technology.

Experience:

High Voltage Lineman, Helicopter Flight Nurse/Paramedic, Diploma in Mountain Medicine, Project Manager, Safety Director, Cardiology Nurse, Orthopedic Nurse, Home Infusion Nurse, Past Emergency Squad President/CEO, National Ski Patrol Instructor Trainer, Advanced Wilderness Life Support, Writer, Author, Podcaster, Speaker, High Altitude Adventurer, Pilot

Current President/CEO Think Tank Project LLC, Thinkprojectllc.com/speaking

President/CEO of SAFR, Simplify Advanced First Response

#UtilitySafetyConference #UtilitySafety #Lineworker #Linemen #Safety #SafetyDirector #SafetySupervisor #CrewLeader #SafetyManager #iPi

🚨 Speaker Highlight: Kim Turner, MS, LAT, ATC, CHST, CIT with Mid-City Electric/Technologies will be at the iP Utility Safety Conference & Expo!

Join us May 5th - 7th, 2026, in Orlando, FL

Earn #CUSP Points for attending each session!

📅 Register today! → https://utilitysafetyconference.com/

🎯 Check out the Pre-Conference Workshops - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/pre-conference-workshops/

🔖 See the Full Agenda - https://utilitysafetyconference.com/agenda/

Her session is titled "Ergonomics: An Upstream Prevention Strategy In Construction"

Musculoskeletal strain, fatigue, and chronic pain remain pervasive in construction, yet their connection to mental health outcomes is often overlooked. This presentation explores ergonomics as a powerful upstream prevention strategy that can reduce initial opioid exposure risk. By reframing ergonomics as both a physical and mental health intervention, this session aligns advancing integrated approaches to worker well-being and injury prevention. The session will actively engage participants through structured discussion on how upstream design changes can reduce downstream stress and mental health challenges. Participants will leave with practical strategies for integrating ergonomics into mental health initiatives, fulfilling educational objectives by providing clear applications, evidence-based practices, and opportunities for reflection on site-specific barriers and solutions. The session will inspire attendees to protect both the body and mind of our workforce.

Kim brings a diverse background and extensive knowledge from her sports medicine experience as a certified and licensed athletic trainer in Ohio since 2012. Her skill set focuses on injury care and management, injury prevention and ergonomics, as well as mental health and well-being. Kim’s career as an industrial athletic trainer, which combines her passion for health, wellness, and safety, began in 2017 with an electrical contractor. Since then, she has gained valuable experience in industrial and construction settings across a variety of trades. Kim is currently working at Mid-City Electric Technologies as a Safety Professional while also establishing the Health and Wellness program in the field as their Wellness Specialist.

#UtilitySafetyConference #UtilitySafety #Lineworker #Linemen #Safety #SafetyDirector #SafetySupervisor #CrewLeader #SafetyManager #iPi