S2E3 -Empowering Safety

Welcome everyone to Park Innovation Flow Podcast. I'm your host, Blair Corning, and this is the podcast where we talk all things South Platte Renew park program, which is pilot and research center and innovations that are happening throughout the water and wastewater industry. And so today we're going to do just that. We're going to tackle kind of a different topic to topic of safety. And to do that, I have Isaiah Crewnagel as my guest. Thanks for being here today, Isaiah.

Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for the invite, Blair.

You bet. I've been looking forward to this episode. Isaiah, to give you a little bit of background, then I'll let him introduce himself. Is the deputy director of operations and maintenance at South Platte Renew. He's got experience in a lot of different areas, but I'll let you maybe tell the listeners who you are, what you a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are.

Sure. Yeah. I've been in the public utility sector for about 20 years now. Started at a small wastewater treatment plant in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Spent a good chunk of my career there. Moved out to Colorado about three years ago and I've done just about everything. I've worked in. I've worked in operations, I've worked in maintenance, worked in the collection system, and at my last stop for a little while, I was the safety coordinator. So I have some. Some safety kind of programmatic experience as well.

Didn't you tell me the other day you did a brief stint as an auto. Auto mechanic too?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I know you never work on your car.

Never work on my car again. Yeah. And I mostly try to keep that as a chapter in my life that I don't think about very much.

Oh, I'm sorry to bring that back up.

People think wastewater is a very dirty job. And fun fact, working on cars is way dirtier than working in wastewater.

Yeah, I could see that. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's me. That's how I got here. Been at South Platte Renew for a little over three years now and was really excited to come into a well established safety culture and help take it to the next level. But I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that today.

Yeah. Before we get there, let's talk a little bit about hobbies, things you do outside of work. Have you embraced the Colorado lifestyle? Are you still wishing you were in California, surfing?

I think I've embraced it pretty well. My family's a big hiking family, so we go up into the mountains a. And I mean, you've known me for a couple years now. It's every weekend we're out, we're up in the mountains, we're at a lake, we're, you know, somewhere doing something exciting.

Yeah, yeah. Skiing. I know. You do. Maybe not this season so much yet, but.

Right, right. Yeah.

One of these days. One of these days.

It'll. One of these days. Yep.

Cool. Well, the interesting question, and I to tell the audience, I prompted him with this early because it is a hard one, but I wanted to ask this. So what's something you surprisingly opinionated about that most people wouldn't guess that you are that opinionated about?

Yeah. So I'm going to stick with the outdoor theme.

Okay.

We hike a lot, we camp a lot, we do all these things. And hiking is one of the coolest things you can do in Colorado. It's. There's just such a diversity in landscape and terrain. And my hot take, my thing that I'm surprisingly opinionated about is there are 58 14ers in Colorado, mountains above 14,000ft in elevation, and hiking them, I think is overrated. So there's my, there's my.

Wow.

Surprisingly opinion.

Yeah, that's a, that's a hot take there. You might cause some controversy.

Yeah, I'll stand behind you stand behind it.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Overrated.

Yep. I think hiking in general is overrated, but that's just me.

Yeah.

If you're hiking like in a park to a, to a brewery, I'm all for that.

That's called a walk.

Oh, that's a walk. That's what I'm, I'm good at that. All right, well, let's get into the topic at hand. SPR Safe program. And it's a little, you know, park is here to talk about innovation, talk about research. This is not so much research, but it's a very innovative program or very innovative approach to a program that all facilities should have. So saying that, you know, the mission is protecting people, our greatest asset. That's kind of the. The tagline along with SPR safe. So tell the listeners, what does that mean? How. What is the basis, the foundation for that?

Yeah, I was, when I got this invite, I was, I was a little bit confused. I was like, man, innovation, safety. I don't know that they quite go hand in hand, but I think the approach that we've taken here at South Platte Renew is definitely innovative. And so we had some. Not everybody realizes, but industrial water and wastewater plants are some of the most dangerous places you can work. We have Confined spaces. We have hazardous chemicals, we have fall hazards. We have all these things that make these places really complex industrial facilities. And everything boils down to people. Your people are your greatest assets. They're, you know, without. Without people, it's really hard to get the job done. And so we have to make sure one of our values here at South Quiet Renew is safety. And we have to make sure that we're standing up to that value. And we're equipping people with the knowledge and the skills and the tools they need to do the job safety, to do the job safely, to go home every day, and to look out for one another as well.

Yeah, yeah, I noticed. I know that one of the key tenets of the program is employee empowerment, or empowering employees to take safety into their own hands, be responsible for their own safety. Even the safety. It's not really an acronym, but the Y in safety in the. What do you call that? Not an acronym, but I think it's an acronym. Okay, well, every letter in safety stands for something, and Y stands for you have the power to stop work. So anyway, point is, it's involved a lot on employee empowerment. And how do you. That's a tough thing. How do you empower employees or get that buy in?

Yeah, I think it starts with engagement. You have to make sure people are engaged and understand the expectations and understand the danger. You have to put the expectation on people to be experts in their own safety. And then when they do exercise that right, when they do. When they do raise their hand and say, hey, there's a thing that would make my job safer or there's something I'm uncomfortable doing. Instead of creating barriers, you celebrate that and you empower them and you use it as an example for others to follow and to say, hey, we really want to recognize this. We want to make sure other people feel comfortable doing these things. So empowerment is a huge part of what we do here. We have. We have this idea in an industrial wastewater environment called stop work. And so our big thing with SPR Safe is anybody has a right to stop work. And for a lot of people, that's intimidating for somebody who's a line level staff to go to a construction foreman and say, hey, I don't like what you're doing. I need it to stop. We've empowered our staff to do that. And as long as they have good grounds from a safety standpoint to do that, it's. It's something that we support. We communicate to our contractors and our partners expectations, and then we have Ways to recognize people for doing that. Like, we have an award that's really cool. One of our mechanics fabricated it. It's like this safety hard hat that they built and that's a traveling trophy that goes around and it's recognized by our safety committee to say, hey, we, we appreciate what this person's done over the last month and here's why we're giving you the safety trophy.

So have you seen as operations, maintenance manager, real world examples of when someone said, hey, this doesn't feel right and pulled it back?

Yeah, absolutely. We had an incident not all that long ago where there was a contractor performing some work and one of our staff noticed that this person wasn't appropriately tied off. And so they were working over a pit. And it would be really easy to just walk past that job site, continue doing your work and go on about your day and allow the contractor to put themselves at risk. But our operator had the courage in that moment to say, hey, this doesn't feel right. I'm going to speak up, I'm going to go find somebody and make sure this work stops so that we're safe as an organization and that the partners we bring in are safe as well.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's important and I know it's, it's, it's hard to do to get people that empowered where they, they are not afraid to do that. You know, when there's no, there won't be repercussions. We're all going to get together, we're going to talk this through. We're going to come up with a solution that makes people safe. Yeah, I'm glad that's part of it. I know another part of the, the program is kind of this. Think before you act, take a step back, before you look, before you leap. How do you implement that concept into spr? Safe program?

Yeah, it's, it's again, giving people information, giving people tools. And sometimes tools are physical things like hard hats and wrenches and steel toed boots and those types of things. And sometimes tools are processes and procedures. And one of the, one of the tools we have here is a job hazard analysis or for bigger things, what we call a mop, a method of procedure. And it's a way that we can take all of the risks associated with the job and try to visualize them and talk about, all right, what could go wrong. Get a bunch of people in a room and say, all right, everybody come up with anything that can go wrong and let's put it on a whiteboard let's put it on a sheet and let's come up with ways that we can make this safer. The, the JHA is the job. Hazard analysis, I think is pretty standard for a lot of, not necessarily wastewater plants, but a lot of construction sites. A lot of places use these types of things. But the whole idea is to get you to slow down and to get you to think before you dive into a job and make sure you, you've, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's pouring rain outside and there's a job that I need to do that's out, exposed and I could, I could do it today in the pouring rain and expose myself to all these risks and hazards. Or maybe the right answer is to wait for tomorrow. Is there a way we can sequence it around or do I have the right tools? So just really making sure people take that time to stop to think it through and to lean on each other as resources as well. So yeah, we've found that these are really good tools that as long as people buy into them, they work really well.

Yeah, yeah. I think that getting together too is huge. A lot of accidents I've seen along the way are just caused by people not communicating, you know, the contractor not talking to the subcontractor, to the owner, to the, you know, everyone not on the same page. So getting everyone in a room to say, what are we doing here? Yeah, yeah, that's. I think that's important. Well, good. Let's talk about this. You know, safety usually is. I know this program was developed like an employee driven program, safety kind of top down approach. Talk a little bit about how the program came to be and how it functions now where you don't get that top down, here's the manual, follow it, you know, that kind of approach.

Yeah, I think for a lot of us in the industry, we've sat through a lot of pre recorded videos on how you're supposed to work safely. And usually it's a, you know, it's a professional actor. They're in a setting, they're, they're talking to you about confined space hazards or atmospheric hazards or whatever. And it's this very abstract, abstract safety concept. And by making it, you know, more involved, less top down, we get people involved and we can make it a little more tailored and a little more specific to our hazards here at South Platte Renew. I think the, the genesis of the, the genesis of the program was we had a couple of major near misses a handful of years ago and we had a major stop work where for a couple of days there was no construction happening, nothing happening at SPR where we could reset and really reestablish safety as a priority. And then following that there was this big group of people. And this was before I got here. We had people from our engineering group. Blair, you were involved. We had people from operations and maintenance and really to make sure that this was a well rounded group with stakeholders from throughout the organization to say here's what our priorities are, here's how we're going to be safe. And so if you start by creating a program with involvement from throughout the organization, not just management staff, but line level staff as well, you're much more likely to succeed moving forward and have it be adopted. And then when you start rolling it out instead of I mentioned those really dry videos from like Circa or whatever insurance organization you have that's telling you this is how you work safely.

We have a ton offense to search.

Yeah, yeah, Circa is fine. Yeah. So we have, we have a ton of experts here throughout this organization.

Yeah.

And we really lean on them to talk to their peers about the hazards they see how you work safely and, and the resources that we have here at the organization.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's, I agree with you. It's so much more meaningful. And I heard this from the employees to have our master electrician, you know, that works at the plant talk about a hazard on the plant site and a person they don't know come in and talk about an incident or a program that they're not familiar with.

Yeah.

So I think that is huge. And I've heard that from employees, you know, the in house training and getting experts from within and tapping into people to be those experts. Because a lot of times I think people have the expertise they just need to be called out as an expert

and

be asked to do some training, I think.

Yeah. And there's some benefits outside of safety there too. Like when you get into. I'm going to take an operations supervisor who knows everything there is to know about handling chemicals and I'm going to put him up in front of a room to train people. And maybe that's where we start to get into innovation a little bit. So now we're, we're using sort of non traditional means to train people and we're getting people like thoroughly out of their comfort zones. And so I think there are some really cool benefits to that as well that support safety and reinforce safety but also are accomplishing some other things as well.

Cool. Well maybe let's just talk about Some basics. You know, you mentioned not being tied off, fall protection. But for the listeners who may not be familiar with the hazards you mentioned, wastewater plants are, can be extremely hazardous. Take us through a few of those hazards. What are the big ones? Fall protection being mentioned. But what are some of the other ones that you do training on or that you're concerned about that you, that you have programs to make safer?

Yeah, so we just in January had a confined space training, and confined space is one of the deadlier hazards in an industrial facility. So you have these spaces throughout a wastewater plant that are large enough for an employee to occupy, but not necessarily designed for them to be in there for a long time. And throughout the course of work, sometimes we have to, we have to send people into those spaces to perform maintenance, to operate valves, to do any number of things. And within these confined spaces, there are engulfment hazards, there are atmospheric hazards. You can have these chemicals or these gases that are odorless, sometimes that you can't even tell what's going on. And so making sure that we have awareness of the hazards throughout the plant and that people understand what's going on and to, to the point of confined space. One of the things we've done recently that I think is pretty cool is traditionally a lot of wastewater plants, you target training to the groups that really need it. And so I'm only going to give confined space training to the people who are going to enter confined spaces. And that's, that's kind of how things have been done for a long time. But what we've started doing here is we're doing at least awareness level training for all staff. So our laboratory staff, our front desk staff, our engineers, people who in the course of their job duties may never go into a confined space, we're still providing them that awareness and those tools because maybe somebody from the administrative team is leading a tour out in the plant. But now they have knowledge of what the hazards are and they know if they see a sign that says danger confined space, it's not just this unknown kind of idea to them. It's something they've been trained on

and

that's received hugely positive feedback so far. And something that I think we intend to continue doing is giving all the training to everybody.

Yeah, yeah. I think it helps also with just letting people know what other groups do, you know, so maybe you're never going into a confined space, but maybe the, you know, maybe the person who is a little distracted one day because they're gonna do an entry and it's Important that for someone else to realize, oh, that's what they're, you know, I'm just. It just helps level the playing field as far as. Oh, that's what that group does. That's, you know, an important part of their job that they do. So. Yeah, I think it's great. The. And then you have, you have specialized training for the people go in the confined space or climbing heights.

Yeah. So. So the general kind of awareness level training is for everybody. It's. These are the hazards. This is how SPR handles them. These are some of the tools and resources. And then if there is additional training that's needed for like our operations staff or our maintenance staff or you know, medium voltage electrical training for our electricians, they'll get that additional training to equip them to do the job. But there is kind of where we draw the line where we don't need everybody with those, with those skills. Cool.

All right. So you mentioned electrical. There's ton of power used at these plants. You mentioned fall protection. There's a ton of high tanks and towers and different structures going into confined buildings, confined spaces, digesters, you know, little areas where there's gases from the wastewater. What else is that? What other ones can you think of that you do training on that are, that are important.

Yeah. I mean, some, some of them are a little bit more mundane. Like every building you work in anywhere has a, has a fire alarm. Right. And in general, like, we're, we're trained as children to react to fire drills. And I have, I have kind of a funny story that I'll share from not that long ago. So we had a, we had a scheduled fire drill not that long ago. And the fire marshal came in, he initiated the fire drill. It came through and one of our staff saw the fire alarm, there was some other work going on and acknowledged it. And they said, cool. I hear it like acknowledged, let's go from there. And that highlighted for us an actual gap in understanding of what our evacuation procedure was. And so we have a big office building we work in that could have flammables and spaces where you can have limited access to get into and out of. And so brand new building. We had the opportunity to go pull that fire alarm again and walk everybody through. Here are the steps. Here are how, here's how you get out of the building and turn it into kind of a fun interactive exercise and poke fun at people at the same time, which is always kind of cool.

Yeah. As another part of the training that the safety committee kind of Puts on or orchestrates. Part of SPR SAFE is the interactive. Kind of break into groups and figure this out. And here's the equipment. You know, let's get into the, you know, heat protection equipment that we have on site. And when you would use it and touching the stuff and getting with groups, I think has been. Yeah, a good way to do the training.

There's. There's this interesting. There. There's kind of a balance you have to have with safety, where you want people aware of it, but you don't want. You don't want to turn your staff into the safety police. Right.

Yeah.

And I've seen organizations where you try to have an emphasis on safety, and you try to empower people to look out for one another, and it almost turns into, like, you create this little safety police force within your organization. And that was something we were aware of when we started developing SPR Safe that we wanted to get away from. And so by making it more. More involved, more collaborative and helping people understand how to address issues. So we've. We've created outlets for, you know, if you have an issue, go talk to our safety coordinator. If you have an issue, do this. So it becomes more of a productive conversation instead of like, hey, I think I saw someone do something on safe, so I'm gonna go tell on them.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, some places have a safety committee, and that's a few over, you know, I don't know overzealous, but sure, I'm gonna write you up. And that's the program. But that's really. I think SPR Safe has gotten away from that and been a lot more effective at getting results.

Yeah, absolutely.

What do you see for the future? I know it's come a long way. I know you've seen improvements in your three years. What do you think the future holds for SBR SAFE for the way South Polar New approaches safety?

Yeah, so we've got kind of a roadmap. We've got some milestones. We have some things that we intend to keep doing, but we're also trying to be flexible with it because the plants changing, the hazards are changing. We're getting, you know, new processes. A couple of years ago, we. We started up an ultraviolet disinfection where we have these, you know, big tube lights in the water that shine uv. And so now we have. We have another source of what could be a hazardous light. Like if you go into the UV building and pull up a hatch and you don't have the proper eyewear on you can damage your eyesight. And so we have a new hazard that we never had before. And so trying to remain flexible, to adapt to new hazards and to also hear the what are the wants and needs and the things that our staff is seeing as safety issues and be able to adapt to those as well. We have an annual survey that comes out to have staff give feedback on how safe do you feel, do you have the right resources and those types of things where we can quantify it year over year and see how does staff feel about the direction SPR SAFE is going. And that's definitely a tool we have in our toolbox moving forward and just continuing to evolve the program. I think one of our. When we kicked off the development of SPR safe, I think one of the goals was to have a. I don't know if there's a world class safety program or basically a safety program that other people could look up to. In 2025, we won the National. I think it was the NAWQA or is it WEF? Yeah, it was the WEF Safety Award. So this is a national safety award. So it's when we're setting these big, huge goals to go be a world class safety program that people could look up to, we're starting to do those things. And so maybe we can get more staff presenting to others on what the process looked like and how we developed it and just become more of a recognized authority in safety and not necessarily just in the water, wastewater space, but how can we, I don't know, maybe influence industrial safety or construction safety or those types of things? So cool. Yeah, Very, very big and exciting.

Nice. Well, thanks for, thanks for your time today. Thanks for coming by to talk to us about safety. I know it's an area that is unfamiliar to. Well, everyone knows what safety is. But for sure, digging into it I think is. Is interesting, especially the kind of outside the box or innovative approach that SPR has taken with SPR safe. So thanks for taking us through it.

Absolutely. Thanks, Blair.

But you're not done yet. You got a quiz.

Let's do it.

Let me give you some, let me give you some options here. This logo is the game. So it's logos, taglines, products, that kind of thing. Here's your choices, mister. Oh, auto slogans or potluck, which could be a variety of things.

Yeah, it could. I. I think I'm gonna go with auto slogans.

Auto slogans do it. Okay. I don't know if I would be too good at this, but okay. What auto brand is known for the slogan moving forward?

I shouldn't have picked out a slogan.

I don't know.

I don't know, Blair.

Toyota.

Toyota.

Okay.

I didn't. I've never known that one.

Me neither. All right. Before it shifted its slogan to shift this car brand used life is a journey. Enjoy the ride.

Is that Mazda?

Close. Nissan.

Okay.

I never heard any of these.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would have went with potluck, but that's because I like to eat well.

I mean, we can pivot. We can. We can go to potluck.

What automaker advertises the equation drive equals love? Is that Volkswagen says Chrysler?

I don't know any of these. These must have been from, like the 1990s or something.

I don't know when this game's.

Okay. All right.

I know. I've never heard of any of these either. I would be open.

Have you ever had a guess, a guest, not get any?

I didn't want to say it, but I was just thinking. I was like, this could be a first.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Maybe it's pressure.

Yeah.

Which brands? Ads proclaim their passion.

Oh.

Their passionate pursuit of perfection.

Oh, man. So perfection. That. That makes me think like some. Some German automotive or something like that. Or could be Japanese. Like the variants of continuous improvement.

Oh, there you go. I like it. Like your deductive magic.

I don't know. I'm. I'm overthinking it, though. I don't know. Let's go Honda.

Honda. Yeah.

Close.

It's a high end brand, but it's his jab at Lexus.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you just record today.

All right, I'll take it. That's all right.

Next time, potluck. Maybe I didn't know any of those either. That's a bad category, but bad category. Great program for sure. Great information. Again, thanks for being here. And thanks for leading the way on safety, finding new and innovative ways to keep people safe.

Absolutely.

All right. And to the listeners, thanks for listening. If you're watching the show, give us a shout out on YouTube. If you're listening on Spotify, give us a five star rating. And tell a friend about the podcast. Tell an auto mechanic. Tell your fellow wastewater employee or your fellow safety professional. Professional. Or your grocer at the groceries or whoever. Just tell someone. We'll build listenership that way. And thanks for listening to the Innovation Flow podcast.