Ethics, Love, and Accountability

If you know me, you know that I’ve been in construction basically for my entire life. When I was 5 years old, I used to “go to work” with my Dad on a Saturday and sit on his lap while he moved dirt around on excavators and bulldozers. For as long as I’ve been in and around this industry, the Heavy-Civil sector has always taken the spotlight. Even in my high school years, when I would work summers, it was in heavy-civil. When I decided not to continue post-secondary, it was Heavy-Civil where I ended up. I’ve been around this industry for a long time. I’ve been in and out of excavations and trenches, I’ve been on top of bridge decks, I’ve run excavators, dozers, front-end loaders, and articulating trucks. I’ve finished concrete and built forms, and I’ve run entire projects. This industry has been good to me.

Safety wasn’t necessarily the path I had envisioned for myself. In fact, when I applied to the Ontario Ministry of Labour I did so as a “joke”, thinking I was never going to get in. Joke was on me though, I got in. It wasn’t until I got in that I actually understood safety. I don’t mean the technical aspects of safety, I mean really understood safety. The very first fatality I was called to investigate opened my eyes. It wasn’t “special” because it was my first, we went through 9 months of training to prepare us for these investigations, but this fatality investigation had a profound impact on me because it hit home.

It was a hot July day in 2014 and I had just gotten my badge about 6 months earlier. I had spent months responding to minor calls, doing proactive inspections, and just getting into my own personal groove as an Inspector. That day in particular was a great day. That morning I had stopped work on the 4th story of a mid-rise building where a balcony renovation was happening. There were 4 workers on a concrete balcony about four stories up not tied off or protected by a guardrail. I charged the Supervisor (Foreman) on that job as well. See, when you do that, you feel as though you made a difference by potentially saving their lives. I remember pulling out of a Tim Horton’s drive through with a coffee and getting on the highway to go north with my windows down and some music playing in the vehicle. The sun was shining, it was a great day. As I was driving my work phone rang, there had been an incident in my assigned area. A worker had been buried in a trench and was likely VSA (Vital Signs Absent). I whipped around and headed back southbound into the city.

As I arrived on site, there were police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and people everywhere. The site was a custom-built semi-detached house with trenches which were cut in the shape of a Y leading from each garage out towards the municipal sanitary sewer manhole. A worker had been installing a clean out in the trench when the trench walls collapsed pulling all the spoil material into the trench as well. He had been completely buried. Emergency services couldn’t go into the trench to rescue him either, as the Fire Department won’t put their own staff in danger when it comes to trenches and collapse. For the Firefighters to enter that trench, the walls would have had to be supported and the trench stable, which we knew it wasn’t. As I arrived on scene, I assumed control of it. The Ministry of Labour takes carriage of the scene from the Police when it involves a workplace incident as long as the Police determine that there was likely no foul play or criminality involved. I immediately began collecting all the information I needed, taking photographs of the entire area, and gathering names and contacts of witnesses. The training I had received kicked in almost instantaneously, almost like your mind goes directly into work mode without processing the human side of things. That happens later. It took around 15 hours to extricate the worker’s body from that trench, with hydro excavating trucks being called in and contractors from the city working to widen the trench itself. That call came at around 2:45pm, and we finally got out of there at around 6:00am after the Provincial Coroner came to collect the deceased’s body.

It wasn’t until after all this commotion did the reality of what had happened sink in.

Remember, I had come from this industry, I remember being inside trenches with no support systems installing sewer. It also hit me that the deceased worker was killed in front of his brother who was the pipe layer and his father who was his Foreman, they watched their loved one disappear under a mountain of heavy dirt and die. I remember sitting at home that morning and crying. It really hit home. I worked in the trenches, I worked with my brother, my father, my cousin. This was the first time since joining the Ministry of Labour that I truly understood what an important role we played and what an important part of working life safety really is. It changed the makeup of my brain in a way; it made what I was doing more of a mission than a job. I knew after that first fatality that I could never go back to being a Site Supervisor, no matter how much I loved it. That man left behind his high school sweetheart, his hopes and his dreams, and most importantly, two young daughters who would never get to know their father and the man he was.

Did you know that in 2022 39 workers in the United States died in trench collapse events alone? It was the highest number in 18 years. Now, I could turn this article into a “bash you over the head with Standards” article, but I’m not going to do that. The OSHA standards in the United States and the Provincial Standards in Canada are easy enough to navigate and find. What I intend to do here is make this about humanity and the mindset around safety at work. After all, that’s what makes the difference. No amount of statistics or standards will impact a person enough to make them take safety seriously, and let’s be honest, I don’t think that fear mongering with fines and citations and discipline is effective either. Safety is about the human being doing the work.

When we start to look at safety as an ethical responsibility that’s when we begin to see real change.

My experience in the industry gave me a different perspective on safety. Being inside those trenches with mud on my boots, dirt stuck to my skin, and calices on my hands gave me the opportunity to see safety beyond the words on a page, the checkboxes on an app, or the fancy policies in the binder. In my journey through various workplaces, various trades, and various industries, I've come to understand that safety culture transcends mere compliance. Approaching safety from the vantage points of ethics, love, and accountability transforms it into a living, breathing ethos that impacts every part of our lives. Ethically, it means recognizing the inherent value of every individual and acknowledging a shared responsibility for one another's well-being. Approaching safety with love compels us to genuinely care for the people beside us, creating an environment where empathy and compassion drive our actions. Most importantly, instilling a sense of accountability, not just to rules but to the people who await our return home each day like our spouses, parents, siblings, children or even pets, adds a profound layer to our commitment. It's this trinity of perspectives that breathes life into a great safety culture, making it more than a set of guidelines but a collective promise to honor the sanctity of every life within our professional family and keep the promises we make to our actual family to come home each day.

I don’t do what I do to benefit my own personal brand. I don’t do what I do because it makes the company look good. I don’t do what I do because it puts food on the table for my children. I do what I do because I care about those people who make the world go round and function. I care about the spouses, the parents, the children of workers. My goal is to make as much of a difference as I can, and to reach as many people as I can to honor the families of all of the deceased workers whose lives were intertwined with my own through their untimely deaths.

I’m a safety professional, I get it, that’s my job. But it isn’t just my job; it’s OUR job. From the boots on the ground to the CEO in the office, it’s our job. I’ll leave you with a quote I keep close to me from that first fatality investigation; it’s from the brother of the deceased worker:

“For all of the hustle, for all of the pride, for all of the money we thought we were making the company and ourselves, none of it will bring my brother back.”

Take care of each other out there. ????

#OSHA #OHSA #WorkplaceSafety #Trench #Construction #UnitedStates #Canada ????????