Safety in the sheet metal workers’ space is going through a fascinating transformation. Where safety was once considered a matter of compliance and processes, today it is evolving into a positive value system that engages people at all levels. This new approach is called a generative safety culture.
Bruce Sychuk is executive director of SMACNA-BC SMACNA-SMART and a member of the Best Practices Market Expansion Task Force. He started in the sheet metal industry right out of high school as a production worker, and then became an apprentice and journeyperson. Eventually, he became a chapter executive for SMACNA-BC. His experience has helped him put both labor’s and management’s views into perspective.
The main goal of residential HVAC service providers is to gain customer confidence. It’s a challenge in the best of times, but the task has assumed unprecedented proportions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when many customers wouldn’t dream of calling for home service, and even the service providers are concerned about their own safety. Although concern about the virus hasn’t abated, confidence is being restored in the residential market as a result of the close collaboration between SMACNA contractors and the skilled workforce and partners at SMART.
It is critical in any healthcare space to maintain safe, clean air, the pressure in every room precisely balanced to prevent contamination of patients and healthcare professionals. This is the work that testing and balancing (TAB) contractors perform with precision every day of the year, but in the wake of COVID-19, they have been working around the clock to flip regular hospital rooms into negative air pressure isolation rooms.
Our tendency to place one perspective above all others—the proverbial “fact-based view” or “maximizing key stakeholders’ alignment”—can be dangerous. All too often, we operate with an excessively simple model in enormously messy circumstances. We fail to perceive how different pieces of reality interact and how to foster better outcomes.
