JOBSITE SAFETY
Pre-Job Briefings
Tailgate Talks
How utility fleets are transforming risk culture one pre-job briefing at a time
By Seth Skydel
One of the most effective tools for improving utility safety is among the most overlooked— the job safety briefing. These routine conversations are so effective, the Construction Safety Research Alliance( CSRA) at the University of Colorado Boulder has identified their absence as one of three precursors of serious injuries and fatalities( SIFs) on jobsites.
While all utility field crews should conduct job safety briefings, however, why are some effective while others overlook crucial details? What tools and processes can utilities leverage to make these briefings more effective? How can field crews hold conversations that identify more hazards and put more controls in place?
These topics are covered in Urbint’ s webinar, Life-Saving Job Briefings: How Work Safety Plans Can Eliminate Serious Injuries and Fatalities, where industry veterans detailed their experience making job safety briefings more effective.
Understanding Why Job briefings save lives, but too often they’ re treated as another form to fill out or another box to check.
“ There were a lot of checkboxes,” said Mike McCallan, former head of electric operations at National Grid.
“ A lot of times, I think our workers didn’ t really understand the real value and the‘ why?’ behind them.”
When he noticed some persistent safety issues during his time at National Grid, McCallan conducted an analysis of SIF data that spanned a 10-year period. Through this research, he found that 50 % of safety incidents had a deficiency in the job briefing. In each case, the job briefing wasn’ t written down, it wasn’ t discussed or it never happened.
Once he discovered the issue, he got safety advocates from across the organization to look at the job briefings. The results were overwhelming. From that initial analysis, McCallan was able to implement new job safety briefing processes that detailed critical tasks and got more workers involved in the conversation.
Kate Nichols, corporate health, safety and industrial hygiene manager at Georgia Power agreed. She had found that the most effective job safety briefings explain why something is a hazard and why it needs a control.
“ Those conversations are great when someone says‘ because’ or‘ we do this because of that,’” she said.“ Then everyone on the crew is on the same page.”
Work Planning While job safety briefings are effective tools for safety, they also offer an opportunity for field crews to reassess work routines and consider the full range of safety tools at their disposal.
“ Something that gets overlooked as a control is work planning,” said James Upton, director of safety operations at Urbint and former vicechair of SIF research at the CSRA.“ Careful work planning can often eliminate or substitute hazards on site.”
McCallan and Nichols noted that field crews fall into patterns of behavior, but job safety briefings empower them to consider their activities with fresh eyes.
“ Think differently,” said Nichols.“ For example, place your vehicle as a barrier across the lane.”
McCallan noted how safety improves with just a little extra work planning.“ Over the years, I saw good supervisors that would not just give the work out but would go ahead and look at the job ahead of time,” he said.“ Planning is a big part— time of day, location of equipment, all of those play into it.”
Secret Ingredient
Written job safety briefings have proven critical to safety at both National Grid and Georgia Power but both McCallan and Nichols stressed the importance of conversation in the briefing process.
“ At some point, we made a transition to a job safety briefing
10 l January-February 2026