Archive for September, 2010
Big Dawg’s Last Bark…
It was 117 degrees in the shade, and I found myself in the Nevada desert “Badlands,” about an hour north of Vegas. I was asked to come and help Fluor Construction kick-off a new behavior based recognition process with the thousand plus union construction workers at the Moapa Co-Gen project.
I was rapidly trying to organize my thoughts, since I knew that in the next 4 hours we’d assemble more than 1000 workers inside a temporary warehouse to feed them lunch, hand them a special gift, and speak with them about how important safety was on this and every construction project.
It was then and there that Jerry “Big Dawg” Westbrook walked into my world. At first, I thought the local Hell’s Angel gang had taken a wrong turn and wound up on our jobsite. But Jerry’s big hearty handshake told me in a moment all I needed to know about the Dawg.
BBS on Life Support: What Happens When it Fails?
“I work for a large railroad, and we have BBS from one of the top ‘big name’ BBS consultants. I am an agreement employee and have coordinated the process for over two years. It has flat-lined, and we are now looking to go back and motivate our teams–or try to. I am not convinced the ‘same ‘ole materials’ will do the trick. I’m looking for fresh ideas. I am afraid we have too many so-called experts within who don’t understand the design of BBS, but I am only one voice. I know I don’t have all the answers, but I understand I know just enough to get me into problems. Management has invested big $$$, and they did put up some good numbers—which, in my opinion, were more the result of luck than the BBS process. Now they want to move in and manage in hopes of a repeat. We made all the classic mistakes–didn’t get union buy-in, no management involvement starting up, etc. They put the process in our ‘rank & file’ hands, which was a big mistake. I am afraid we are on a crash course……
…Can you help us Bill?” –anonymous BBS coordinator
