Vice President of the Landscape Group Drew Garcia interviews Lost Control Supervisor with Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies and OSHA 10 instructor, Steve Hamilton, to discuss newly offered OSHA 10 courses specific to the landscape industry.
Show Notes: Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter
Director/Host: Drew Garcia
Guest: Steve Hamilton
Editor/Producer: Megan Lockhart
Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, "Hiking" by Silent Partner
© Copyright 2023. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
Transcript
Drew Garcia: Hi, this is Drew Garcia with the Landscape Group. Thank you for listening to today's interview brought to you by our safety and risk management network, StudioOne. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape Group here at Rancho Mesa. And today, we're joined by Steve Hamilton, lost control supervisor with Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Company. Steve, welcome.
Steve Hamilton: Thank you.
DG: So Steve's been involved with the National Association of Landscape Professionals for seven or eight years now, doing a lot of the training for them at the national convention. He'll do breakouts and webinars. So heavily involved in the green industry. He's brought a lot of support and he's helped a lot of people. Today we're going to talk about OSHA-10.
DG: Steve's an OSHA-10 instructor. And Steve, if you could help the audience understand what is OSHA-10, I think it's a term that many construction companies have heard of before, But what is OSHA-10 and how does it benefit a business?
SH: Yeah, So the OSHA-10 course is exactly what it says. It's a it's a class about OSHA and it's 10 hours long. So that's where the 10 comes from. At the end, participants get a certificate of completion, meaning they're authorized and they understand a lot of the basics about what OSHA is. They understand some of the risks involved with the industry, specifically how OSHA works. They understand the focus four, the fatal four, with falls struck by injuries caught between injuries and electrocution. So those are the top topics, The top five really that makes up more than half of the class. And yeah, the rest are other topics that are specific to the industry. So that's kind of what OSHA-10 is. It's a good general broad overview of what risk potential is involved in that industry, but also a good introduction to some regulatory issues and what causes injuries.
DG: Okay, very good. And you know, it's a little bit unique with what we have for the OSHA-10 that we're talking about today, because NALP in conjunction with OSHA, where they were able to come up with kind of a catered to OSHA-10 that fits the green industry. So talk to us what makes this OSHA-10 training, maybe the contents not any different, but how the information's delivered. Why does it make it a little bit more specific to the green industry?
SH: It's actually a little bit different from the typical OSHA-10 class because it is specific to the green industry. It's one of the one of the first of its kind, really, that's industry specific. OSHA-10. Up until a few years back, it was OSHA-10 for construction, OSHA-10 for general industry, and then they had one for Maritime. This is taught under the auspices of the OSHA-10 construction. But it's landscape specific in that a lot of the information, the risk potential, the industry specific hazards are, you know, really focus for the green industry. You know, the focus four is the same for construction and landscape, but the risk potential is very different. So if we're talking about falls, the risk of falls in a construction site are very different than the landscape industry. So the information, though, the topics are generally the same, the risk potential really is focused on the green industry. So it's really cool in that, you know, like I said, it's one of the first in the nation that was authorized by OSHA to teach this specific information.
DG: It seems like that'd be a little bit more engaging, too, right? If you're a landscape professional and you're attending this course where the content still would be helpful if it was an OSHA-10 construction course and they got to fall protection and they were talking about securing yourself on a building or something like that. And you're just kind of as a landscape professional trying to make it work for you and how it could play out in your industry. But this would make it maybe a little bit more engaging when the examples are, yeah, that that could happen to our business, that scenario could play out. And I know that you've used industry pictures and things like that to help tell that story a little bit, right as you're continuing to train this, this class.
SH: Yeah, a lot of the examples we use are really from real life. They're not hypothetical. They're they're examples that we've seen, the pictures that we use are pictures that I've taken, some of them. So I think it's a little bit more meaningful to them. It's a lot more impactful in the material can be can be tough. If you've never sat you've never had the opportunity to sit through a ten hour class, I mean, it's a long time. That's a lot of hours. Having it be that engaging, you know, because it's your industry, it's what you see every single day makes it a lot better. So it makes sense.
DG: Absolutely. Who do you think when you when if I'm an employer and I'm looking at my roster and my organization chart, who do you think would be the key candidate to get this training? What level employee do you think this makes sense?
SH: Yeah, the cool thing about the class really is it's designed for all levels of an organization. And there's something there's a take away that every organization can get. So if the owner of a company comes or, you know, the CFO or the human resources people, they're going to take away a lot of different information that maybe the frontline worker wouldn't get so high level organization. Maybe you don't understand how OSHA works or you don't understand the economic impact of citations or, you know, if there's an injury, you know, how does that impact the employer or if I, you know, want to develop some preventive measures, how does that impact me as a as a company owner? So so there's something to take away if you're the owner. If you're a supervisor and you've never had to deal with safety, you're going to talk a little bit about are you going to take away some things like, you know, how can I address a specific hazard? You know, one of the topics is material handling. Supervisors don't necessarily understand some of the controls that you can put in place on a daily basis to reduce the risk of strain. And that's one of the things we talk about. And it's specific to landscaping. It's not I mean, it's taught, again, under the OSHA construction standards, but it's very specific to the landscape industry so the supervisors can get something out of it. The safety manager can get something out of it. There's all kinds of things that you can take away from this class. And each section has some very unique issues. When I teach the class, I actually make them, any participant has to give me something that they've learned at the end of each day. And there's a lot that you can take away from this class, the way I teach it.
DG: So that's that's a that's, I think, a great way of answering that. So you're not just saying, it's only for supervisors? No, it could be for any, any level employee because they're looking at it through a different lens and they could end up bringing something back to their organization that fits kind of their day to day or what makes sense to them. So I liked how you answered that. That makes that makes a ton of sense. How about how often should somebody get this training? I know I believe you get a certificate of completion card or you some some sort of card validating that you went through this training. Talk to us about, you know, maybe how often should somebody revisit the training?
SH: Yeah I, I there's no expiration on your card so we can start with that. But information changes every day. You know, OSHA standards change month to month, state to state. So I would encourage everybody to do this class maybe every three years just to get a little bit of a refresher, because the information changes, the course work changes too. OSHA will often issue, you know, changes or revisions to the coursework, the outline. So three years from now, the course may be a little bit different because there's a different focus. So I would take it every three years. To me, that's, I think, a good idea.
DG: Or it could be an operation change, right? There could be a business that takes on a new service offering and they want to make sure that they've got all their safety protocols in place for this new, you know, this new line. So may be a good opportunity to revisit it, because, again, you could be looking at it through that new lens now of, you know, how is this going to fit? Our new service that we're offering?
SH: Absolutely.
DG: And, you know, pretty exciting, too. And it was in the works for a while. But you guys, meaning Berkshire Hathaway Homestay Companies, was able to translate this entire training into Spanish. And now this is available to Spanish-speaking landscape professionals. And I believe the first virtual class took place earlier this month. And right now we're December 2023. Is that is that right? You were able to. So talk to us about that process because I know that can't be easy because this is a 10-hour course. But that's a huge development and that's a major impact to the landscape industry and that's recognition needs to go to you guys for that. That's a huge undertaking and, you know, really helps the industry continue to grow and move in the right direction. So first of all, thank you for that. But anything that you can give us on the back story would be would be helpful.
SH: Yeah, well, it took a couple months, took a little while. 10-hours’ worth of material is something like 550 slides and PowerPoint presentation. And when you translate, it never it's never slide to slide or word for word. So it's often a little bit longer when you translate. But yeah, we, we managed to get it done, took us a couple of months and, and we helped the NALP find an authorized trainer in Spanish too so they have a good engaging authorized trainer for the Spanish material too. So it's a good thing. It's good, Good thing.
DG: That's great. Yeah. Huge development. So like you said, this is really the first of its kind being an industry specific training and then now it's being offered in Spanish as well. So it's, you know, well-rounded. Steve, is there anything else that you want to let the listeners know about this training? I feel like we kind of covered the key concepts here today.
SH: Yeah, I don't think there's anything else, but I would encourage you to participate. It's a good class. There's one other benefit that we didn't really talk about really, is every class that I've taught for the last 10 years has had different employers from different regions of the world and different levels of organizations. There's a lot more that you get out of it than just the 10-hours of OSHA stuff. So I would encourage you to participate and interact with your fellow employers in the industry because you're going to get a lot of stuff out of it. The storytelling alone is worth the price of admission, so it's absolutely worth it.
DG: That's great. That's a good point. Well, if listeners are interested in learning more about this training, they can visit NALP website. And there's a specific dropdown for OSHA-10 and how to learn more about when the next training is coming up, or if you wanted to host your own OSHA-10 at your facility, you can contact NALP for that. Steve, if any of the audience wants to reach out to you with any direct questions, is there a good contact that you can provide that they can they can use?
SH: Yeah, they could shoot us an email at losscontrol@bhhc.com, losscontrol@bhhc.com
DG: Perfect. We'll see if we appreciate your time. And again, thanks to Berkshire and your overall commitment to the green industry making it a safer world. So we really do appreciate it. Thanks for the time again. Thank you.
Alyssa Burley: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning into our latest episode produced by StudioOne. For more information, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
