Jill:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded October 18th, 2020. My name is Jill James HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today, I'm joined by Carter Divine, a safety professional working for the department of the Navy located in California. Now the reason I asked Carter to be our guest today is because I was reading about him in a press release from the National Safety Council.

Carter has been, I guess you could say they have decided that Carter is a rising star, and so I'm curious to find out from Carter, what that means. There are 38 rising stars, according to the National Safety Council for 2021, and Carter is one of them. So Carter, welcome to the show. Can't wait to hear about your stardom.

Carter:

Thank you very much. I'm incredibly humbled and both excited to be here.

Jill:

Awesome. Well, Carter, you are working for the Department of Navy. Sounds super interesting. Also, want to hear about the rising star, but as we say on this podcast, let's hear what your winding path to safety was, or was it a direct path?

Carter:

Based off of some of the previous podcasts I've heard from you, it sounds like most individuals kind of just, as you said, fell into the safety profession, but I guess I'm one of the anomalies on that. As I actually had my path chosen around junior year of high school. It's kind of an indirect direct choice there.

I was asked to do a project by my junior year high school teacher, of what my career was going to be. And at that point I'd only ever thought I was going to be a professional baseball player, but that was a bit unrealistic. And they said that choosing the military was too easy for the project at the time.

So at that point, I was like, "What was something physical, but is considered as a career?" And that led to firefighting. And so we actually did the research, and that led to Fire Science, and Fire Science led to Safety Management. And so from that point, I actually took that project, and ran with it, and then went home and talked to my dad about it.

It was one of those self realizations that he had really always talked about work, but never explicitly said what his title was. That's when I found out that he was an explosive safety specialist, but did a fair share of both the occupational safety and health side as well.

And so from there it was definitely kind of like a commitment to be like dad again, without realizing it.

Jill:

Was your dad totally beaming at this point? Like, "Wait, this kid organically came across this."

Carter:

Yeah, it was interesting because I was one of four children and always quite a bit of the wild child. So it was a contradiction to think I might be one to go into the safety world anyways. But then it just gave us a greater connection point, so it was awesome.

Jill:

Well, you did start out with interest in Fire Science, and so you have to be a little bit of an adrenaline junkie to be interested in that. So maybe that-

Carter:

Absolutely.

Jill:

Maybe that was part of your wild child, right?

Carter:

One of many.

Jill:

So you had this high school project, you kind of made your decision. That's amazing, in high school. So what happened next?

Carter:

I was born and raised in a small country area of Bloomfield, Indiana. And so I kind of did research on the local opportunities of that type of education. And there was Eastern Kentucky University, Indiana State University, and Indiana University, but I wanted to stick with more of the small town feel. So I went with Terre Haute, Indiana, for Indiana State University. I ended up going there and did the undergraduate degree in three years.

And it was around my sophomore year, I kind of like manifested that I wanted to work at NSWC, or Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, which happened to be about 35 minutes outside of where my hometown was. And so just kept working towards it. Did all the internships that I could while at Indiana State. And then lo and behold, my junior/senior year, there was a Pathways Program that opened up, which is a different term for internship.

But to be eligible for that internship, you had to show that you were still going to be in academic coursework for another three to six months. And so at that point, went ahead and decided to go for my master's degree as well, to be eligible. And so I did my master's degree online with Indiana State University as well.

I could've chose Columbia, Southern or any of those other potential online courses, but I was familiar with the professors at Indiana State, and knew what type of education I would continue to get, and with it being in close proximity, I would be able to still meet with my Chairman when I had to do my field studies. So I did that in a year and a half, and thankfully, they were willing to bring me on full time.

Jill:

So while you were an undergrad, you kind of looked out on the horizon and said, "Hmm, think I want to work for the Department of Navy, at this specific location," and it happened.

Carter:

Yeah. So the specific location was one of those that just kind of sat there out in the open my entire childhood. It was one of the economic drawings to the area I was in. So it wasn't entirely like a hidden idea. But without being an engineer or a scientist or something of that nature, it's not always the easiest to get into.

Jill:

Right. Well, and the Pathways Program sounds pretty interesting. Is that something that's unique to the military?

Carter:

No. So the definition of Pathways Program was specific to the NSWC Crane, but there are all sorts of careers along, or ways to develop that career. So there's STEM internships, there's Naropa internships, but basically, they're each aligned for whatever type of degree you're going for.

And so around October, since we operate on that fiscal year, and you can typically expect to see them open, and then usually selections are made by December timeframe, but, definitely something worth looking into, because it's got a great structure for any younger individual to come up through.

Jill:

Well, that's a good tip for our listeners. Thank you. Now you've mentioned the NSCW? Did I get that right?

Carter:

NSWC.

Jill:

Okay. What does that stand for in context with the Navy?

Carter:

Well, first, the reason I love the NSWC, Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Center, is because it has probably one of the highest missions you could support. We directly support the war fighters.

So we are 1 of 10, what we refer to as sister warfare centers that are located across the United States. Their function ranges anywhere from in service engineering agency, which is what my current Naval Surface Warfare Center is here in Port Hueneme. That basically means that we are the subject matter experts in engineering analysis, for the systems that are on ships.

So if one of them needs troubleshooting, or even put in from the whole beginning, or taken off, or updated, we are the ones that go onto the ship. Or I should say our engineers and technicians are the ones that go onto the ship. And then there's a whole all kinds of RDT and research and development that goes on.

They're all at the warfare centers. There's others that focus specifically on underwater warfare. So the mission is very broad, but very specialized to supporting the war fighters.

Jill:

Carter, you are there as a civilian, correct?

Carter:

Right. It's a pretty unique relationship. Warfare centers are 95% civilians. So within that civilian category are both contractors, so people like SAIC, Northrop Grumman, and then there are subcontractors, so on and so forth. They work alongside us, but I would not have direct oversight on them. But a person as a person and property is property.

So I can provide recommendations, but I have to work through their contracting officer representatives. And if I think there needs to be any changes associated with those contracts, and then the military side, we work again, right alongside of them. But there's usually no more than 70 or so, active military actually associated to Port Hueneme, but there are other what are called tenets, to the Naval Base Ventura County, in which some of them are completely military. So it just really depends on what section you're associated with.

Jill:

Sure. So as people are listening to us Carter, that's interesting to know that people can work as civilians on military bases. I did that early in my career as a civilian, but I was a minority as a civilian.

You have the opposite experience where you are. So, this is interesting for people who are listening, thinking about careers and career changes. So do you want to describe maybe what does the safety world look like, where you are? Like, do you work with a team? And then maybe an example or two of current projects that you're working on.

Carter:

So within the Navy, I hire instruction or regulation. And when I say hire, it refers to the occupational safety and health administration regulations or the CFR, but it also takes into consideration the horizontal and vertical standards. So the [inaudible 00:11:55], ASMES and those things along the world.

Where we say, we're going to incorporate the most stringent instruction, regulation or policy possible, because we want to ensure we're not overexposing or exposing any personnel to any unnecessary hazard. But so within that, I currently have, including myself, a team of four here at Port Hueneme, with additional personnel in the explosive safety world.

And then there's others that are spread across the United States ad-hoc attachment sites. So all together, there's seven of us; within that, I'm considered the team leader, the safety manager.

Jill:

Wow. Congratulations.

Carter:

Thank you. My day consists of a lot actually. It can vary from day to day. There are roughly 38 programs. And I say, roughly, because each warfare center may or may not have actual functions in specific programs, and those can range anywhere from what everyone recognizes as confined spaces, ergonomics, personal protective equipment, so on and so forth. But then on the other side, there are specific programs associated with operational risk management.

Which shouldn't be pigeonholed into just operational as in what the military goes out and does, but it's truly what we do from a day-to-day basis. Having situational awareness, taking the time to stop and review what you're about to do, to traffic safety, where we have kind of a little bit of like the Department of Transportation, minimal hours or maximum hours permitted for our drivers that might be driving something from east coast to west coast, to put it on a ship. So again, it's very diverse.

And so a couple of the projects that we've had recently, have been more on the personnel and personal developments. And so that kind of like jumping back to my managerial role, I have to step outside of the program sometimes, and think of how am I going to strategize to develop these programs?

Last week we had our Naval Surface Warfare Centers, Community of Practice, which brings together the warfare center managers from all 10 of the warfare centers, in which we go over some of the commonalities of issues we might be having. So we went over some lessons learned with some of the previous investigations that we've had.

We talked about the recent... it's called the OPNAV INSTRUCTION 5100.23 which is that higher overarching instruction. They just came out with a new change with it. So we discussed what affects those changes might have had, and how each warfare center has gone about implementing those changes. So it's really just a great knowledge and sharing capability.

So that helps me grow as a safety manager, and also just seeing the different perspectives of safety managers that are ranging from being in the job for two years, all the way up to 25 years. And then on the personnel development side, there's a lot of the mentoring aspect of it. Again, I might seeing young from the managerial side of things, but I have very compounded my experiences at this point.

And so the side of taking certain programs that have a newer program manager, getting them into courses that will help improve their knowledge and then helping them idealize how to take that knowledge and actually expand upon it and apply it to the workplace.

Jill:

Well, and it sounds like you have a lot of collaborators with whom to run things past, and like you said to learn from. To be that mentor and possibly mentee. You were talking about being young in your profession for the responsibility that you have. I know that you've got some opinions on answering the question, when are you really a safety professional and something about job qualifications? What have you learned about that, and what are your thoughts on that?

Carter:

I really don't think just going to an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree ever is enough to consider yourself a professional. That really just means that you were able to go and absorb the information, and potentially put it back down on a piece of paper.

And so whether or not you have actually mastered the application of that, or the emotional intelligence to actually have those critical conversations with an employee that might not explicitly agree with you. So the true safety professional side of it is to be able to be flexible in your approach to each situation.

And so one of the items that I was involved with at NSWC Crane was developing a job qualification requirement that basically gave the first year, second year, and maybe even third year employees, kind of like a line of what to look forward in accomplishing. So it could be 10 inspections in which five of them were with three different senior safety specialists.

So you're getting different perspectives on how to actually do the investigation or the building inspection. And then do an additional five on your own, and show what tangible deficiencies you were able to find. And so that way, the senior safety specialists or the safety manager can be like, "Well, I see you only found electrical. So maybe we need to expand upon what information, for fire and life safety, program manager," and so on and so forth.

But really, it's just a matter of making sure that we're not pigeonholing ourselves into, "I am the single source of information." That's where I just see, as a safety professional, you should have the emotional intelligence to be able to admit that you don't know everything, and that we could continually learn from each other.

From my personal perspective, that is where I have been focusing a lot of my attention this last year or two, as far as actually using the outside sources I have. So the LinkedIn, the safety conferences, so on and so forth, to develop the networking and see what other areas of knowledge that we can continue to grow in.

Jill:

Is part of that, you had said to me, when we talked previously, about an ability to be self critical, is that what you're talking about?

Carter:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jill:

Were there some opportunities to learn more? And gosh, this is a career where we are constantly, constantly learning.

Carter:

And it kind of goes two ways as well. When earlier you mentioned the mentor-mentee, but, going out of your way to identify who those people should be in your life, and that doesn't even mean that it's only one. So I have recently found what I would consider a career coach that I've utilized heavily, versus a career mentor.

Jill:

Talk about that.

Carter:

It's really all in the approach. So the career mentor has kind of been like, "Hey, I've got these job opportunities coming up. Can you help me look through them as far as what would you would have done? What do you think I am capable of doing?"

It's a very interpersonal relationship. And then the coaching side of things. It's not to say that there's not interpersonal relationships there because you still have to have that trust developed between each other, to be able to take whatever self-critical information they might share with you, and take it as constructive criticism to move on.

But it's more like they understand where you're trying to go and they kind of push you into a direction with their self opinion or professional opinion, as to say, "On this project, I would have recommended having this communication style," or so on and so forth. It's more directional, is how I would refer to it as.

It's basically saying they have the professional capabilities that you desire to have, and you're going to learn more explicitly from them, versus the mentorship, where there is a constant back and forth communication with each other. So there's not communication and coaching, but that is how I am highly utilizing it.

Jill:

Is your coach someone that you sought out yourself and is it someone who's within the system where you work or did you go outside?

Carter:

It was definitely like I had to earn my capability to ask that question. The individual is in my organization now, out at Port Hueneme; he's a phenomenal individual. I am not the first, nor will I be the last that he has coached. And even he and himself, has kind of developed and mastered this trade to where he understands that mentorship is a longer lasting commitment, where coaching, it could be for a shorter duration, because once they determine that you've developed the necessary skills in that area, you guys can move on.

You're still going to be friends and communicate, but I explicitly went to him for internal leadership capabilities, and he is most certainly a subject matter expert in that in the area.

Once I get to a point where I feel like I've got that aspect under wraps, I know for a fact I'll continue to communicate with him. But it was very organic. In some cases, you might be able to just go up and ask somebody, "Hey, would you be my mentor? Hey, will you be my coach?"

Jill:

It happens.

Carter:

But it needs to be strategized on how you ask that question. Like, "This is the area I'm working on. I've seen that you have exhibit A, B and C experiences with it. Could you please set aside an hour a month to talk with me and help me?" The mentorship and the coaching was definitely organically grown where I kind of earned the capability to have that time with them, and then it's grown into more from there.

Jill:

Awesome. So are you mentoring anyone yourself?

Carter:

I am actually. I have the impromptu mentorships nearly on a daily basis with everyone on the team, but as far as true, like someone requesting mentorship, I am still involved with the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity out of Indiana State University, as their Health and Safety Adviser.

Jill:

Interesting.

Carter:

Yeah. So I've been mentoring the health and safety chairman there for the last year or so, and it's really beyond the helping them program health and safety into enter the fraternity, but also helping mentor them as far as how do they determine what career they want to do? How do they get into that career field? What should they do? Steps from here to there, and then just always leaving the underlying concept of, “Enjoy your life. Don't get so uphold on whatever is directly in front of you. Just know that there is always a brighter side to it and enjoy the process as you go through it.”

Jill:

What a great way to give back to your campus? That's a great idea. Very nice. Carter, you had said to me previously about finding ways particularly as a young professional, to find your voice in this career. Do you want to expand on that? And I'm guessing maybe it's a piece of this mentoring and mentorship and coaching you're talking about.

Carter:

Yeah. Finding your voice has definitely been a difficult thing. It comes from two perspectives. Throwing out age, it's really just an experience as far as knowing, you don't know what you don't know. So when I first came into the profession, I had, again, a lot of the by-the-books knowledge, but knowing how to communicate those effectively is where the lacking capabilities were.

So again, I was and continue to be self-critical and constantly looking for constructive criticism, but some people choose a single idea or a single concept of safety to become a specialized individual on and that's how they get their voice. So like for instance, an ergonomist is going to choose ergonomics, an industrial hygienists is going to choose industrial hygiene.

Someone might enjoy fall protection, so they're going to become the fall protection program. I felt like I was able to comprehend and develop all of the programs effectively, and I didn't want to keep myself into one of those instead of prospering and becoming a level of [inaudible 00:27:25] each of them to where I would consider myself-

Jill:

Yeah, a generalist.

Carter:

A generalist where I would consider myself a safety professional. And so I was able to quickly pick up based off of just work reactions or interactions I had with the senior safety specialists and it became more of, “What can I do more beyond safety, but while using safety?”

At this point in time, I think I've personally found my voice in the concept of workplace optimization, so while I was at Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane, blessed at the fact that they had such a strong infrastructure in the safety office.

I was able to develop my capabilities in other areas as well, so I ended up doing my Six Sigma Green Belt, which as you continue to go down those roads, you realize that safety truly is connected to all sorts of the business operations of any business.

So that's where I actually got some of my bigger breakthrough projects in the safety world. After I did my Green Belt certification, we had a few of the safety accidents in which I was able to combine my skills with safety investigation and also the integrated product teams and brought together the project that was actually associated with my national safety council award where I brought together four or five different warfare centers and put together a product that we were able to use as a best practice across each of them on a lifecycle management plan for floating assets. All that to come back to the workplace optimization and professionalism flexibility.

Jill:

Right. So Carter, you mentioned Six Sigma. So for people who are not familiar with what that means, do you mind explaining it?

Carter:

I will give this the best of my shot here.

Jill:

Well, I know it's complex, so yes, take a crack. 30,000 feet.

Carter:

Just for the initial confusion that some people may get is LEAN and Six Sigma. So LEAN is, it's associated with Six Sigma, but Six Sigma is more of the idea where you go through and you look for how you can optimize a process based off of bringing together all of the different personnel that you might need.

They call it the one-third, one-third, one-third process. So you have one third subject matter experts, one-third just people that do the work, and then the other third is someone that has no one associated with it, and you come together and you brainstorm and you develop a process with metrics or key measurements that can identify how you can continue to improve the process.

And then LEAN is more of the statistical analysis of how you actually take all of that information and continue to make it work better.

Jill:

Interesting. Thank you. So was that pursuit of your Green Belt in Six Sigma, is that something you decided to do on your own or is that something that was supported by the warfare center?

Carter:

It's actually both ways. I chose to pursue that on my own as I, again, I saw the greater breadth that the safety profession had, and so if I could understand that communication style and incorporate safety into it, I could continue to make safety a more business-related discussion versus just a, “We have to do it because of compliance,” measure, but within the warfare centers or specifically in SWC-Crane the Six Sigma personnel and training was a very strong suit there, so it just so happened to be the right place at the right time where I had three master black belts that were very approachable.

One of them was actually my neighbor back in Indiana, and I guess another slide in there is my mom actually, completed her black belt prior to retiring as well. So I knew a little bit more on that one side as well.

Jill:

So you knew what you were getting yourself into at least a little bit.

Carter:

At least a little bit, right?

Jill:

Yeah. So you started to talk about NSC's Rising Star, so do you mind sharing that information with us? First of all, what is it as you understand it? How does one become a Rising Star? What is it that you did? And you started talking about that.

Carter:

Yeah. From what I understand it, the Rising Star award is an accumulation of somebody else in an organization that you worked with taking the responsibility upon their own hands to document all of the great work that you might be doing. I had submitted an application for a co-worker in [inaudible 00:33:22]-Crane who ended up winning the 2020 Rising Star, an incredibly deserving individual as well.

And then he was one of those individuals that I had a very healthy competition with, so it wasn't necessarily who was a better safety professional, but it was who's going to do the next thing that brought better measurements that brought a greater safety culture? Fill in the blank.

We just had a healthy competition, and so as I had documented some of his recent initiatives, he was able to document mine that were going on the exact same time. So he submitted one for me on the 2021, and as I was alluding to, it was a longer process with the integrated product teams, and so once the final product came out, it just so happened to be within 2021.

The award in and of itself is decided upon by the National Safety Council selectees, so it's only one person per organization. I don't believe there's actually a cap on the amount of personnel, but there's 84,000 employees in the NAVSEA which is the overarching organization that I'm a part of and which of that, there's a certain percentage of safety professionals. I believe it's around 500 to 600 at this point.

Not to say all of them were submitted, but only one could be submitted out of the amount that is in that organization and we being the navy have had a relationship with the National Safety Council for at least the last eight years, I believe, in which we are all supposed to have… We all have the capability to have an account with National Safety Council where we can use their benchmarking processes and their online training and we can get a little bit of the discount of the fees for all of the National Safety Council events.

Jill:

Sure. Training and whatnot.

Carter:

Yeah.

Jill:

When you find out that you've won this award, what is that like? Do they give you a phone call and say, “Congratulations, you're a star,” do you get a letter? What does it look like from your side?

Carter:

Since I have the perspective of both the nominee and the nominator, it depends on how the nominator decided to distribute the information. So if they chose to not tell the nominee until the award was won, it could actually be a complete surprise that you didn't even know somebody has submitted a package. But normally there's quite a bit of information that you, as a nominator will need to get from the nominee so-

Jill:

So it'd be pretty hard to do.

Carter:

Yeah. Like just randomly asking for your resume and what your perception on safety is and all that good stuff, you could technically slide those into just random conversations with the person, but it's just far easier to keep them involved from the very get-go and making sure that their true voice is seen in the nomination.

So you go through the process, you get it submitted, you can work with the awards committee at National Safety Council to make sure that whatever submission package that you are going to submit is of high quality, and then once it goes through the process, you get an email that says either your nominator or nominee was selected, which is an awesome thing.

They really want you to be there in person to receive it, so they'll start to communicate when the National Safety Council Safety And Congress Expo is, the day that the awards are supposed to be, what your package would include if you were able to go so on and so forth. And then also if you weren't selected, you would receive an email that says you weren't select.

Jill:

Right. And so the Congress & Expo happens to have been last week at the time of this recording. So how did that work for you? Did you go, or were you not able to?

Carter:

I chose to not go this year. I had some personal obligations the week before and I, just knowing how busy we can be in the office, chose not to take more than two weeks off in a row.

Jill:

Yeah. I can certainly understand that. I wasn't there this year either. Well, congratulations. That is fabulous. So Carter, I'm curious, you've been in the work of health and safety for how many years now?

Carter:

I have been in the government services working on my sixth year now, and then I did an accumulation of about a year and a half of internships through college or through undergraduate. So we'll go ahead and just say a solid six years all together now.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. What's your favorite part of this work so far?

Carter:

The daily changing of dynamics for sure. It keeps you on your toes. Numerous are times where I will be reviewing a construction design and then have one of my other safety specialists asked me for assistance on reviewing all fall hazard plan to getting a call from the east coast saying that they need help developing a lockout-tag out procedure.

So it changes on a daily basis, sometimes minute by minute basis, but my favorite part of the change dynamics are the friendships, relationships, and networking that I can develop as we go through it for sure.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that sounds awesome. What's your least favorite part? Maybe it's something with managing people. Not specifically the people, but [inaudible 00:40:21] role of government paperwork or something.

Carter:

I mean, I would say the least favorite part of it is having to justify funding or justify the time that we do towards certain objects of safety. It makes complete business sense. You can't just throw out, “This is safety. It's important. We have to do it.” We're not the only department or division associated with our corporate operations department, so we can't just have 12 people in the safety office, which would be awesome.

I would easily be able to distribute two programs per person, and everything would have so much time for continuous improvement, but it just doesn't work that way. So being able to strategize, set up plan and actually communicate effectively goes a long way in the profession.

Jill:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we're closing in on our time today, wondering if you have anything you'd like to share with others who maybe are getting their start or just getting started, like you or are maybe interested in civilian work in the military or anything like that.

Carter:

Yeah. Just to jump right into it. Take advantage of the social media networking capabilities we have. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, create one. Just search ASSP or NSC, and just start following all the big names you see in there. They'll lead you down directions and information that you never thought possible.

I know I've found quite a few amazing people on there that I learn from on a daily basis. Take for granted articles that you read. Don't just read it and think, “Oh, this is the next big thing,” but actually read it and then apply to what workplace knowledge you already have and think, “Can I change this to actually fit my workplace? Can it fit my workplace as is or is this just not something that's going to be feasible for the workplace?” Just because you read something doesn't mean it's the next big thing.

And then for the civilian world or working in government services, working for the navy is not the only thing. So go to usajobs.gov, create your account and start playing with those filters.

Yes, it is easier as an engineer or a scientist to get into the government as a direct hire, but that does not mean that as a safety specialist, a business analyst, contracting officer representative, all those other business-related positions, you are you're able to get in.

It is a very rewarding position to have. There are all kinds of people that you could ask to get more information from. That's also where I would just say, use your social media capabilities there, and then be courteous when you send the messages or look for networking capabilities.

Everybody is incredibly busy these days, so be clear and concise with your communications. Saying, “Hey,” and then expect them to reply is not a good way to go in your first message.

Jill:

Yeah. I get those messages.

Carter:

Yeah. Introduce yourself, but get to the point. If you want to bring somebody on here to your podcast, introduce yourself and say what you want and for those people that truly care about expanding upon the profession will be plenty.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Hey Carter, to bring things full circle, you mentioned your dad at the beginning and how you didn't realize he was a health, safety professional until you started talking with him about your career planning. What are your conversations like today?

Carter:

Our conversations today are very entertaining, nonetheless. It'll literally just be a story to story, to story. Sometimes the stories connect, sometimes they don't. He'll tell me about… I mean, yeah, I've heard the same story a few hundred times at this point, but it never gets old of where he goes out and was conducting a burn permit and was inspecting the pile and found things that should not be getting burned, and then I'll give a scenario that I'm in right now and he'll discuss about how much harder it was back in his day.

It's not per se a competition, but it's just always funny, his life or his experiences. He was able to do some of the same things without an education. That's what he likes to throw into my face.

Jill:

Yeah. It was a different time.

Carter:

But then there is the occasional thing that I throw out there when I start talking about some of the more sophisticated things and he's, I shouldn't say sophisticated, but other things that he wasn't involved-

Jill:

Technical?

Carter:

Technical. There we go to. The more technical terms he's like, “Okay. Yeah, you can have that one.”

Jill:

Interesting. So is he still working as an explosives expert?

Carter:

No, he's a do-things-on-the-farm expert now.

Jill:

Nice.

Carter:

He doesn't walk around and inspect electrical safety and all that stuff anymore. He's the kind that takes 45 minutes to strap down a load of furniture that you might be taking to your sister's apartment complex or something along those lines.

Jill:

Excellent.

Carter:

He still finds ways to incorporate the safety past in the present.

Jill:

Well, it never leaves us. I don't know anyone who's a retired safety professional, whoever just leaves it aside and starts leading a risky life.

Carter:

No. There's oftentimes we'll be walking down the street and we'll both look up, see the construction guy up on a ladder on top of a scaffolding and we cringe we're like, “Do our civic duties and go say something or do we keep on moving?”

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. Such as the flight of a safety professional. I know that one well. Well Carter, thank you so much for sharing your story today. And again, congratulations on being a 2021 Rising Star with NSC.

Carter:

Alright. Thank you very much. Greatly humbled and glad to have made it onto your podcast.

Jill:

Me too. Thank you. And thank you all for spending your time listening today, and more importantly, thank you for your contribution towards the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.

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