Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded August 26th, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. My guest today is John Mahoney. John is Manager of EH&S Training and Public Education at Avangrid. John is also a civil engineer, a CSP, and has been a volunteer firefighter for 48 years. John is joining us today from New York. Welcome to the show, John.

John Mahoney:

Thank you. Good morning.

Jill James:

Good morning. Yes, it's early morning, kind of, sort of. We are on all these different coasts, John you're on the east coast, I'm in the central time zone, and Naiem our producer, who's listening quietly, is on the west coast. So yeah, it's an early morning for our recording today. So thanks for being here. And John, you have a pretty storied career and I think we need to back, let's back way up in our time travel here and set the scene for us. Tell us about where you grew up and what was going on in your life that started you on this path?

John Mahoney:

Well, I grew up in a small village, Southmont New York. At the time, there was about 900 to a thousand people living there. And my dad was in public service. He was a Albany city police officer when he got out of World War II and then went to the county Sheriff's department and retired in '94. But that whole public service thing, I guess, is where I had that interest, if you can say that. And the fire department was just across the street. I lived on a side street from the firehouse and they used to come to the elementary school during fire prevention week. And I thought, oh, look at that truck. Look at that equipment. And they used to start a little fire in a tub and put it out with a fire extinguisher. And that just made me think, and then when I was old enough, I wanted to join and my parents were like, oh, you don't want to go to the firehouse. Do you know what it's going to take? If you want to wait one year and then you still want to do it, we'll let you do it. I said, okay, I'll wait a year. I waited one year to the day and said, I still want to join. And I got sworn in July 1st, 1974 and had served through many officer ranks. And I actually left that department after I got married and we built a house, but I moved from one department to another and had served as a commissioner for the fire district in which I live now and still responding as a firefighter. Although I don't do the interior stuff, I don't bend like I used to, not as young as I used to be, but still serving the capacity in training education, which I really started back in the early years in Altamont as a Lieutenant doing training. And it's kind of carried on from there with respect to trying to educate folks, so.

Jill James:

Yeah, John, what was, back when you were a kid and amazed by that fire truck coming, what was after the Ooh, big red truck? What really drew you in and got you hooked like, "this is something I want to do." Was it the service piece of it or what was it back then?

John Mahoney:

Well I think for all young kids it's kind of like the ooh and the aah, light sirens and that kind of thing, but there was a life-altering event for me. One of my best friends had a major aneurysm while we were trap shooting at a local guns club and he dropped and I watched two gentlemen do CPR on him and I thought, I need to be able to do something like that. So between the fire service and the ambulance service, that's kind of what really spiked my interest in being able to help. So I made it my mission to do that. We pushed for the very first Hurst tool in the town at Guild One, and Altamont Fire Department carried that Hurst tool and was able to serve half of the town at Guild One. And we just kind of continued from there with respect for me, technical education and rescue work between high angle, low angle rescue and the Hurst tool for vehicle extrications and things like that.

Jill James:

So, what is the Hurst tool, John, for people who don't know.

John Mahoney:

That's the jaws of life.

Jill James:

Yeah, okay.

John Mahoney:

Hurst was basically the first one way back in the late sixties, early seventies that developed that tool, which was done for the racing community. And then it found its way out into the local community. So now there's multiple types of jaws, different manufacturers, but that's where it got started basically.

Jill James:

And so I mentioned in the introduction that you're also a civil engineer. You've been a volunteer firefighter for 48 years and you've done a lot of training in firefighting. When and how does this weaving of earning your degree and being an engineer, when does that come into your story? And I'm also interested to hear about the training piece. How did all that come together? It sounds like a busy life.

John Mahoney:

Well when I got out of high school, in high school, I was really interested in electronics. I love the electrical side of it. And when I went into tech school I was like, oh, I don't like this theory. I grew up with my mom's side of my family and the construction work. So I'm used to bulldozers, dump trucks, pay loaders. When I went to work for my local village, I was fixing water lines, running the water plan. I became a licensed wastewater operator while I worked for my local village. And that whole thing just kind of evolved to more, hey, that's mechanical, that's hands on. So, I really found more of an interest in mechanical. So I switched because the theory, I didn't grasp some of it. It was just kind of difficult and mechanical engineering or mechanical technology at the time was not exactly what I thought it was. So, I ended up switching to civil because I did one of those: what really do you have for experience? What would you like to do? And as I did the pros and cons of mechanical versus civil engineering, it all really fell into the civil side of the sheet that I wrote, I literally wrote everything down on. And I knew that if I got a mechanical engineering degree, even if I graduated with a 4.0, and I'm not a 4.0 student I'm a hands-on guy, that I'd be competing with all the other students that might have a 4.0 for a mechanical engineering job, but I had no experience. So where was the experience? Civil engineering. So I switched and had a great professor by the name of Tom Jewel. He was a PhD at Union College in Schenectady, New York and he was also a veteran and he flew Chinooks in Vietnam. And he really inspired me on the beginning of the learning curve because when I went to him with questions, he's would never give me an answer. He would always start to give you information so that you can make a choice. And that's where I learned to get the bits tidbits of information so that you can figure it out. He says, if I give you the answer, you'll know the answer to this problem. But if I give you information that leads you to learn how to solve that problem, you'll solve other problems. And that made me think, and that has stuck with me to this day where I do the same thing. What do you think, how would you approach this versus me telling you so that it gets the individuals, whether it's a classroom teaching, electrical safety or on the fire ground or drills ground, how would you handle this? What kind of pressure would you use, et cetera?

Jill James:

Yeah. Some critical thinking skills. I mean, those are the gifts of those mentors and teachers, isn't it?

John Mahoney:

Yeah. And that legacy has carried on. Tom is obviously since retired, but, and he was the type of person that had a PhD. He was a West Point grad and he flew Chinooks, and I thought, the only thing hanging in his office was his PhD and his PE license. He really didn't have a lot that he showed for. And I just kind of made me think that this man has a lot of knowledge and doesn't have to, I want to say brag about it, but publicize it, shall we say. He was very confident in what he knew and when you talk to him, he was not a bolsterer. He was one that you could carry on a conversation with even as a young student. And that just made me understand how to treat people and how to teach them to learn. Teaching to learn is the big issue, not the subject itself.

Jill James:

Yeah. So John, you've finished up your degree. I mean, I feel like we're going down two parallel paths, right? I mean, because of the fire service and you said you do education with it, but then you also have the civil engineering degree. So yeah, you pick a path and tell us what's going on. You can cross the road anytime you want.

John Mahoney:

Well, it's kind of like a drunk driver going across the yellow line on both sides of the road because I have the fire service for my life since '74 and then this whole career change and the educational side has crossed that boundary many, many times. I went to the New York State Fire Academy and I've achieved the Instructor Level Two for the National Board. So it helps on the fire side, but it also helps in the classroom when I was teaching at GE, it helped when I was teaching wastewater operators along the throughway and other places on how to do laboratory testing and how to do their paperwork and calculations and things like that. So it has been one of those I'll say crossing the boundaries, they've mixed very well. It has not been a total separation. It has been something that I just fell into, basically. It just seems to merge and morph to go here, help this one, go over here and switch, put bunker boots on and train this one. And then tomorrow morning, get into a classroom or jump on a plane and go someplace in the United States or around the world. I've had the opportunity when I worked for GE to teach around the world. But that's kind of where it's come from is morphing back and forth and carrying the fire service into the classroom and classroom stuff for the engineering side back into the fire service.

Jill James:

Yeah. So when you just mentioned GE a little bit ago, is that your first job post engineering degree? And then when did this EHS business come into your life? That sounds like another on-ramp.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. Well, it was and when I got out of Union, I graduated on Sunday, went to work for Clough, Harbour & Associates in Albany Monday morning as a civil engineer doing water waste, water engineering design, and eventually leading into the forensic side and troubleshooting for facilities that were not working because I was a licensed operator and an engineer. So I could look at it from an operational standpoint, knowing how those things are done, calculations testing, and from an engineering side, from a design perspective as to what's working, what's failing and that's...

Jill James:

Unique.

John Mahoney:

Yeah, that was the beginning of my forensics and interest in forensics. And that kind of spurred from vehicle accidents and fires, doing investigations on how they started, how they happened. And now in the wastewater field that again, crossing the boundaries, gave me something to look at from two different perspectives, engineering versus operations.

Jill James:

Wow. Wow. So, I think you're talking about root cause analysis. It sounds like you really focused on that. Did that take off into the EHS space at some point?

John Mahoney:

It did. A friend of mine that went to night school had worked at GE in legal department as associate and said, hey John, we're looking for somebody to run our wastewater plant at the Schenectady factory. I know you're a sewer guy and you're an engineer. I'd like to have your resume to show someone. I'm like, okay, I'll get you something next week. She goes, no, I need it today. I'm like, look, I'm in the office. I don't have my resume updated. So I did it the next day and it was a couple of months and then I got picked up by GE and that's where I spent 22 and a half years and learned how to do Taproot, learned a couple of different root cause analysis programs and was one of the instructors developing our root cause analysis courses at GE. And one of the things that I got involved with as one of the vice presidents at GE corporate in teaching the program to not just the power systems business as it was known then, but to the entire corporation. So to transportation, aviation and wind energy and those folks. So I was, one day with my wife we were at a funeral for her uncle and when I got home, the phone rang and my boss said, I need you to go to Erie, Pennsylvania. And I said, what for? She goes, I need you to investigate a fatality. And I'm like, oh, whoa, hang on. Yeah. Okay, I'll go. So I was on a plane at six o'clock that night and the next day the plant manager picked me up at the hotel, gave me the low down and spent three days there. And we had a team, they put together a team, and I led the team and it was a great team. They were better than I had ever expected. And I could not have picked a team myself to equate to the knowledge that was in that room. And I won't go into all the details of that, but it was something that I was actually, when I left on Saturday afternoon, I was pleased at the progress that the facility had made because I facilitated it for them. They actually did all the work. And I told them that this is their facility. They are the ones that have to figure this out. I will help facilitate you. And it ended up being a very good experience for them, given the circumstances of course, but it was a very good experience for them because they felt that they had a part in trying to figure out what happened. And bottom line was, there was no fault of anybody. There was nothing inappropriate or going against procedures or anything like that. It was truly an accident. And that's when I came back, I was thinking to myself, I hope everybody can move on from this. And when I talked to this safety manager a week later, I said, how's everybody doing? And he said, this one gentleman came in and said, it wasn't about John it was about us. And because we were a part of it and we got into the details, he goes, I feel better and I can move on because we were a part of that. And again, to me, that's part of the education, teaching them how to use skills. And that really made a difference in my life. To this day I think about what a positive result from that particular analysis for other people, to be able to understand and move on that you would never dream on when you're looking at an accident that's a fatality.

Jill James:

Well, and also a good... I've investigated a lot of workplace deaths and generally, in my experience, my anecdotal experience is that employers generally fall into one of two camps. The camp you're talking about, which is we don't want the same or similar to ever happen on our watch again and we're going to pull together and do what we can to learn and to prevent. And then the other camp, which is, well, we're going to blame the victim and we're just, move on. And I mean, that's a pivotal learning piece for you. And I'm sure wasn't the first time you came across a fatality, because you've been a firefighter. So you've seen this before, but this was your first in the workplace.

John Mahoney:

Yes. Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah. It left a mark. So John, when you were talking, we are talking about root cause analysis and your specialty, and this is a piece of what you did in your career. For people who are listening, we have a listening audience that includes lots of different types of people and backgrounds and tenure and thank you to everybody who's listening now, for our younger listeners or maybe people who are just starting out in this career who are still trying to figure out what root cause analysis means could you go a little, be turned into a little professor here for a moment and just, is there a way to synopsize what that means for people who aren't super familiar with the term?

John Mahoney:

Most people that do root cause analysis, whatever system or process you use, and there's many. I was trained in root as an instructor back in the late nineties and I personally know the president and vice president of the company System Improvements, but we got away from that only because of the costs that were involved when things started to downturn. And I think when you're starting out, you have to understand that most people don't see fatalities when they're looking at root causes. They might see amputations, cuts, bumps, bruises, slip, trip, falls, those kinds of things, but you need to be prepared. And I think what allowed me to be prepared for that fatality I investigated is I was in buildings and taking people out of cars when they were not so lucky. And I had to be prepared for that cause it's not for everybody. It's not for the faint of heart. And I know for police officers who see as young officers, the first time, it's tough, the same way for the first EMT out the door, after training, going to a major event, it's tough and it makes you or breaks you. Either you accept it and you move on, or you have to walk away from it. And to me, if you cannot take it that's okay. It is not for everybody.

Jill James:

That's right.

John Mahoney:

My first fatality that I was exposed to, and I'll get back to the root cause stuff here in a second, was a car that was doing 60 miles an hour through a T intersection that hit a tree that was 40 inches in diameter. Yeah. And there were two fatalities and there was two people in the back seat. We ended up taking the person in the back seat who was really bad. And I'm talking to myself the whole time I'm carrying this person to the ambulance, the whole time we're going to the hospital. This is what you need to be prepared for. This is what you're going to see. It's not every call. Are you going to be able to, I mean, I'm talking to myself, trying to convince myself one way or the other. And I was on the ambulance for 25 years until my daughter was born and I said, I need to just back away from something. I hated to do that. But I was traveling with GE and it was difficult to maintain hours on the ambulance. But when you're getting into root cause analysis, you have to have a curiosity level. You also need to be able to understand the methodologies that you need to apply. Learn a methodology, learn another methodology if you can, because there is a morphing that can take place when you learn a couple different methodologies that you can apply. So there's acronyms out there that you'll hear. I don't remember the words to each of them, but there's SCAT, there's MORT, there's Ishikawa, Fishbones, Taproot, Apollo, just to name a few and I'm not advertising, but you'll see these. If you Google or Bing or whatever root cause analysis or accident investigations, these things will eventually pop up. And the one that we used a lot in the beginning years was Events and Causal Factor charting, which Taproot used. But that was developed by the National Transportation Safety Board for doing aircraft events. And it serves pretty well. But again, you have to learn that process, that system, and you have to work the process. You can't take shortcuts. In one class I was doing when they were working the analysis to figure out what happened, they weren't using the guidance. And this one team, I always broke a class up and each team had a different event to analyze, but I always managed to give one event to two teams so that the class had a chance to see that no matter who does the analysis, you'll probably 85 to 90% be on the same path. You'll never be exact because people, skill sets, influence, knowledge are going to vary. So having a group is always better. But when I put these two teams together and they compare, they're like, well, we did this a little different, we did this the same. Well this one team who did not follow the rules, come up with all of these: yes, this contributed, this contributed, this contributed, this contributed to the point of being almost obnoxious as well. How can it contribute? But I let them use that methodology. And when they came up to do their presentation, they had to list all the corrective actions and they couldn't list them all. And I said, does this make sense? They're like, well, no, not really. I said, well, does this make sense? They're like, no, not really. I said, see, you took, what's what I call the shotgun approach. Here's the event. You shoot the shotgun bullets, not bullets, but the birdshot at it. And you're hitting all these different things, but they don't all apply. But the little birdshot hit that thing. So if you go back, follow the rules, follow the guidance. They narrowed it down to six out of 30 something. And they're like, oh, now I get it. I'm like, yeah. And that's why I didn't correct them when they were going down the wrong path because in the educational world, learning what's wrong doing what's wrong and showing why it's wrong to say, I don't want to do that again is part of the learning curve. If I show you everything, that's right you won't know when you do something wrong and in root cause analysis, you have to understand that you can't just say, oh, that's pretty obvious. That's the problem. Maybe not. What led up to it? So some of the things we talk about in more recent years is human and organizational performance. So I could say, what made Bubba Gump push the button? He doesn't normally push the button at this point in time. He always does this job, but what made him push the button at this point in time to let the product drop? Well maybe Bubba Gump's wife went to the hospital this morning to deliver a baby. Maybe his parent had a heart attack the night before, he was up all night. So, there's influences you also have to think about as to why a person makes a mistake. And that has to be a part of your equation when you're looking at root cause analysis. Because if you say you push the button, you dropped it, you shouldn't have done it, you're fired or you're getting a week off without pay and a person's sitting there going, I didn't get any sleep last night. I'm trying to do my job. So that's part of looking at it, but you have to have that curiosity. And you also have to listen to people when you're doing root cause analysis, whatever process you use. There's a lot of talking. There's a lot of psychological influences that you may not think about. So if I sit you in a chair and I stand up and I'm talking to you, I'm talking down to you, you're talking and looking up at me, there's that vertical barrier. So now there's an impression that I'm forcing you or you're feeling pressured to answer. And you're not sure how you should answer it, because you don't want to be wrong or have somebody else get fired because of it. And if you have a desk between you, there's a physical barrier there, even though there's no visual barrier, there is because the desk is there. So there's a lot of these things that you learn over time as you go through educational programs, psychological interview programs, things like that. And you can't do it in one year. You can't. It takes time to hone your skills. And that's what you really need to do is hone that skill and learn by doing small things. And then the bigger things will come, and then they're easier because you still approach it the same way as the little thing.

Jill James:

That's right. Yeah. You're talking so much about training and training adults and critical thinking and gosh, paying attention to just human behavior and cues. I did so much of that as well in my years with OSHA. And I didn't get... Once in a while, we'd have some training, like interview skills and things like that. And you're right. You just pick things up over time. You're paying attention to your body language and then you're looking and going, hm, that person across from me, their neck is turning red.

John Mahoney:

Yeah.

Jill James:

What's going on with them. They're starting to get a little twitchy. They're nervous. They're scared. And try to identify that so you can continue with your curiosity and get the information you need without completely freaking someone out.

John Mahoney:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah. But you were talking about adult education and John, it sounds like you've learned obviously through experience, but you've also had some training in that. How did that unfold in your career and life?

John Mahoney:

Well, part of it came from the fire service, going through the instructor level courses. They're week long courses at the New York State Fire Academy and they're nationally recognized when you take the exams for that and it's called Pro Board. And then at GE, they spent some time bringing folks in and teaching us how to teach adults, learning those methodologies. We used a great consultant. His name is Bill Heacock of Heacock and Perez and he is a down to earth guy who actually had a slight amputation in the manufacturing workforce in his early career. So he was really in tune with safety, but he got into the educational side and teaching us how to teach adults, it was an amazing learning curve. He didn't show up with oodles of PowerPoints. He showed up and he would talk and he'd use flip charts and he showed some PowerPoints. But how he taught was also how we learned how to teach. And it was very interesting and he and I had traveled to a couple different places, teaching people to teach for GE. And we spent some time in the hotel, we spent some time at dinners talking about things and we always could see eye to eye, because we were always on the same path. if you will, the mentality of how we need to make sure people learn. This is not me bragging about what I know about electrical safety because I'm going to tell you I'm a civil engineer, as you said, but I've worked a lot with electrical people. I still have a lot of interest in electrical stuff, just not design engineering, but I've worked with utility people. I work for a utility now, but my mom's side of my family were into Niagara Mohawk years ago, which is now national grid. And they were out there putting power lines back up after storms, et cetera. And I worked with people at my fairgrounds from the local utility and I've learned a lot with our electricians and from people that I've learned from at GE. I mean I knew about turbines and generators. One of the gentlemen in the firehouse was a bearing mechanic for large steam turban generators back in the seventies and eighties, and I learned a lot about what they do. Not the details that I knew when I finally went to GE, but a lot of the mechanical side and what they do in general. But that educational side was always interesting and I learned from the best. I've also learned from the worst, and I've had some people in my classes and they've ranged from far and many from just a couple to 20 in a classroom to 80 or 90 in a lecture hall to 250 at a conference to lecturing at the VP PPA conference. It's interesting because a couple people will come up afterwards and say, where did you learn how to teach that? You know, kept me engaged and you were asking questions and I just don't get it. How did you learn how to teach like this? And I said, actually, it's actually pretty simple being an engineer. Most engineers put people to sleep because they talk engineer-speak. Firefighters talk firefighter-speak. Safety people talk safety people-speak. And I said, what I figured out is I've been put to sleep by the best of people. And if I can just avoid that, I've got to look good. And they think about that and they're like, oh, well come to think of it I've had some boring lectures in my life too. And I'm like, yeah. I always termed it the Reverend John, whenever I'm in a lecture hall or classroom, I don't stand up behind the podium. I work the room, the minister of the church. I'll walk around. And part of that is the, as Bill Heacock would tell us, if you stand up there and you just kind of turn, stand, walk, shake, do whatever it's like a metronome, right? Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Jill James:

And everybody will go to sleep.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. You're forcing them to go to sleep. So when you walk around the room, they're turning their head. They're following you. When you point up to the screen, they're looking at what you're pointing at. When you raise your voice and lower your voice or change your voice, they're looking, they're listening. So what you're doing is you're using different senses of theirs: sight, hearing, smell, whatever, sound, sound levels. And when you walk around the room, what do most people do today? They're on their phone. They're on their computer. Well, our students are no different. And when you walk around the room and you're standing alongside of them or walking behind them, they don't know what you're looking at so they don't want to do their emails. And when you're in a dark room and you see the shade of color change on someone's face from bright to dark and you know darn well they're not looking at the PowerPoint that you're showing, you know they're off Googling Binging or doing whatever. And when you're walking the room, they tend to not want to do that. So again, it's learning how to keep them engaged. And just by doing some of those simple things, it allows them to stay engaged versus fall asleep. And yes, for those that are listening, I have actually slammed a laptop closed on a manager that was sitting in front of me. And the reason for that was everybody behind that manager was looking at what the manager was doing on the screen.

Jill James:

Dang.

John Mahoney:

That's a distraction. I can't have that. So I literally walked up and very slowly closed the laptop. And about the last inch slammed it. And everybody's like, what was that? I'm like, and I didn't say anything. I just kept lecturing. But the point was well received by everybody else. So the manager did not open his laptop to do more work on it. But unfortunately he pulled out his phone onto the desk and continued to do what he had to do.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

John Mahoney:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

John Mahoney:

At the break, I said, look, I understand you have work to do, but these people need to learn this and pass the test at the end. I'm testing, John. You got to pass a 25 question test at the end of my courses because we have to know if you understand the material and the information. And there's only one way to gauge it. Either I follow each person on their job for a few weeks or a few months, which isn't going to happen, or I give you a written exam or a practical type exam and see what your level of knowledge and skillset is. And it's kind of simple. I need to know that you know. That's the bottom line. And I won't send you on if you don't know. I've got no problem in qualified level classes like Electrical Safety or Confined Space or Lockout Tagout. I got no problem in saying you ain't going any further. And I let the students know and I worked at GE, you got to get past me to get to the technical guys. And if you don't pass me, you get to go home. And that really sets the tone for: this is serious. And yes it is.

Jill James:

Absolutely.

John Mahoney:

Not just your life, but your colleagues working with you, their lives, their body parts depend on you knowing this. And it tends to set in to their psyche, if you will, that we need to take this serious. And they do. And I've had people in the classes say, I've taken a class like this before, but never to this level, never to this detail. I learned a lot from it. And I'm like, good. I'm glad you did. I know you're not going to remember a hundred percent of it when you leave here. But if I raise you up to the level of knowledge, let's say at a hundred percent at the classroom, when you leave here, you might remember 75% of it. But if I only raise your level of knowledge to 40%, when you leave here and a few weeks later, you're going to be at 20% knowledge, that's bad for you and the people you're working with. So we always bring you up to the higher level so that you're always going to remember something. And mechanical guys were always hesitant to take the electrical safety class, but it was a requirement for the field engineers at GE. And they're like, John, if I touch a disconnect switch, I'll be fired. I get that. But here's the reason you're taking this class. You're over here working on some mechanical part. A bearing, a thrust block issue, whatever it may be. I said, and the generator guys over there, he opens up a cabinet with 13 two in it. And you look over there and go, wait a minute. I'm only six feet away. I'm too close cause that's high power or high current and John said something about, there's like a distance I need to stay away and I'm out of here till I figure out what's right. That's the bottom line. You may not remember those distances. You may not remember what the art flash and the energy calculations are and the minimum approach boundaries but you knew enough to get out of there. Bottom line, after eight hours of sitting through an electrical safety class, you knew to walk away.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. That's the beauty of it.

John Mahoney:

Absolutely.

Jill James:

John, you spoke about curiosity and having curiosity and asking questions. In your experience and the questions that you ask in your classrooms, the questions that you ask of people and trying to really drill into well, hopefully we can help people with curiosity, but for our listeners who are like, I don't know if I'm that good of a question asker, what are some of your go-to questions that you lead with? Obviously not a specific topic, but when you're asking people questions, how do you frame things?

John Mahoney:

Let's do a quick two type of questions. All right, the first one is going to be Joe, did you get out of bed this morning on time? What's the first thing you're thinking a defense, wait a minute. Did I get now?

Jill James:

What? What's on time? Yeah. What is it? Who set that? Yeah.

John Mahoney:

Right. And then it's like, Joe, could you explain to me what your morning routine is like? What do you normally do? And in explaining that to me, I'm just kind of curious as to what those steps might be the first part of your day and you say, well, I usually get up six o'clock, the alarm goes off. I don't reset it. Well, okay. Now you're just talking to me versus trying to be defensive. Say, oh yeah, I got up at six. Well that doesn't tell me everything I want to know. Did you shut the alarm off and get out of bed? Did you put those alarm on snooze? So when you're asking questions, you need to ask open ended questions. So I would ask if somebody pushed the button on some machine and something happened. Okay. Can you explain to me the routine that you normally go through? Is this the typical part that is used on this machining process? Look, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. I'm not knowledgeable. I'm just trying to figure this out. And again, I'm not standing above them. I'm kind of at the same eye to eye level. I try to keep the barriers away. Explain to me what this process is. I understand part of it, but boy, I don't understand all of it. Can you walk me through it so that I can understand? I might know. I might very well know the details. I don't want them to say yes or no. I want them to tell me because I might pick up something that is out of the norm.

Jill James:

That's right.

John Mahoney:

And that's an influence to them to make a mistake. That is not going to come out with a yes or no.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. They might be walking you through. I did that so much in my investigations as well. And asking people, tell me about how this thing works. How do you do, you're the expert on this thing. Kind of walk me through it. And then all of a sudden, somebody would say like, well it's normally like this, but three weeks ago, this thing broke and so now I have to do it this way. And you get to hear these little things that if you're listening, which is another thing you said about listening and being an active listener.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. They might say, well, no, we've done this process for years and it hasn't really changed, but maintenance has falling apart. Now I go back and I look at maintenance. I'm like, what's the schedule? Well, the schedule is pretty plain. Okay. So why isn't maintenance doing this? Well, they used to have 10 maintenance guys. Now we're down to five. Okay. So they can't get to everything in a timely manner. So what's the problem. Is it the operational side or now is it a maintenance side? So now you begin to look at other influences to why this event actually happened. And when you hear the term root cause analysis, everybody's thinking there's got to be one thing, right?

Jill James:

It's too bad that's the actual term is.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. And the funny part about it is when I was doing a lot of the Taproot classes you talk about the root cause they'd say, well, here's the root cause. And somebody would say, well, what's the real root cause? I just told you. There's no real root cause and an almost real root cause. And that, there is no one thing. And I have to be honest so that the audience understands: in all of the years that I've looked at various events that have happened, I'm not going to say accidents, because they're not, they're events, something happens. Nobody got hurt, nobody got killed, no damage happened. It just happened. Like you trip on a carpet, you don't fall, but you keep on walking. Okay, that's an event. No negative results. And when you think about those events and how you answer those questions and what you're looking at, you can see what those influences are. And that to me is the real key in getting valuable information. These events will happen. There is no one thing. And all the analyses that I've been involved with, there has never been one thing that allowed an event to happen. Never. There's always some sort of an influence, some sort of a system failure. Whether it's a policy or a procedure, they can say, well, the procedure's wrong. Okay. Well who wrote the procedure? A human being. Okay. Do humans make mistakes? Yes. Do we blame that person for not putting something in the procedure? No. They made the procedure based upon the best information they had at the time, but things have changed in the last 10 years. The machine changed. We've got a DeWalt instead of Milwaukee, but nobody changed the procedure just as a quick example. So to those who are listening, I'd really love to know if you found one thing, because if I take a look at your event, I probably will find some other influence that allowed that event to happen.

Jill James:

Everything's multifactorial.

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Jill James:

Yeah. I mean asking good questions, being curious. And also what you're explaining, for anyone who's listening, is to be patient with the process. There's no way to rush through these things.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. I mean a lot of the recent years here with Avangrid, we've done a lot of work with human and organizational performance. I did that at GE. It really started back then about 2015 ish somewhere thereabouts. And when you learn about human and organizational performance, you understand that there are many, many influences that can happen. It takes some time to learn the process, but a lot of knee-jerk reactions by managers or whomever is I want to know who's responsible. I want to know what happened. And when you look at these influences and there's influence mapping, that's out there you can work with, you find out that there isn't just one easy solution because it's not easy to identify one fault or error if I can put it that way. There's bow ties that are out there and you talk about pre-event, post-event, there's barriers, there's processes. Hop uses what they call the Swiss cheese model, where everything aligns just right and it goes through the holes and the bad thing happens at the end, from the person to the hazard. These are the kinds of things you have to be wary of and understand. And that's why there should be several defenses to protect the person from the operation, the hazard, whatever it may be. So that if one thing fails, there's other things there to protect from going immediately to a negative result. And that's tough sometimes to identify but when you're talking about humans, you're talking about creatures that make instantaneous decisions based upon the influences they face at that point in time. Do not look at it that we know today. You've got to look at it at the point that person made the decision. What did they know at that point in time? And that's hard sometimes because retrospective hindsight is 20/20. We know what happened, but they didn't know what would happen when they made that choice.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. John, you talked a bit about your career at GE for 20 years and now you're with Avangrid. You're in an education role there as well, correct?

John Mahoney:

Yeah. I lead a team of two that actually support the networks business, Avangrid Networks. One is our LMS person and she is very knowledgeable. I rely on her wholeheartedly a hundred percent. She keeps me aligned with the LMS system that we have just recently implemented. She is an expert.

Jill James:

And for who people aren't familiar, LMS means learning management system and Avangrid is an electrical utility, correct?

John Mahoney:

We are. We have eight operating companies plus wind farms that we operate and we are working on offshore. Avangrid is a subsidiary company of the Iberdrola Company in Spain. But Avangrid is based up here in Connecticut and the great Northeast and we are electric and gas utility. So that's kind of where me and my folks reside in the networks business. And I have one person that goes out and he does a variety of in-person training. There is a lot of local people that do the training too. And there's technical training, and technical training is separate from those of us in EHS but the technical trainers provide a lot of EHS training like in New York state here in New York State Electric and Gas has multiple sites around New York state. Rochester is pretty much residing around the Rochester area, but they got a couple of subsidiary areas I should say that they cover. Central Maine Power is basically one area that's all contiguous to themselves. So there's no satellite areas if I can put it that way, the same way with United Illuminating in Connecticut. So those technical folks do the safety training, our health and safety specialists that work for our health and safety managers will provide training. They also do the event analyses and the operation side are the ones that actually present the events that they may have in their area to the executives. Every Thursday, there's anywheres from one to four events that the operations folks have to present to the executive team and they have to understand what happened and what the corrections are going to be. But the health and safety specialists help them work through that because they've been trained with a couple different types of event analysis. And we support that for them, plus we have public education that we do. It's a requirement in New York state by the public service commission for the gas business to provide training to emergency responders. We have we a team up in Maine. That's all they do is public education at county fairs, schools, public works, emergency responders and various police and fire academies. So they're doing a great effort.

Jill James:

Is that unique in the country, John, that New York has that requirement?

John Mahoney:

I don't know about other parts of the country. I know Maine does not have that kind of requirement. It is a New York state public service commission law. And part of that all goes back in all of the states that we have our operating companies in here is the rate cases, because it's what you're allowed to charge, what the state allows you to charge for your electricity or your gas for your budgeting and what you want to do. I know there's been a great effort with resiliency for vegetation, try and reduce the amount of trees and vines around wires. They're putting wire up that is not insulated for us, the people, but it helps when a tree limb gets on the wire to keep it from arcing out right away. It's just a plastic coating, shall we say, and that way we don't see the arcing and the glow. It helps protect from an outage until somebody can get there and remove the tree limit itself. So there's a lot going on behind that scene.

Jill James:

Yeah. It makes so much sense to do the public education. I mean, just when you're specifically even talking about the fire service and being a volunteer firefighter all the years that you have having those opportunities to have that education from experts like yourselves. I mean, that's difficult in volunteer settings for them to learn all of those hazards that they're responding to.

John Mahoney:

And I got interested because I was a young person in elementary school seeing the fire truck and I know somewhere along the line that we will have that influence to the younger generations also. And I know it's happened also because folks that have come in over the years that I've been exposed to the fire service and I was like, well, they came to school or, well, I saw it. Well, my uncle was in the fire service. Some of our volunteers have moved on to paid departments because they wanted to do it full-time. That's great. I mean, you never know where it will lead. And I always said that even to one of our chefs at the GEs cafeteria is like, go take the education. You never know where life will lead you. And look where I have gone from growing up with construction stuff, riding on a bulldozer and backhoe with my uncles who would probably be in jail today by OSHA because of the laws back in the seventies and sixties are different than they are today because there was no OSHA in the sixties, to going in the fire service, liking electronics, moving to mechanical, becoming a civil, teaching engineering stuff, to wastewater stuff, being an engineer, doing design and moving to GE and training field engineers, and then moving to Avangrid utility company. I mean, have not actively said when I was 18, 25, I'm going to work here until I retire. I have always just been lucky enough, fortunate enough with the skill sets, the background, and I'll say the contacts. I wouldn't have gone to GE if the person I went to night school with didn't know about it, or know about me. I mean, I've just kind of literally fallen into great careers along the way and each one has built on the previous career and has gotten me to the point where I am today.

Jill James:

Yeah, that's beautiful.

John Mahoney:

And I'm passing that along because of what my professor, Tom Jewel, taught me I'm trying to pass that along little by little in whatever I do wherever I teach. Last Wednesday night, we had a total mutual aid drill with multiple departments on tanker operations. So I drove our tanker to the drill site, I dropped the first load of water I said, okay, which one of you are going to take the tanker now? What? Well, look it, I'm not going to be around forever. You guys need to learn how to do this. So one of you who is going through driver training, you take the truck. I'm here. You could take it, let's get filled, bring it back, dump it. And again, trying to get the younger people. I could do it. I could do it in a heartbeat. I've done it for years, but these younger folks need to learn some of that skillset that they don't normally use in the same way, whether it's in the fire service at GE with the field engineers or here at Avangrid, it's teaching people how to learn, give them the information that they need to make sure they understand it so they can go out there and do their job safely and, bottom line, go home at the end of the day. That's one of my little sayings. I tried to tell the people and it's not a hundred percent encompassing, but two fingers, two toes, two eyes, one nose. Go home with everything you came to work with. It's not two toes, don't get it wrong, but two feet. Two ears, two eyes.

Jill James:

Yeah. That's beautiful.

John Mahoney:

You actually want to go home better, if you can, than what you came to work with and you owe it to your family to go home. So, the bottom line for me is I need to make sure I provide for them what they need to do that and be successful at it.

Jill James:

John, you had said to me, in our pre-podcast chat, I have a quote written down from you. "There's a job for everybody."

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Jill James:

Tell me what you mean by that as we're closing our time out together today.

John Mahoney:

Well, I learned this early on when one of my older firefighters in Altamont couldn't climb a ladder anymore. So he would take the air bottles to the local firehouse air bank, because we only had one in the town at the time, and fill the air bottles and bring them back so we could use them. There are some people that don't like to climb ladders, so they can do the groundwork. Some people don't like to wear air packs and they can't because they're claustrophobic. Great, help support the ladders outside. We need somebody at the bottom of the ladder. We need somebody to run the pumper. There's always a job for someone in the fire service. Don't think because you can't put an air pack on and run to a building with an inch and three quarter line that you can't be a firefighter. We got people that are fire police. They don't want to be firefighters. They don't want to go into a building, but they want to serve and help. We got people that just do support work. The same way here, not everybody that wants to drive a bucket truck can drive a bucket truck. Not everybody that wants to be a lineman can go through the years of training. This is not something you sit through for a couple of weeks, couple of months and you become a line person. It's years, minimum of three. So it takes time. But if you're not a line person, you could also be a ground support person. You could be a stores person. You could be a logistics person. There's many different jobs. There's different things you can do to help support your organization, whatever it may be: fire service, legion, church. Doesn't make any difference what that organization is, there's always a job for somebody.

Jill James:

That's right.

John Mahoney:

It's what you're willing to do, also. What are you willing to be exposed to? What challenges are you willing to take? For me, I'm backing away from the hose going into the building because I'm older and the 20-something, 30-something should be doing that because that's what I did when I was twenties and thirties and forties. Now I run the truck, a pumper, and make sure that they have what they need, like the water, to do their job. And if they don't, I make sure they know they don't have it so they don't go in and put themselves into a position where they will not be so fortunate. So there's always something that you can do to help your organization, your community, whatever it may be, to move forward.

Jill James:

Last question, John. You've been doing education for a long time. What keeps you excited and engaged to do it?

John Mahoney:

The fact that people need to learn. I think that my mentality over the years, much like what I just said, there's a job for everybody and there's things you can learn, is making sure people learn from it. Well, I've gone to a couple of fires and I've had young officers, and this one person had to go into the house that was on fire and went up to the second floor with another person. And she's a younger firefighter. She's actually an officer now. And I said, so after we got done, I said, so what'd you learn? I said, what'd you do in there? She goes, well, we took a line to the second floor. I sounded the floor with the ax. I said, you sounded the floor with the ax? Why'd you do that? Because we always do that at drill. I said, but it's a concrete floor. She goes, yeah, but we're always supposed to sound the floor before we go out on it. I said, that's muscle memory. That's why we do it in training, so that you will do it in real life so that you don't fall through the floor that's wood and not concrete. And I said to her, what would you do different? What did you learn from it? Not that I'm learning from it, but when she's talking about it, she's retaining it. She's thinking about it. And I think for me that's just, I don't have a PhD in education first to tell everybody I'm not a PhD in education, but you don't have to be if you know how to treat people with respect and how to get them to think. I think, for me, learning how to get people to think and learn and express themselves was the biggest advantage for me in the classroom, on the fire ground or wherever so that they can walk away with a better level of knowledge for the next thing they will face.

Jill James:

Beautiful. Beautiful. John, thank you so much for sharing your insight and your wisdom and for your public service all these years.

John Mahoney:

Thank you, Jill. I appreciate it. That was a good time.

Jill James:

It really was. Thank you. And thank you all for spending your time listening today and more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple podcast app or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes, it really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like John and I. Special thanks to Naeem Jaraysi, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.