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Other best practices to use are simple
in nature and help identify jobsite
safety hazards before, during, and after
With ample experience in-hand, Rodriguez advises others on how MKD has they develop.
reached such resolute success and how others can learn from their safety
operation through a few key areas. One Rodriquez really stands by is the
“20-20-20” method, which refers to team
members checking their surroundings
every 20 minutes, for 20 seconds, within
Team Building through Transparency 20 feet of a work area.
“By sharing this procedure, we’re ensuring
Embrace your teams mistakes, understand how mistakes all our team members are using their
happen and use it for the entire group to get better. eyes to identify hazards consistently for
Nobody benefits from using someone as a negative example. It is about themselves and for others. This plays into
recognizing mistakes positively, being proactive to finding solutions, our overall team culture. When we’re all
not reactive to stop detrimental behavior. For MKD, this is accomplished working together, using our resources as
through weekly safety calls and daily toolbox talks to chat through mistakes, a team, we’re able to ensure a stronger
accidents, and near-misses each and every week. safety culture, not just a program that
stops and starts,” said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez notes, “It’s important to keep these discussions positive in nature.
Encourage people to share and learn. Your message will be more well One other thing Rodriguez and the MKD
received than reprimanding teammates for overlooking something. We get team likes to preach is their mantra,
better as a team, not by singling people out.” “Nothing we do is worth getting hurt.”

This message is shared from every
executive all the way down to part time
labor help. When organizational buy-in is
Continued Learning apparent to everyone from the top down,
we see much higher acceptance rates of
safety protocols and procedures, which
Continuing to review safety protocols, issues encountered
on the job, and real-life examples are all opportunities benefits everyone.
to keep the team engaged and learning all the time. Continued learning “It takes a whole team effort to ensure
exercises don’t have to be a webinar or a presentation. Use on-the-job we’re keeping our employees safe on the
instances to keep teaching, questioning why things were done, and job. There’s a million things going on each
encouraging the team to point out areas of improvement. When the team is and everyday at work and in our personal
able to make an impact on the organization’s success through activities that lives. It can create instances where we
keep everyone learning, the overall culture benefits.
overlook things individually,” Rodriguez
reminds us.

“Culture has lasting power. Something
individual programs don’t. Use that to
Checklists and Tools your advantage.”

Teams leveraging checklists stand to benefit most on the MKD Electric is a national leading
job. During Oscar’s time in aviation, checklists were the industrial electrical contractor located
gold standard to performing adequate safety reviews before, during, and west of Chicago. For more than 25
after flights. He’s taken this approach to every job, making sure we have a years, MKD has built, installed, and
fail safe method of ensuring we’re checking and rechecking safety all the maintained systems for their clients in a
time. It never quits. Having a checklist ensures at the very least, we checked variety of sectors. For more information,
everything we could in our power at the time. visit MKDElectric.com/safety.

www.ieci.org | May/June 2021 | Insights Magazine 53