Pat Stark

Pat's first assignment when he began his safety career nearly 20 years ago was as a safety coordinator. He then became Safety Director of the Opus South Company, a general contractor in Tampa. Since then, he has worked with Argonaut Insurance Company and the AGC Self-Insurance Fund as a Safety Management Consultant and as a Loss Control Representative. He also worked as the Division Safety Manager of the Florida Division of Brice Building Company. And, he has worked with a steel fabrication, steel erection company as their safety director.

Pat has been active in the Associated General Contractors Central Florida Chapter. He is an active member of the American Society of Safety Engineers. Early in his career, he spent four years in the United States Navy, serving two years on the USS Shasta, an ammunition ship, home-port of Concord, CA.

In 1994 Pat received the Construction Health and Safety Technician Certificate (CHST) which is accredited through the American Board of Industrial Hygienist and the Board of Certified Safety Professional Joint Committee.

He is authorized to instruct the Construction and the General Industry Outreach 10 hour and 30 hour sessions, and has coordinated and instructed over forty 10-hour Construction Outreach sessions since 1991 and has been involved in general industry outreach training as well.

Talking Safety with Pat Stark

Accountability

To test employers’ safety accountability, Pat Stark asks, “How is top management measuring the front line supervisors or middle managers on safety activities? Are they being measured on new employee orientation, on regular inspections? Are they being measured on how well they promote safe behavior—by either positive reinforcement or by enforcement of known safe practices? Are they being measured on accurate completion of accident investigations?

Stark believes that one of the big failures by employers is when they assign these responsibilities to the person in charge of safety, rather than to frontline supervisors and foremen. The latter have their hands on the pulse of the production process, and not keying them into the safety by holding them accountable is a common weakness in any safety management process. However, Stark adds, these frontline supervisors often face a dilemma when management talks safety but actually promotes production. When employees are asked to pour more cubic feet of concrete per day, process more pounds of citrus, or move more patients, frontline supervisors will usually provide what top management wants—production. So, one of the most important elements to achieving safe production is that top management must back up this process—even in critical, crunch times.

A Near Disaster in Construction

The company safety manager can’t be alone in upholding the safety process. All parties must participate, says Stark. Stark had the opportunity to witness the sidestepping of safety management when a general contractor more or less condoned the continual mis-use and unsafe method of scaffold side brackets being used on the outside of the scaffold by a mason subcontractor. Over 190' of two-frame high scaffold collapsed, due to the improper loading of these side brackets (they’re intended for personnel only, not as loading platforms). It could have been a catastrophic incident. Miraculously, no workers were injured. “The foreman wasn’t taking it seriously,” says Stark. “The GC should have stopped work and said they absolutely wouldn’t tolerate this unsafe activity. They did not, so the sub’s attitude and continued unsafe behavior and the GC’s profit motive both led to this dangerous incident.”

Manufacturing Safety

In manufacturing as in construction, Stark says a lack of accountability is demonstrated when managers don’t put guards on machines—just because nothing’s happened yet. Stark cites the example of an unguarded press brake.

“When the supervisor walks by it every day, he basically condones it, allows it, and doesn’t correct it. He says by his own behavior, ‘That’s the way we do business around here’. And then one day a worker loses a finger!”

Sometimes the accountability for safety is shifted from company employees to temporary workers. “Some employers figure that temps are covered under the temp employer’s workers’ comp plan, so they do virtually no safety training at the job site.” Many temporary workers who are not English speaking and are willing to take a risk,” says Stark, “too often end up seriously injured or killed.”

Stark has assisted many types of employers in a wide range of industries. No matter the industry, Stark says, “When top management not only speaks but truly promotes safe behavior by implementing various accountability measures, and when middle management and supervisory staff understand that safety needs to be incorporated into daily production—and sees that this is accomplished—this is the foundation and the building of an effective safe production process.”

Building America

Pat Stark knows the risks of construction safety firsthand. Many years ago while working for a roofer in Tampa—a roofing company that had virtually no safety process—Stark stepped where a coworker had placed felt (tar paper) over an opening in the roof. “My leg went through the felt and into the hole. I flipped over the edge of the roof and landed about 12 feet below in a sand pile. They didn’t even miss me. I was down there for quite a few minutes and they just continued to felt the roof!”

A few years later, Stark became a laborer, building a ten story building in Tampa, and eventually became his firm’s safety director. “There’s no prouder work force than a construction work force,” says Stark, “and they have a right to be. These guys are out there building America and doing a heck of a job.”