In early October, the flagger for a Lewis Tree Service mowing crew noticed that a gas line shared the corridor on a utility right-of-way. The general foreman conducted a pre-job walkthrough with the crew. The terrain was uneven, slippery, covered in thick brush and, in it, they found debris from an old railroad. As the general foreman came...
What stories do the cuts on your chaps tell? Next time you ask field leadership to inspect chaps, say, “Tell us the story of what happened.” Or place damaged chaps in front of crews and ask what they think happened. After they take turns guessing, tell the actual story. What are their stories? What makes kickback more likely? What actions do...
There’s a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein that we’ve all seen, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That perfectly reflects how Lewis approached safety for many years. We made significant improvements in our safety results and then hit a plateau achieving only marginal gains every...
“It was 4:30 in the afternoon on nice, sunny day. Our crew had performed regular trimming on multiple oak trees around a three phase and was stacking brush while getting ready to shut down for the day. One of the crew members went to remove the drop zone cones when all the sudden he heard the sound of a limb slam on the ground. The employee was...
