In this Longshore Insider Podcast, AEU's Mike Jernigan and Matt Hockman speak with Wepfer Marine's Harbor Operations Manager Alex Willingham about his company's methods to promote safety across multiple worksites.
Announcer:
Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast from the American Equity Underwriters. At AEU, we are passionate about helping waterfront employers protect their workers and their businesses. Join us as we explore practical strategies for improving workplace safety, effective claims management, and much more. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast.
Mike Jernigan:
Hi, and thanks for listening to the AEU Longshore Insider Podcast. In this series, our focus is safety. Specifically, we're speaking with health and safety experts from across the maritime industry about what they do to develop and maintain a culture of safety among their teams and throughout their organizations. I'm Mike Jernigan with the American Equity Underwriters. I'm joined today by loss control manager, Matt Hockman, who's here to provide his perspective on AEU's outlook on safety. And I'm also joined by Alex Willingham, Harbor Operations Manager of Wepfer Marine. Matt, Alex, it's great to have you with us.
Alex Willingham:
Appreciate being here.
Matt Hockman:
Thanks for having us, Mike.
Mike Jernigan:
Alex, tell me a little bit about yourself and also about your company.
Alex Willingham:
I've been in the marine industry for about 10 years, safety background for about the past 10 years off and on. I work at Wepfer Marine. It's a family-owned company. We have nine locations, run about 36 boats, primarily a fleeting harbor company, but we do have three shipyards, one in Calvert City, Kentucky, our main facility is in Memphis, dry dock, full service, and then a small shipyard down in Greenville, Mississippi. So we're spread out, just like anybody else.
Mike Jernigan:
I imagine that you have challenges that you faced and throughout your career you've faced multiple safety challenges. Can you tell me a little bit about the challenges you've faced and what you've done to overcome those?
Alex Willingham:
Sure. I mean, a lot of what we deal with at Wepfer is, because we are too faceted, we're having to deal with multiple entities, Coast Guard when it comes to the fleeting service and the boats, the OSHA when it comes to the shipyard portion of it, a lot of compliance issues. As everybody's been dealing with sub-Chapter M the last few years, some things have had to take a backseat. Not necessarily safety being one of them, but more of a compliance focus. So what we're trying to get back into now is getting our mind off of necessarily just complying with a regulation and bringing back and breeding that safety culture.
And so it is a little bit difficult when you figure it's three hours north, three hours south, and then you're centrally located in Memphis. But we do have some good people in place, specifically up in our Calvert City location. We have a young man who came in and just took over and has done a fantastic job. Injuries are down, compliance is up. It's been great. That, and I would have to say probably that old school attitude of we've always done it this way, so why would we change now?
Matt Hockman:
Changing that old adage is one of the hardest things you can do. People get that mindset and they think, well, this hasn't hurt me yet, so what's going to change to do that? And it's like, all it takes is one time, and that one time is something that you could possibly not come back from.
Alex Willingham:
I've been climbing in this tank for 20 years and nothing's ever happened to me, so why should I think it should happen tomorrow?
Matt Hockman:
Exactly. And what if this one time that you climb into the tank, someone else has been in there before you got in there?
Alex Willingham:
Exactly.
Matt Hockman:
I know you've got different sites, you've got different places that you've got employees. What strategies have you found most effective for managing those sites?
Alex Willingham:
We have been doing an older school approach. Specifically what I call the safety guy has been going out there taking care of the meetings and talking with the crews and we're starting a new direction. We've started looking more at what I would call PCC, partnerships, communication, and collaboration. And we are getting more of our people involved. Not just the VP of operations, not just the CEO of the company, but even the welders. We're starting to get those guys more involved in the safety platform.
We're also encouraging our upper management, so those senior VPs. They're doing safety meetings now, not just the safety guy, so that the crews that are in Calvert City, Memphis, Greenville, and everywhere in between, they're seeing the faces of their company, which I think is something that we've never really done before, but is paying off.
Matt Hockman:
You're giving everybody a voice, you're giving everybody a platform, you're giving them an opportunity to show a different side of everything, and when you can give people an opportunity, they surprise you a lot of times.
Alex Willingham:
And it also, by getting those upper management, and not just seeing the same safety guy month after month after month, it shows the guys that are actually doing the work that ownership, upper management really does care about our safety and care about our safety program.
Mike Jernigan:
I just wanted to mention, you mentioned old school, you do it the old school way, and then you talk about these new approaches. So there's a little bit of a difference between old school and old school, right?
Matt Hockman:
Yes, sir.
Mike Jernigan:
So we're not talking about the old school way of, "We've always done it like this," like Matt alluded to earlier, but we're talking about that old school work ethic, making sure that the job gets done and that things are successful. So I think that when you talk about those new techniques through that old school lens, it makes a lot of sense. But I did want to designate the difference between the two old schools that we both talked about here.
Matt Hockman:
So do you find any specific tools or methodologies particularly useful as you approach risk assessment?
Alex Willingham:
I am a data guy. I will say this. We have some people that have always been part of our safety team, safety culture at Wepfer that have different talents and different drives. I'm the data guy. I love data. I love trends. I love to see what actually comes about from all that. Then we take that and a lot of it is how we're going to apply it. And that goes back to, and I'll probably say it a few more times, the collaboration between that welder. We can put out a policy because of what we've seen or we can put out a new safety measure because we all know that compliance is the basics. Compliance checks a box, but an actual safety culture and actually being safe is different.
So what we're doing is we're trying to take some of that stuff, get input from the people that are actually having to do it. Because I'm not a welder. I'm not a fabricator. I don't do that. So for me to tell a guy, "You have to wear this, put this on," and then climb underneath a boat, that's all well and good, but until I actually have to go out there and put it into practice and see how uncomfortable it is and see that when I'm down there and I'm laying on my back and having to do welding this way, it really hurts. And so maybe we can change it up or modify some stuff or give you some different things to get the job done.
Matt Hockman (07:47):
When you get their buy-in, when you do something and you get the understanding of what they're doing and how they're doing it, you're getting that buy-in from them completely. Because they're like, "Okay, well, he's not just full of it. He's actually giving us a way that works with what we're doing."
Alex Willingham:
Correct.
Matt Hockman:
So I guess, when you do have a new tool or you do have a new way of doing things, how do you communicate that effectively to the other job sites, because that's the hard part?
Alex Willingham:
It is the hard part. One thing I will say, we are consistent. We try our best to have an agenda, a platform that whether it's myself, VP of Ops, one of the owners, we're taking this out to our people. We're trying to stay consistent and we all talk about it. Again, we try to be consistent in the message so that everybody's hearing it the same way. And then if we do get feedback, we recently put a policy in place, two weeks later we get feedback from the guys in the yard in Memphis that what we put in place isn't working, so can we modify it? And we sat around and had a discussion about how we can modify it and then decided what we were going to do. Then all of a sudden we put it out between me and HR and our safety man up in Calvert City and it gets done.
Matt Hockman:
So how are you getting that feedback from the employees? I love that you're getting feedback, but a lot of companies I think sometimes have trouble getting feedback from their guys. Is it just because you give them that opportunity? Is it in safety meetings?
Alex Willingham:
It is In safety meetings. One of the things, and we do get feedback there, we discussed a lot of near misses, a lot of things that you're having issues with. We discuss at risk behaviors, at risk conditions. We get feedback from guys during that, but a lot of it too is going out on the yard. I think as people, whether it be like me, I'm probably more in ops with a big emphasis on safety, but we spend too much time in the office trying to figure things out, and what I like to do and what I think we do a good job at Wepfer Marine is we go out on the yard and we observe and talk to these guys.
Matt Hockman:
Well, the more visible you are the more you know the guys, the more likely they are to talk to you about an issue that they're having within the yard or just a gripe in general. I mean, sometimes they just want to feel heard.
Alex Willingham:
Right.
Matt Hockman:
So giving them that chance is huge.
Alex Willingham:
I think a lot of times people take safety and safety violations as more of, we're going to dictate this is exactly what you're going to do. Whereas we want to collaborate. Let's both try to figure out a way that you can still be productive, because we still have to turn stuff out. We still have to move barges. We still have to fix boats. But at the end of the day, we all want to go home. We all want to go home with 10 fingers, 10 toes, two eyes, and everything intact. And so it's through that and with our guys that I think we're able to achieve that.
Matt Hockman:
So are there any new innovative methods, technologies, anything like that that you guys are using?
Alex Willingham:
We do work with a third party, especially in our learning management system where the guys at their leisure can fulfill their safety training compliance. We can check that box. We're also utilizing some of the tools from AU, the Look Program, a lead here at the National Forum where y'all talked about the Look Forward. Look Forward is a new program that I believe is coming out. So we're excited to see that. We like to partner with people like you, like AU to try to make it happen.
Matt Hockman:
Well, I think that partnership is key.
Alex Willingham:
It is.
Matt Hockman:
Because you need that external look into what's going on, because you see it day to day. So some of the things that may change for you guys may not be seen.
Alex Willingham:
Correct.
Matt Hockman:
Like a hazard that's been there for six days, you've passed by it 100 times and you just have blinders to it. So somebody like us coming out and taking a look at it and just saying, "Hey, this is what we're looking for here and this is what other groups want to see from a safety perspective," it's just to find, we call it fact finding, not fault-finding. And I'm sure you've heard some of our Loss Control Managers say that. And that's truly what it is because if we can fix it before somebody gets hurt, then it's fantastic. If not, then, I mean we still have to learn from it, but we'd rather catch it in the front end.
Alex Willingham:
Right.
Mike Jernigan:
You were mentioning earlier the collaboration you had among various members of your team and how you were able to look at a problem, develop a plan, make some modifications, and then come out with a successful solution. So how do you guys put all that together and how does that impact the safety culture within your organization?
Alex Willingham:
We get together when we have things like that. You have, some of, again, the upper management guys will get together. We'll figure out what we need to put out. We talk to the guys. We invite the individuals to come and speak. And I think when you make it a part of it, when you make everybody a part of that safety thing, you can't help but breed a culture. And again, when you've got one of the owners, whose name is on the side of the boat, and you got one of the CEO whose name is on the side of the boat and they're out there coming down talking safety, you can't help but breed it. I think it's something that, when you involve your people, it's just going to come naturally. It's not something that you can just sit there and measure, to be honest. It's just going to come naturally when you keep everybody involved.
Matt Hockman:
It's be visible and diligent.
Alex Willingham:
Correct.
Mike Jernigan:
So you speak about that safety culture and that buy-in that happens organically just by default through living it and really following through with what you say. Can you speak to anything like specific strategies that you implement that really pushes that buy-in on all levels?
Alex Willingham:
I wouldn't say there's so much as a program or a way to subscribe to it. We do, again, like I said earlier, we use the AU look. Moving forward, we're using Look Forward, which does create that safety culture and it does create some easy ways for guys to be safe. But what we've created or what we're doing is, by involving everybody at all levels, I think it's almost creating a sense that not only are we being safe because that's what we're supposed to do, we're being safe because we want to. And I see our crews out there a lot almost policing each other in a way and it is interesting. I happened to walk out looking, some crews were on the shipyard on dry dock using the crane to reinstall the rudder on a boat.
And I kept my distance. I didn't get anywhere close to the boat, but I was in the vicinity, but didn't think, and I'm telling on myself, didn't think about putting my hard hat on. I felt I was far enough away. And one of the guys on the stern of the boat yelled at me and tapped his head two or three times. So I backed away and afterwards I went and thanked him. I said, "I'm one of members of upper management and you're telling me what I need to do." And I thanked him for it. That's what I think we've created.
Mike Jernigan:
It's so good to hear those stories like that because we're all human and we all need to be reminded. And so the fact that you say that there's no specific magic bullet per se, I mean, that's really a great answer because it speaks really to that overall sense of safety that you really stress every day. And I just think that's great to create a culture where it just organically grows from the bottom up and from the top down.
Alex Willingham:
And I'm not going to say that we don't have our issues, and I'm not going to say that we're perfect 100% of the time. Every company out there big and small, we all go through the same issues. The difference is that I think we are making strides, and I see it every day and I see the guys, I see our crews happy that it's happening.
Matt Hockman:
One, if you're not looking out for your coworkers, who are you looking out for?
Alex Willingham:
Correct.
Matt Hockman:
Because at the end of the day, you're your brother's keeper or you're your sister's keeper. If you're not doing that, it's just somebody's got to get injured and we're going to see it's going to affect everybody. So if I was going to ask you to give yourself one piece of safety advice, if you're looking at your younger self in the mirror, what would you give from a safety advice perspective?
Alex Willingham:
No one thinks about you until something happens. So be vigilant. Don't give up. It's going to be a struggle. But in the end, you're going to help people do better, be safer, and as I said, go home with 10 fingers and 10 toes at the end of the day.
Matt Hockman:
I love it. That's what it's all about. We want to make sure that everybody gets home the same way they came in.
Alex Willingham:
Exactly.
Matt Hockman:
Or better.
Alex Willingham:
100% correct.
Mike Jernigan:
Well, Alex, Matt, it was a pleasure having you both with us today, and I thank you so much for the time and your perspective on safety.
Alex Willingham:
Happy to be here, man.
Matt Hockman:
Thank you. It's been great.
Mike Jernigan:
Thanks again, guys.