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Insights and updates on workplace safety, AI assistants, and best practices

September 28, 20266 min read

What is the SCL Model? A plain language guide for safety teams

Same event, different answers. EEI once showed 113 safety professionals the same scenario: a worker at 70 feet holding an 8 pound tool, no protection below, and people working underneath. They changed one detail at a time and asked one question. Is this a potential serious injury or fatality? When the tool dropped and hit the ground with nobody hurt, 93 percent said yes. When a lanyard caught it, 62 percent. Add a barrier below and it fell to 35 percent. Across the four versions the group agreed

Brady Keene

September 11, 20264 min read

Safety Observations: Quality or Quantity? The Argument Is About the Wrong Thing

The quantity side is right that observation is a habit, and habits need reps. A crew that files five observations a month is not looking. The quality side is right that a quota produces entries written to hit a number, and a thousand notes about housekeeping say nothing about the next serious injury. Both camps are arguing over a trade the form forced on them: volume cost detail and detail cost participation. When the record structures itself, that trade goes away. The n

Brady Keene

September 11, 20264 min read

What Is HECA, and What Do I Actually Do With It?

You have probably heard HECA in a meeting and nodded along. High Energy Control Assessment is a score that answers one question about a crew doing a task: of the hazards on this job that could kill someone, what share has a real safeguard in place right now? Count the high energy hazards, count how many have a direct control, and divide. Ten high energy hazards with five controlled is a 50. It came out of the Construction Safety Research Alliance, was published by Matthew Hallowell and Elif Den

Brady Keene

July 23, 20264 min read

One Number, Two Jobs: What EMR Can and Cannot Do for a Construction Executive

Experience modification rate earns the attention it gets. A mod above 1.0 can cost you access to hospital systems, university systems, municipal work, and data center developers who use it as an automatic filter, and a single pursuit lost that way is worth more than a year of premium difference. Any executive treating that number seriously is doing so for sound commercial reasons. The difficulty is that the same number is also being asked to describe how exposed the business is to a catastrophi

Brady Keene

July 21, 20265 min read

A Data Scientist in Your Pocket

Safety analytics do not usually fail because the math got too hard. It fails because the answer showed up a month after the moment it could have mattered. A data scientist in your pocket is about closing that gap. The pattern reaches you while the work is still being planned. A Thursday on the third floor. A team leader walks back to the trailer and records a voice note. Temporary handrail pulled at the east stair landing. Material stacked in the walkway. Two crews doubled up beca

Brady Keene

July 7, 20264 min read

The Future of Safety Is Inside the Work

For a long time, safety carried a specific kind of weight inside organizations, because it was the function that protected people, found hazards, and stepped in when the risk got too high. That role still matters and it always will. But the market has changed, and the things that once made a safety program stand out have become table stakes. Training, audits, software, observations, dashboards, and forms all exist now, and every organization has them, which means everyone can say they care abou

Brady Keene

June 23, 20268 min read

Your Next Fatality Has Already Happened

What SIFp means, why it matters, and what most safety programs miss about modern fatality prevention. You just got lucky. Somewhere on your jobsites in the last 90 days, a worker likely stepped into a condition with the energy to kill them and walked out without a scratch. No incident report. Maybe a near miss filed. More likely nothing at all. That event has a name in the research literature: a Potential Serious Injury or Fatality, abbreviated SIFp or PSIF. It is one of the most valuable sign

Brady Keene

June 3, 20265 min read

AI in OSH, Done Right: Inside the StepoAI and GVSU Partnership

Safety students at Grand Valley State University did not learn to chat with AI. They learned to work with it. Here is what changed, and what it means if you hire safety professionals. Most people meet AI through a blank text box. You type a question, you get an answer, you move on. That is fine for trivia. It is not how safety work gets done, and it is not how we taught it. This semester, safety students at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan used StepoAI to build the kind

Brady Keene

May 29, 20265 min read

PTPs May Be Hiding Your SIF Potentials

PTP completion is not the same as PTP quality. Recycled PTPs can create a false sense of control. The PTP is one of the places where high energy work should be connected to direct controls. If the PTP does not change when the work changes, planning may not have happened. The fix is not more paperwork. It is looking at what changed between yesterday's plan and today's work. Safety leaders should measure PTP quality, not just PTP count. The flip through test. Flip throug

Brady Keene