Toolbox Talks are quick and easy informal trainings conducted to enhance the safety requirements on construction projects. Toolbox Talks cover a wide range of topics ranging from workplace electrical safety to lifting basics among many others. Toolbox Talks also helps to create an environment to discuss task specific or timely safety communications, identify problems or highlight specific safety concerns/risks.
A Toolbox Talk is an informal group discussion among employees of an individual department that focuses on a particular safety issue. They are usually 15 minutes long that will be conducted on monthly basis held in a comfortable location at the beginning of a shift or after lunch-break. Although anyone can conduct a Toolbox Talk, it is recommended to select individuals who have expertise on the given topic.
Toolbox Talks can be used for post-accident communications, re-enforcement of safe work practice, pre-task planning and talking points for hands on training or table top exercises. Predefined pamphlets that will summarize the content of the toolbox talk will be shared with the participants. Those can be pamphlets prepared by the organization itself or readily available by safety organizations like those of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) quick cards.
Organizations who are using Project Management Information Systems (PMIS)like PMWeb to manage, monitor, evaluate and report the different health, safety and environment (HSE) processes can also use the same platform to manage toolbox talks. This provides the organization with a single version of the truth platform to manage and report on the performance of their HSE management plan.
To start with, PMWeb document management repository is used to create a shared folder for which all pamphlets created for toolbox talk will be uploaded and stored. The shared folder is used to provide access to all projects to those pamphlets. If needed, subfolders can be created to group and organize those pamphlets to ease locating the needed topic.
To ensure that toolbox talks are an integral part of each project as well as making participants of those talks aware of when those meetings take place, PMWeb meeting calendar module is used to schedule the toolbox talk meetings as well as other scheduled project meetings.
The details of those toolbox meetings including the list of project team members who have attended the meeting as well as the details of all comments made during the meeting is captured using PMWeb meeting minutes module. If there were any actions decided during the toolbox talk, a meeting business item is added to capture the details of the action and the individual or individuals responsible for those actions. Those actions could be task specific or timely safety communications, identify problems or highlight specific safety concerns/risks.
The meeting minute states the topic of the next toolbox talk and who is giving the talk. It is also recommended to use the “Create Next” option to confirm the next toolbox talk meeting date, time and location as well as create the agenda for the next toolbox talk.
In addition, the relevant safety pamphlet and other documents shared during the toolbox talk will be attached to the meeting minute. This enables those who have attended the toolbox talk as well as those who could not attend to have details of what was discussed as well as have access to the relevant pamphlet. It is also possible as an option to video record the toolbox talk and attach the recording to the meeting minute.
