Hi
This is my first year as the Safety Captain for team 5907. I was wondering what I should do for the safety Presentation?
One of the biggest things you can do is to constantly be working to make your pit a safer place. As the safety captain, you should be in the pit for the majority of the match, and you should always make an effort to keep your pit orderly and organized (a clean pit is a safe pit.)
Ensure every single member of your team, student or mentor, knows where the fire extinguisher, battery spill kit, and first aid kit are. If you don’t have all 3 of those things, get them ASAP. A big part of being the safety captain is instilling a safety culture in your team; everyone shouldn’t just be safe, they should want to be safe.
Have physical documentation of any safety training your team has done (formal or informal), and have a binder that has the MSDS for all raw materials you have in your pit (aluminum, chemicals in the battery spill kit or first aid kit, etc) and SOPs for all power tools your team has used (this includes both handheld power tools such as drills and jigsaws, and standalone tools like drill presses and table saws.) Similar to the above paragraph, if you don’t have these things, get them ASAP.
Every hour or so, go find one of the safety inspectors roaming the pit area. Ask them to check your pit and ensure it is safe, and if it’s not optimally safe, what can be done to improve. This is huge; not a lot of teams do it, and (straight from the words of the safety inspectors) it’s what won our team both safety awards last year.
At the end of each day of competition (this includes load-in), make sure your pit is fully cleaned up; every tool is back in its proper place, no power tools are plugged in, there’s not screwdrivers all over the robot, etc. In the morning, you will get a little slip that has a smiley face, a neutral face, and a frowny face. One of these will be circled; if the circled face is not the smiley face, get a safety inspector ASAP to ask them why you didn’t get a good safety rating. If it’s a smiley face, get one anyway and ask if there’s anything you can do to improve the safety in your pit.
Follow all these steps, and you should have a really good chance of winning whatever safety awards there are to win at your competition(s)!
Do you need a PowerPoint for the judges.
Hey! You definitely don’t need to have a powerpoint for the judges. Just be prepared to speak about your team’s safety program, safety culture, and your team in general.
Adding onto what B_Resnick99 said, I think the vital thing is showing progression in the safety culture of your team. When I was presenting to the judges, I was able to tell them stories of really bad preventable incidents, of how we implemented different strategies to reduce the possibility of preventable injuries, and the overall changes our team has experienced. Team 1257 has won the UL Industrial Safety Award twice in one season for showing some serious progression.
Hope this helps and PM me if you need any further help!
In general, no. (Exception: Chairman’s judges, who get a presentation, not necessarily a PowerPoint.)
Most judges–including the safety judges–will get their information by talking to the students in the pit, looking at the pit, etc. No powerpoint needed. (Though if you have one running, or have binders for judges to take a look at, it can help.)
To have a successful safety program you need to have a good understanding with your team about the importance of safety. Once they take is seriously and can help you, it’s very easy to really create and develop your program. You can ask them to try something new- like the drive team has to wear gloves when going on and off the field. Or a type of attendance system in the pit that shows where each team member is supposed to be at a given time so say they’re in the pits, and want to go to the stands, they could move from the pit to the stands in the attendance.
The best thing you could do is ask judges what you could do better, and any ideas they might have about pit and team safety.
Its the little things that count, and the judges see it, if you really care.
Just work hard on it and you’ll do great.