Forbes Bros. Group of Companies

As the VP of EHS at Forbes Bros. Group of Companies, Steve Davis is serving in his third role as an executive safety professional in the power generation and delivery industry. For the past three years, he has focused on safely building the grid in Canada and the United States with Forbes Bros. When not at work, he lives with his wife between Buena Vista, CO and Maryville, TN, attempting to coerce others to join him skiing, riding his mountain bike and kayaking with every spare moment.

My early career was spent in nuclear power at Progress Energy and Duke in roles related to emergency planning, safety and human performance. Later, I transferred to oversight of contract organizations, performing maintenance and construction in all forms of power generation.

Before starting my career in commercial nuclear power, I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Wyoming and later achieved a Master’s degree in safety management from the University of Tennessee. I have served as a fire captain, a paramedic, a hot air balloon pilot, a raft guide, a bar tender, and performed many aerial stunts with companies such as Ripley’s, Guinness, MTV and Fox TV.

I have always felt that an organization is perfectly tuned to deliver current levels of performance. For safety professionals, knowing what levers to pull to re-tune the organization isn’t magic.

An organization is perfectly tuned to deliver current levels of performance. For safety professionals, knowing what levers to pull to re-tune the organization isn’t magic.

I am always willing to share my accumulated experiences spanning 18 years of leadership in the power generation and delivery industry. The foundation for successfully re-tuning for any performance-driven organization is rooted in a clear understanding of the importance of integration, as it relates to the levers of Programs, Processes, Metrics, Communications and the Org Chart.

• Programs: Safety programming must be data-driven, based on a deeper analysis of what is creating undesired conditions. Flavor of the week won’t cut it.

• Processes: Process must include programming. A program is dust in the wind if not saddled on the horse of process. Process is hard, try to make it less hard and do it anyway.

• Metrics: Metrics can become predictive and therefore tell you which direction to ride. They come from the process when the process is ridden right. The holy grail of safety, the leading indicator, isn’t that elusive. It is as simple as measuring the desirable and repeatable patterns of voluntary behaviors within an organization.

• Communications: Communications must reinforce programming and should be metrics-driven. It should involve sharing lessons and circling bullet holes while being “affective”, and always avoiding true but useless information often found in safety communications.

• Org Chart: The org chart must be filled with passionate entrepreneurs, transformative visionaries who willing to be vulnerable, and who specialize in lever pulling.

I believe that mastering the details of the above bullets is essential for a safety professional involved in organizational outcomes. I am always glad to share experiences to learn faster.