Katharine Gore
Special to Mustang Daily
A month after he took on the job of Industrial Technology Lab Coordinator, Ray Kisch saw a visitor catch her heel in a two-foot deep trench in an I.T. lab.
The woman could have broken her ankle, Kisch said.
“Safety is the No. 1 priority of my job,” Kisch said. “There must be a safety awareness culture where everyone is aware of safety, whether it be at school or home. They should start to think in that frame of mind,” Kisch said.
Kisch was hired in Fall 2011 — he replaced a graduate student at Cal Poly who didn’t have experience in the industry, Kisch said.
“I’ve got 40 years of experience, so I have a different viewpoint,” Kisch said.
As the lab coordinator, Kisch has a background in maintenance, engineering and production. There has to be an understanding that the entire job needs to be done when it comes to safety, not just part of it, he said.
The difference between other Cal Poly labs and the industrial technology labs is Kisch’s experience, Cal Poly Industrial Technology Department head Manocher Djassemi said.
“We have a lab coordinator who is coming from the industry and who understands this importance of safety in an industrial environment such as our labs,” Djassemi said.
Kisch is also the only lab coordinator on campus who has a certificate in operating and maintaining forklifts, as well as the ability to train students to operate the forklift, Djassemi said.
The industrial technology department follows the federal laws and regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Cal Poly has its own set of safety rules based on OSHA, Kisch said.
The campus has overridden OSHA in some cases, such as OSHA’s regulation that there must be a fire extinguisher in every classroom. The regulation was changed to a fire extinguisher within so many feet of the classroom, Kisch said.
Kisch is also getting ideas for changes by looking into the safety programs of other schools, such as Stanford University — which has a really good safety program, he said.
The industrial technology department has made a collective effort to address everything to do with safety, Kisch said.
The industrial technology department is making a booklet for every student that will have a mission and general rules, and specific safety guidelines for each lab, Kisch said.
Students are also working on emergency posters to put up in the labs, Kisch said.
Kisch is also improving the control of who can get into the labs. He added keypad entries to four labs this past summer. Kisch plans to add keypads to the other labs soon, he said.
“Accountability is very big now; a teacher’s assistant or student assistant can lose their job if somebody used their code and something happened in that lab,” Director of Cal Poly’s Packaging Program Jay Singh said.
Kisch’s biggest priority has been to identify and correct areas that were extremely hazardous, he said.
“The main hazards were physical,” Kisch said.
The big one that really stood out was the trench.
The trench is 30 feet long, 18 inches wide and 24 inches deep. It had buckles and covers to keep people and objects from falling in, but the covers were bent from being repeatedly run over by the forklift. The trench and its covers were a tripping hazard, Kisch said.
There were also no signs warning of forklift movement where there was student traffic, which is a state requirement, according to Cal/OSHA consultant Herman Jett.
“You must have signs where operating forklifts are present,” Jett said.
Kisch added signs to warn students of the forklift and added more signs about general safety rules in the other labs. Kisch also replaced the 32-year-old forklift with a new one.
“It was an absolute safety hazard,” Kisch said. “It did not comply with safety regulations so I put motivation into getting another one.”
In the past six months, the industrial department also organized an Injury and Illness Prevention Program, Djassemi said.
“We didn’t pay attention to that official injury and illness prevention — we hadn’t had any focus or specific discussion on that subject, that’s something new,” Djassemi said.
Illness is not very applicable to industrial technology labs unless chemicals are used, but now the department wants to look at that aspect of safety with more focus as well, Djassemi said.
Industrial technology faculty and students have made an effort to improve safety and to get students involved because they come up with good ideas, Kisch said.
The safety booklet and posters with both specific rules per lab and emergency guidelines will be done soon, Kisch said.
“We will have, by the end of this quarter, everything in place,” Kisch said.