JCI & saftey

[9675]

Fellow chiller techs I have a question. How are you guys getting away with doing annuals on YK and YT chillers and sticking to jci policy? The reason i ask is because it is imposable to complete the task for the following reasons. On most chillers you have to climb on barrels to grease motor impossiable with a frame ladder because your belt buckle goes outside the up rights of your ladder when you go from ladder to barrell. How do you megger motor because you cant lean ladder against barrell, or lean outside up rights of ladder and you must maintain three point contact, a little hard to do when you have to pull motor leads. How do you change a condenser fan motor on air cooled machine, its above 6' you have to wear fall protection but there is nothing to tie off to. There is a lot of gray area for these black and white rules, and there are a lot more but you get the point, so how are other branches dealing with it?

[flange]

when i worked at honeywell and had to deal with this crap, we would make the safety guy come tell us how to do it. if he had no ideas, we wouldget some 1/4" copper and run it overhead, and hang the lanyard from it to be a holes. As you can imagine, he was not impressed.

[dweber101]

The policy is to protect JCI from liability. You were trained what not to do to stay safe. It winds up as a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. Can you see the look on your customers face when you tell them that you have to build a railing around the top of the air cooled equipment to comply with policy? How much will that add to the quote? I met some guys from the UK at a training class and they said whenever they change a condenser fan motor (back in the UK) railing is temporally installed for the job. Takes all day to change a fan motor.

[9675]

If we have to follow these rules we cant stay compettitive with our pricing, as long as other shops dont have the same policies, I understand saftey but you do have to draw a line some where, after all we dont were helments in our cars (yet) . We assume the risk of driving and flying and we still do it.

[james mo]

The company I am with does not require the extreme safety policies that you are talking about, but some of the accounts we service do. At one of these places; To replace a gas valve on a residential style upflow furnace, the gas cock had to be mechanically tagged out with a seperate tag for the tech, the maint. dept rep and the safety coordinator. Guess what, the couldn't find a mechanical lockout for a 1/2" gas cock, so they fabricated one in the shop while the tech waited. All three tags were attached and the gas valve was replaced. Then you had to track down the appropriate parties to remove their tags so you could restore service to this 100,000 btuh furnace.
We are paid for our time while waiting or setting up, but DAMN! It drives you crazy.

[klove]

Fellow chiller techs I have a question. How are you guys getting away with doing annuals on YK and YT chillers and sticking to jci policy? The reason i ask is because it is imposable to complete the task for the following reasons. On most chillers you have to climb on barrels to grease motor impossiable with a frame ladder because your belt buckle goes outside the up rights of your ladder when you go from ladder to barrell. How do you megger motor because you cant lean ladder against barrell, or lean outside up rights of ladder and you must maintain three point contact, a little hard to do when you have to pull motor leads. How do you change a condenser fan motor on air cooled machine, its above 6' you have to wear fall protection but there is nothing to tie off to. There is a lot of gray area for these black and white rules, and there are a lot more but you get the point, so how are other branches dealing with it?

They can't be complied with. It's all about not having to cover you if you get hurt. They don't care if you get hurt, they just don't want you to do it on their nickel. But you better get the job done (and just use common sense to figure out the best way to do it)..........:rules:

[flange]

let me explain this from an owners perspective. workers compensation for this industry can run seven percent or so depending on many factors. general liability isnt as much, but it costs money. safety policies and experience ratings can reduce this burden "up to 25%". now do you get it? you techs working on chillers for jci are by and large high wage union guys. think about those numbers....

[deno77]

The policy is just there to protect them as stated before. We had an apprentice get fired for a safety violation. He got bit by 120v trying to change out a flow switch. I don't think any mechanic out there has not been bit by 120v. The real kicker is they sent him into a plant envioroment on a 4160 chiller and he completed the job and then got canned. He didnt have the proper training to know all the sources of power. Mind you this is a third year apprentice who they were charging full street rate for and when on little hiccup come along they screwed him. Who ever sent him into that enviorment should have been fired for being a dumb ass. JCI is the worse place I have ever worked.

[cperk]

You know, when was younger, I used to have a goal of someday working for Trane factory service or York factory service. But now, since the Ingersol-Rand and JCI buyouts, I have a goal to not ever work for them. I know some techs. from both, and all I here is horror stories since the buyouts. Seems like all of the companies though, including the one I work for, treat you as a liability. They don't give a damn if you get hurt or not. They do all this safety junk because they are building a case in the event that you do get hurt. Then they can let you go. Face it we all are out there everyday putting our lives on the line, with our middle class wages, to keep a multi-million dollar bldg. or operation cool, while the corporate guys that don't have a clue, are getting rich and trying to figure out a way to move their factories to China or mexico for cheap labor. O.K. I'm done. Be safe!

[amickracing]

I'd love to know how to comply 100% of the time also. I'm not saying that I don't do my best to be as safe as possible every chance I can, but I'm telling you, some of the crap they preach is just ridiculous. Common sense has to prevail somewhere, and sometimes they need to understand that being 'safe' can be more dangerous than just doing the job.

Hell I slipped and fell down stairs (lots and lots of them! ok, 4 stairs...), and the letters I hate to write, statements, phone calls, safety checks etc, it was stupid. I was asked if I had gloves on, if I had my bump hat on, etc etc... I finally got a bit cranky and asked how gloves could have possibly saved me from breaking my back. I got no reply, the lady just kept reading from the script.

I'll admit I'm proud to work with the guys I do, I'd say they are some of the elite for the area, and the company isn't all bad, but the direction I've seen in go in the last 3 years is turning people into numbers and that's it. The stories I've heard from back in the day (10-20-30 years ago) made it seem like honestly the dream company to work for. Hopefully things will change, but I don't know if that's possible. Once a company gets so big there's just no way for the big company politics to take over.

[york56]

Most of the companies out there today factory and middle size are just out of there mines today you seem to be always looking over your shoulder to see who's watching or who's going to throw you under the bus or it's the gps B.S or lets put a governer on the truck so I can kill myself while driving there truck. This is why people start there own buisness its called peace of mine.:yes:

[flange]

I worked for honeywell back in the day, and it was good, but in now way shape or form could i work there today. The rules are insane. This is an inherently dangerous business, with high costs of doing business. The thing is, its a numbers game as you guys already know. The bea ncounters only know profit and loss, and take the advice of "trusted partners", ie insurers and the like who offer discountsa for this, and savings for that. Why do these companies jump at this crap? Well, its a many faceted diamond. Think about the post I made above. lets sayyou are are jci/york guy doing chiller work. In large metro areas most of you make roughly six figures give or take. at a rate of seven percent for workers comp, it cost them 7 g's a year to cover you only. pull all the safety crap, and it could go down to 5.25% or 5250 per year, a significant savings. Now multiply that nationwide on THE ENTIRE WORKFORCE, it becomes a pretty real number right? now think about general liability and experience rating. Another real number. if people get hurt, the base rate of 7 percent can go up 10/15 even 20%. a pretty wide swing in costs.

With the stock market flailing, they need to "find" money in their overburdened structure, and reducing overhead is not an option for the boys network. You then need to understand that big business looks to other big business, and all of the things that make you sick to your belly, make other businesses want to do business with you. Thnigs like ISO 9001, where everyone is "trained to do the same thing every time with zero defect", and six sigma come into play. How many of your employees have ________? is a question much pondered.

Guys, this is businessand is here to stay among the big boys. In the end, it does help to protect you and allow you to go home to your family every night, and in the end, is a good thing right? They KNOW that every job has certain issues that are unavoidable. They just dont want you to be a renegade.

Here is an example: I had a guy doing commissioning work at a pharmaceutical plant. It was "unsafe" by any determination to do the job. One unit sat above a stairwell, and the only way to access was an extension ladder, but there wasnt enough landing to get the proper distance out from the wall for the ladder. After negotiation with the plant manager over how to do it, we were given advice. It went like this. "when my guys work on this, they have to wait until the green ford parked in spot so and so leaves the lot for the day. its the safety guy, and he only works until four pm. if, for some reason you couldnt get to this unit until say five pm, there would be no one around to write you up for being unsafe. "

[9675]

I cant write it any better then above, it just makes my stomach turn thinking about it, coming to work with the factory was great they wanted you to fix chillers, now they dont give a s*#t, as far as saving money for saftey they are going to scare off good mechanics and bring in new brainwashed mechanics and it will go down hill from there.