Estevan – Roughly 190 service rig personnel and wellsite supervisors who work for Crescent Point attended the third annual Independent Well Servicing Safety Stand down at the Estevan campus of Southeast College on Jan. 10.
Brian Crossman of Independent Well Servicing said, “This is an event we’ve become very passionate about, as safety is the most important part of what we do every day. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than arriving home safe, physically and mentally intact, to our loved ones.
“You are the reason we make this investment into safety, and a commitment to your health and wellbeing.”
Curtis Swain, completions team lead with Crescent Point, said the company had up to 38 service rigs working for them at the time. Swain said, “2017 was a good year for us. I believe it could have been better. I believe it will get better. 2018 is here. It’s going to be extremely busy for us in (the first quarter) and throughout the year. Every time I come out to the field, I’m always seeing new faces. There’s new people coming into our industry. Lots of people have left. Some aren’t coming back. So this is the time, I feel it’s most important. All of you who are experienced, you now need to train and take care of all the new people that are coming into our industry and make sure they go home safely every day.”
He noted two safety initiatives underway for 2018 – stop and think, and hazard identification.
“We’re going to have a busy year. It’s going to be a good year. Stay safe,” Swain said.
The speaker for the event was former Saskatchewan Roughrider Dan Comiskey. He was drafted by the Riders in the 1997 CFL draft, and played 13 seasons for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders, retiring in 2010. With the Edmonton Eskimos he was a part of two Grey Cup championships.
He spoke of his coach in Edmonton standing on a chair in the locker room before a big game, saying, “I’m Bill MacDermott. You can count on me.” Each member of the coaching staff and the team then stood on that chair, saying the same thing about themselves.
“I knew I just became part of the machine,” Chomiskey said.
“We pulled it off. We won the Grey Cup. That moment changed me.”
He noted one should do the things that work, over and over again. Doing so creates habits, accountability and leadership.
“Sometimes you have to lose to win. Learn form your failures,” he said.
Later in his career Comiskey suffered from numerous concussions, the final one of which ended his career. He was done.
“What I didn’t learn from football was you gotta know when to change. One of the biggest things we do as human beings is adapt,” he said.
He became a safety advisor, working for Shell for six years, learning more about people and leadership.
Comiskey spoke of the “butterfly effect,” and how one little change may prevent bad things from happening. As concrete examples, he spoke of his father-in-law getting hit in the head by a piece of rock, on his first hitch on a new job in a mine in the Northwest Territories. His brother was electrocuted and killed as an electrical lineman in 2001 because he had the wrong glove on.
By his calculations, there were 600,000 chances for his brother, Augie, to not have been killed, by having done something differently. But it happened.
Safety is all habits, he said. “We’ve got to create a habit of safety.”
“This room is your team,” he concluded.