ASSE Safety 2018: Your Guide to the Top Safety Management Conference

ASSE Safety 2018 Conference: General Session Preview

General sessions provide an opportunity for conference attendees to hear from thought leaders in the safety world. McNeill says a session on workplace violence—“The Before and After Summit: A Safety Professional’s Guide to Prepare For, React To, and Address Workplace Violence Events”—is expected to be of particular interest. A panel of experts, representing the FBI, local law enforcement and human resources, will discuss the before, during and after of active shooter events. “We’re trying to give safety professionals some tools to go back with to prepare for something like this,” McNeill says.

Also, after successfully introducing a town hall debate to the mix last year, Safety 2018 reprises the format with a new topic, “Operationalizing It!” Tom Krause, founder of Krause Bell Group, whose mission is to develop innovative approaches to safety performance improvement, Scott Geller, Ph.D., president of Safety Performance Solutions, and Todd Conklin, a human and organization performance consultant, will debate serious injury and fatality prevention. Along with a panel of safety executives, including an executive from Tesla Motors, they’ll discuss two different approaches to safety—behavior-based safety versus human and organizational performance—and how companies can transition their systems to either method.

ASSE Safety 2018 Concurrent Sessions: Hot Topic Will Be New ISO 45001 Standard

The conference offers more than 240 concurrent educational sessions, each one lasting for either an hour or an hour and 15 minutes. Sessions are divided into four levels—basic, intermediate, advanced and executive—providing options for a variety of professionals. There are 24 tracks to choose from, from “Business Skills and Personal Development” to “Transportation.”

McNeill says attendees are not tied to one track. “The idea is that when you come, it’s a buffet of topics,” he says. Someone in construction safety can take courses focused on that subject, but they can also take courses in unrelated tracks. “We want you to get outside your wheelhouse and learn about different things.”

One of the hotter topics in concurrent sessions this year will be the new ISO 45001 standard, which replaces OHSAS 18001, McNeill says. Multiple sessions will address different aspects of the newly published international standard.

ASSE Safety 2018: Key Issue Collaboration Sessions

Safety professionals can share best practices and learn from each other during these sessions, which run Monday to Wednesday for either an hour or an hour and 15 minutes each. Sessions cover topics such as “Health Risks for Utility Workers,” “Emergency Planning and Preparedness” and “Vapor Intrusion Fundamentals.”

McNeill says ASSE provides a facilitator and a note-taker to get the ball rolling, but participants really drive the sessions. “It is meant to be kind of an organized brainstorm,” he says. “The knowledge comes from the attendees, not from the people in the front of the room.”

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ASSE Safety 2018: Learning in Quick Bites

Besides the longer, more formal sessions, the conference also offers a variety of opportunities to connect with fellow attendees and pick up information in a faster format. These include:

• Flash sessions: These 15-minute sessions, led sometimes by exhibitors but often by concurrent session presenters, offer short takes on key topics, from using video to drive website traffic and engagement to safety leadership tips for frontline supervisors.
• Social learning stations: These allow conference attendees to network and share experiences in a less structured environment.
• Lunch & Learn: A new feature to the conference this year is Lunch & Learn sessions. Conference-goers can choose to eat lunch on their own or join discussion groups. A “Pitch” option lets attendees pitch a safety message to upper management professionals, getting feedback on message effectiveness and ways to make sure it’s heard by the operations side of business.

A schedule tool and a conference app both help conference attendees keep track of which sessions they plan to attend. There’s a lot of ground to cover and it’s impossible to attend every session, but recordings of more than 150 of the concurrent sessions will be available free to all registered attendees within a few weeks of the conference.

McNeill recommends that attendees come with an open mind and a plan of attack on what they want to get out of the conference. “Come with some questions you want to ask other attendees,” he says. “Don’t just come and isolate yourself. Come with the idea that you’re part of this larger group of safety professionals and you’re there to help each other out.”

And, he adds, “Have some comfortable shoes.”