ST. LOUIS—You need the exact wording of a federal regulation to comply with a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration ruling. You don’t want to spend hours digging through file cabinets or scrolling through digital files, trying to find exactly what you’re looking for. There are hundreds of standards, and it’s impossible to remember all of them.

Virginia, Maryland and Delaware electric cooperative safety professionals have a solution at their fingertips.

“It’s nice to pick up the phone and call somebody and say, ‘What’s the rule on that?’ And someone can give it to you and tell you where to find a reference for it,” said A&N Cooperative’s Curtis Taylor at an NRECA Safety Leadership Summit breakout session, “Bridging the Gap: Fostering Safety Collaboration Across Experience Levels and Cooperative Sizes.”

The safety coordinator at the Tasley, Virgina, co-op was one of five panelists who outlined how participants in the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives Safety Professional Group share knowledge, develop tailored training and foster peer support. During the April 16 session, panelists gave advice on how co-ops elsewhere can adopt the model.

“We’ve been hearing all this week that our industry needs to come up with a better way of communicating, whether it be a safety rule or a policy procedure,” Taylor said. “I’ve seen it firsthand with this group; the collaboration and the communication that goes on is outstanding. And I really think the group has made the culture stronger in everyone’s location.”

Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative CEO and President Gregory Rogers, the chairman of VMDAEC’s Board Safety Subcommittee, worked with 15 other co-ops to form the safety group about four years ago to improve communication and collaboration among safety professionals. A formal charter authorizes the group and defines purpose, governance scope, goals, participants and all-important leadership support and impact.

CEO and board endorsement has been essential for keeping the group alive, said Randy Golladay, job safety and training director at Central Virginia Electric Cooperative in Lovingston.

“Your safety program has to come from the top down because if you try and build it from the bottom up, you will run into roadblocks," he said. "We have the backing to make this program work, and that is so important.”

To foster free exchange of information yet ensure co-ops’ privacy, the group’s meetings operate under the Chatham House Rule, which allows open discussion but prohibits participants from revealing sources of affiliations.

“For instance, we go over an incident at our monthly meeting or we have an impromptu meeting to discuss a certain incident, and a co-op provides detail about what happened,” said the group’s chair, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative Director, Safety and Security Officer John Medved. “When we go back to our co-op we can share the information, but not the person’s name. We keep it very high-level, and we discuss what the incident was, how it occurred and what we learned.”

Panelists discussed building the case for a similar group in other states and how their group acts as a mentoring platform between workers at all experience levels. Another key strength of the group is the range in co-op sizes—the smallest participating co-op has just 7,000 meters, and the largest has 190,000 meters.

“I come from a rather larger co-op, and there’s three of us whose role is only dedicated to safety. We have resources in house to share with others,” said Meggan Robbins, director of safety and compliance at Shenandoah Valley EC, based in Rockingham, Virginia.

“I recognize that we have some abilities that other smaller co-ops maybe don’t have. But that doesn’t mean we have all the answers; we get so much out of the collaboration with this group of professionals.”