Always on guard

With headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery is faced with several obstacles that come with its location. From high temperatures to congested roadways and diverse geography, the full-service waste, recycling and organics collection and processing company has remained diligent in its efforts to prioritize safety.

Mt. Diablo currently has 92 drivers and a fleet of more than 100 trucks, which includes automated side loaders, front-end loaders, rear loaders, delivery trucks and support vehicles that run both commercial and residential routes. The company takes certain measures to ensure top performance among its personnel.

“It’s very diverse geographically [in the Bay Area],” Mt. Diablo CEO Kish Rajan says. “Our territory, in particular, is quite a mix of rural residential areas but with very commercial and urban-like areas [as well], so, we have to manage a very diverse footprint to ensure that we do our collections efficiently.”

To keep things running smoothly, Rajan says it takes a companywide commitment to uphold a culture that promotes safety.

“Safety is not just a small or minor consideration,” he says. “It really is deeply embedded in our company culture; it’s embedded in the way we operate. There’s a long-standing and very deep commitment to safety that reverberates throughout the entire organization all the time, but it’s consistently reinforced. It’s just how we do business.

“For me, as the CEO, and our entire executive team, we’re deeply committed to it. We establish it as a core principle and value that we’re consistently communicating with our employees and reinforcing.”

Spreading the word

To keep safety top of mind, Rajan says Mt. Diablo incorporates its core principles into daily communications such as digital signage at its facilities and at companywide meetings. He describes this as a “continuous information loop” in which drivers are habitually informed of best practices.

The company also has additional training to help newer drivers get acquainted with collection trucks and different routes. During the onboarding process, new hires will be paired with a senior driver who can coach them in real-world conditions.

“When … bringing in newer people or onboarding newer people, we give them the benefit of this whole toolkit of training in both the classroom and the truck and then ongoing coaching and reinforcement,” Rajan says.

To measure the impact of these efforts, he says it’s important to track the data.

“It’s got to be measurable,” Rajan adds, noting that tracking driver performance can provide a baseline for safety expectations and point out areas where technology can be of help. Using this information, Mt. Diablo’s Director of Environmental Health and Safety Bart Miller and his team established a comprehensive safety program detailing best practices and vehicle and equipment information for operators to refer to.

“We’ve invested in the tools for training, communication and innovation,” Rajan says. “So, we are doing everything we can to meet our expectations and exceed them across the board.”

Using camera systems from Austin, Texas-based 3rd Eye, Rajan says, provides a “wealth of data” about what’s happening on the road and key details regarding near-misses and other incidents. Managers and safety teams often will dissect this footage to assess how to best improve safety training.

Although the cameras have proven beneficial for Mt. Diablo’s collection operations, Rajan says drivers initially were hesitant because of privacy concerns.

“There’s a lot of that sort of natural human reaction when they first hear about this,” he says. “But, through open communication, fielding those concerns, then hearing from management that these are tools that they want to be deployed for their benefit, their safety, the safety of the community and for the overall success of the company … we have worked … to develop a trusting relationship with our staff.”

Rajan says the cameras have helped exonerate drivers after incidents where service verification or driving practices have been brought into question.

Minimizing distractions

In addition to cameras, the company has rolled out mobile tablets using Mobile-Pak software from San Diego-based Soft-Pak for GPS and routing. This software will soon be integrated with the cameras to enable automatic service verifications, Rajan says.

“There’s less and less that the driver has to do to indicate that he’s completed a stop,” he says. “Or even if there was an issue—a customer forgot to leave their cart out or the cart in front of the commercial business was obstructed, things like that—increasingly it will automate the recording of what’s happening along the route. That’s less distraction; that’s less potential for any kind of hazards that could come along with that.”

The easier it is for drivers to keep their eyes on the road and complete their routes, Rajan adds, the safer and more productive it will be for them.

He says Mt. Diablo always has been a technology-friendly company and has received positive feedback from its staff on the company’s current routing solutions thus far. By using direct feedback from drivers and supervisors, Rajan says the company is able to create routing sequences unique to conditions in the Bay Area.

Taking concerns to heart

In addition to heavy traffic, the Bay Area increasingly has experienced extreme heat, and with summers getting warmer and high temperatures extending well into September, Rajan says Mt. Diablo has had to pay more attention to heat safety.

“There’s no question that we’re responding to [heat challenges] as a team, making sure we have the best climate control, air conditioning and other tools to try to minimize heat in the cab,” he says. “Hydration is something we stress all the time, and we’re looking at continuous and better … hydration solutions that we can deploy that are proving to be more effective [for personnel].”

Aside from in-cab solutions, the company also will assess the fabrics used in its uniforms, how many hours employees are working and whether they are consistently taking breaks.

Safety is not just a small or minor consideration. It really is deeply embedded in our company culture; it’s embedded in the way we operate.” — Kish Rajan, CEO, Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery

“It’s never a battle between performance and safety,” Rajan says. “We structure routes, we employ enough people, we keep our trucks well maintained so the uptime of the vehicles is optimized and … those cooling systems and other systems are always working.”

Overall, Rajan says open communication is the driving force behind Mt. Diablo’s safety program.

“Anytime an employee has a question or has feedback or a suggestion that they want to offer—either to me directly or to others in an open setting—we encourage candid, open dialogue and conversation, especially when it comes to safety issues,” he says. “But we also operate a number of mechanisms for people to offer feedback, even anonymously.”

In doing so, Rajan says Mt. Diablo has been able to foster a company culture that supports feedback and that takes concerns seriously.

The author is associate editor of Waste Today and can be reached at hrischar@gie.net.