Phones and Distraction

You have one attention and it does not divide. What feels like doing two things is switching quickly between them, and every switch has a gap in it.

That is not a character flaw. It is how everybody's brain works, and it is why this is worth a talk rather than a rule.

What it looks like on a site

• You look straight at things you do not see. A person on the phone will look directly at a moving forklift, a hole, or a hand signal and register none of it. It is well documented and it feels like nothing at all from the inside.
• The reversing truck, the shout, the alarm. Sound is how a site warns you, and headphones take that away entirely.
• The step you have taken a thousand times. Most falls on the level happen to people whose attention was somewhere else, on ground they know perfectly.
• The step you were in the middle of. Interrupt somebody mid-sequence and they resume one step further on than they stopped. That is how a valve stays open and a lock does not go on.

What we do here

• Phone away while you are moving through the site, and while you are operating anything.
• Step out of the work area to take a call. Somewhere you can see, off to the side, out of a travel path. Two minutes.
• No phone at height, in a basket, on a ladder, in a trench, or as a spotter.
• No headphones or earbuds on the working area. If hearing protection is needed, it is hearing protection — and radio muffs are only acceptable where they do not mask the alarms and the shouts. Both ears blocked with music is not compatible with a live site.
• Driving: it is set up before you move, or it waits. 49 CFR 392.80 bans texting outright for commercial drivers and it is banned here for everyone in a company vehicle.
• Nobody here needs you to answer immediately. If you feel like you have to, tell me — that is something I fix, not something you manage.

Interrupting other people

This is the half nobody thinks about.

• Do not start a conversation with somebody mid-task on a machine, at height, or in the middle of a sequence. Wait until they look up.
• If you do have to interrupt, say so and let them stop properly rather than talking at their back.
• When you come back from an interruption, go back one step, not straight on from where you think you were.

And the honest part

Phones are not the enemy — they are cameras, manuals, drawings, and how everybody's family reaches them. The point is not that they are bad. The point is that a site takes all of your attention, and anything with a screen is very good at taking some of it without asking.