2011 ILCA Annual Conference

Monday October 3rd, 2011
 
Mr. Goodden is President of Randall Goodden International and has worked in manufacturing for many years.  He has written three books, the last being “Lawsuit! Reducing the Risk of Product Liability for Manufactures” (Wiley 2009).  This book is available from many retailers including Amazon.  He worked for 25 years as a corporate VP in charge of quality, new product development, field services, and litigation management.  He also developed a U.L. certified product reliability testing center and led four manufacturing plants to ISO 9001 certification.

Mr. Goodden discussed the need for having a good and comprehensive product inspection program to reduce the chance of product failures and recalls.  Class action lawsuits have increased to over 1000% in the last 10 years.  His presentation identified 13 formal steps that should be taken for a comprehensive product liability prevention program.  Typical causes of recalls are typically due to design defects, not complying with regulatory requirements, defective components and/or materials, and defects in manufacturing. 

Mr. Goodden is available to teach Product Safety & Product Liability Prevention in-house seminars in the 2-day format, 1-day condensed version, or a ½ day specialized version.  His website can be found at: http://randallgoodden.com/.  
Look for an article on product liability in the eNews from Mr. Goodden in the coming year.
 
Keith Jentoft from RSI Video Technologies was a conference partner providing a kiosk at the conference.  Mr. Jentoft also gave a 10 minute presentation on video surveillance that can be used in many different types of applications.  The website for RSI can be found at:  http://www.rsivideotech.com/.
 
Ken Lowery has been with ISO since 1987 and gave a presentation on construction classifications.  Mr. Lowery described the six classifications of construction classes.  He also explained how interior or exterior wall coverings can affect the classification of a building regardless of type of load bearing construction.  His presentation also covered how to rate a building with mixed construction, firewalls, and separate classification of connected buildings.  Look for an article in the eNews from Mr. Lowery in the coming year.  The website with the construction briefs can be found at the following website:  http://www.isopropertyresources.com/Training-Education/Construction-Briefs/Construction-Briefs.html
 
John Kneiss is Vice President for Chubb Specialty Insurance.  His presentation was on Management and Cyber Liability Issues.  The presentation covered the need to plan for cyber liability issues and more importantly the need for prevention and emergency plan.  Mr. Kneiss area of specialization is in the executive protection area.  Executive Protection consists of the Directors and Officers Liability, Employment Practices Liability, Cyber Liability, Crime, Kidnap and Ransom and Work Place Violence lines of coverage.  Cyber Liability Coverage is a growing coverage and many businesses are recognizing the need for this type of coverage. 

Cyber Liability is becoming a large concern not only for ISPs, big businesses, or e-Commerce sites.  Businesses of all kinds must at least become knowledgeable about their cyber liability exposure.  Many businesses should at least look at a sound cyber liability risk management plan.  The plan includes providing security measures for protecting critical information, both physically and electronically and having a good post action plan.  Cyber Liability addresses many aspects of liability on the Internet.  Areas of concern are defamation, denial of service attacks, data breaches and data loss to name a few.  Their web site can be reached at the following address:   http://www.chubb.com/businesses/csi/chubb912.html.
 
Mr. Leicht has been in the fire protection industry for over 40 years working for the Air Force, full time fire department, insurance industry, and part time deputy fire marshal.  He works for the Fire Marshal’s Office for Dover, Delaware.  His presentation covered the cooking hazards and the protection required to control the hazards.   He also discussed the changes the NFPA-96 2011 edition. 
 
Tuesday October 4th, 2011
David Ludwin is the General and Products Liability Risk Control Director for CNA.  His presentation on Risk Transfer, with an emphasis on developing a risk transfer plan tailored to your particular business was timely and informative.

Risk Transfer is accomplished through insurance and contracts, and Mr. Ludwin’s reminder to “look before you sign” sounds very cliché, however in today’s litigious society; this reminder along with an overview of several clauses that are found in most contracts written today was very beneficial. 

Other topics included Certificates of Insurance, Additional Insured status, Additional Named Insured status, and Indemnification provisions in contracts.

The bottom line: Get it in writing, but know what’s written.
 
Steve Garvy is a senior consultant with Zurich Services Corporation, providing risk control services to U.S. and global accounts including multiple hospitality accounts totaling approximately 4,700 hotel and resort properties and more than 700,000 guest rooms.

Mr. Garvy’s presentation on “Bed Bugs: Myths, Facts, and Control Strategies” was interesting, informative, and eye opening to say the least (and you just might sleep with one eye open on your next hotel stay!).

Mr. Garvy stated that bed bugs have been around for thousands of years, were brought to the US by the early colonists, and thrived for many decades.  However, by the 1950’s the US had almost completely eradicated the bed bug thanks to strong pest control products, and the widespread use of washing machines and vacuums.

Over the last 20 years they have made a comeback thanks in large measure to the increasing global marketplace, increased international travel, and a lack of public awareness about prevention.

The Bottom Line: If you travel and interact with others that have traveled, coming in contact with bed bugs is likely.  This is not an indictment on personal hygiene, housekeeping, and/or sanitation.

Mr. Garvy provided printed copies of “Strategies for controlling the reemergence of bed bugs” which is a guidebook for hotel and resort property managers.  
 
Michael D. Hard and David Grandaw discussed Industrial Explosion.  The topics covered included types of industries and processes creating dust, the OSHA initiative, fire suppressions and sprinkler systems, and what to look for in dust applications.  Fuel, Ignition, Confinement, Oxygen, and Dispersion are all needed to have a dust explosion.  The smaller the dust particles, the greater chance for an explosion to occur. 

They explained deflagrations explaining flame speed and pressure wave.  Secondary dust explosions caused most of the damage and injuries in recent evidence.  The Chemical Safety Board conducted a study and found there have been 300 dust explosions in the last 25 years resulting in 119 fatalities and close to 800 injuries.  Materials involved in explosions include food and wood making up 47% of all explosions (food 23% and wood 24%).  Other materials include metal dust, plastic dust, coal dust, and inorganic dust. 

NFPA-654 is the Standard for the Prevention of Fire and Dust Explosions.  Immediate cleaning should be conducted if a dust layer accumulates 1/32-inch over a surface area of 5% of the floor area of a facility or any given room.  Areas for dust accumulation include structural members, conduit, floors, cable trays, above ceiling areas, on and around equipment, and Air/product leaks around dust collectors and duct work.  The presentation presented controls and protection methods to help reduce dust explosions.  One interesting fact they presented is an explosion can render a sprinkler system ineffective.  Even if the sprinkler system pipes survive the explosion, the heat from the fireball can trigger many sprinkler heads rendering the sprinkler system ineffective. 

This presentation was a very thorough and informational presentation.  Look for an article in the eNews on Industrial Explosion Protection in the coming year.
 
Charles E. Smith is the Corporate Director of Protective Services at OhioHealth.  With 42 years of experience (the last 18 years in his current position) in public law enforcement and corporate security, Mr. Smith’s experience and expertise showed through in his presentation on workplace violence.

According to statistics that Mr. Smith shared, “In a typical week in the United States workplace, one employee is killed and at least 25 are seriously injured in violent assaults by current or former coworkers.”  However, in recent studies, only 68% of employers have written policies addressing workplace violence.

Workplace violence causes 1.8 million missed workdays and costs businesses approximately $4.2 billion per year in missed work days and legal costs.

As you can see, workplace violence has a tremendous impact on the businesses that we insure and consult with, and it needs to be addressed with formal training and written policies and procedures.

Field Trips
 
The host for this tour was Dr. Sue Ferguson, Ph.D., CPE who is a senior research engineer with the biodynamics lab.  Conference attendees who chose to attend the field trip to the Ohio State Ergonomics lab were treated to a tour of two research facilities where cutting edge technology is used to map and measure spinal movements, muscle tension and force on components of the body.  Using patented technology developed at the University, they are able to measure forces on the body of people doing work at replica work stations in the lab and in the real world settings.  They are able to identify specific job functions that expose people to the most stress.  OSU has partnered with many different industries to evaluate job tasks from grocery checkers to automobile assembly plants and have developed recommendations for these job tasks.  They have a modeling room where the collected data is obtained and can display the data using layers.  They have as many as eight or more programs that work together so that the data can be modeled and viewed so that theories for improvement can be tested.  Published information from their research is available at: http://www.biodynamics.osu.edu/
SEA (Scientific Expert Analysis), is a multi-disciplined forensic engineering and fire investigation company specializing in failure analysis.  SEA was founded in 1970 and has provided investigation services, research failure analysis engineering and testing services to worldwide clients.  We were greeted by the SEA staff and given brief presentations by their specialists in Civil and Structural Analysis, Product Failure Analysis, Fire Investigations and Vehicular Accident Reconstruction. 

After the presentations we broke into two different tour groups to walk through the facility.  We were able to view several items from current and past investigations including scale models, actual items of evidence and actual items being testing.  We viewed several all terrain vehicles that were undergoing vehicular dynamic testing.  We concluded our walk through by viewing an actual candle burn test in progress in the 4,500 sq. ft. candle testing laboratory which was specifically designed for conducting candle performance and safety testing. The facility allows SEA to test up to 3,000 candles per day. The staff explained the strict testing criteria and explained how the four testing rooms have been specially designed for controlled burns with key safety controls for the property and their employees.  Thank you to the staff at SEA, the tour was very interesting and informative!  More information about SEA can be found at www.sealimited.com.  
 
Cheri Hass graduated cum laude from the University of Toledo, College of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ohio State University.  She currently works for the Columbus law firm Downes Fishel Hass Kim LLP.  She discussed the requirements for administering drug testing in the workplace and the importance of controls around the drug testing program.  She also discussed how drug testing can be affected by Privacy Rights, Employment at Will, Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and Workers’ Compensation.  She delivered a great presentation that included decisions around drug testing from actual court cases.  Look for an article from Cheri Hass in the eNews sometime this year.  Her website can be found at:  http://www.downesfishel.com/AboutUs/hass.aspx.
 
Fred Bales, Manager – Fire Protection, Engineering & Safety Service – a business unit of the ISO, has more than 30 years of experience with an extensive resume, and he holds over 30 international certifications in emergency response.

His presentation on working with public responders to reduce losses is one that every person who deals with emergency/disaster preparedness should sit through!!!  As the room emptied, after the presentation, I overheard 2 men talking, one of which was a retired EMS worker, who stated, “That was good information, I was in this field for 22 years and some of that information was new to me.”

So many things have changed in this field as a result of the 9/11 tragedy in our country, and Mr. Bales did a great job of bringing it all together.
 
Brett Gillilan is a favorite speaker with the ILCA conferences.  He brings a very highly energetic presentation while providing valuable information when investigating accidents.  He is a great speaker that engages the audience.  He talked about the need for thorough analysis of an accident that included how the accident occurred, personal protection equipment, environment (time, weather, temperature, etc.), and management.  Management needs to do more than ‘advertising’ that Safety is #1.  Effective, approved training must be a part of a safety program.  You cannot sell the idea that safety is first unless being safe and having frequent job hazard analysis is practiced.  We hope to have Brett back at the conference in 2012 as he is truly one of the favorites.