An electrician by training, Joshua Adams found earning his Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP) credential invaluable in his work overseeing crews doing Electrical Hazards Awareness Program (EHAP) training for BluRoc, a two-year TCIA member company based in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Adams is the health, safety and environment (HSE) field compliance manager for BluRoc, a national company that provides access roadways, bridges and pathways to power-line, pipeline and
renewable-energy projects. In May 2022, he completed the CTSP training. TCIA’s CTSP is the only safety credentialing program in the tree care industry, and is designed to address several challenges that tree care companies face in nurturing a safety culture. He found the techniques learned in the CTSP program useful for training crews for both BluRoc’s civil-construction-access and vegetation-management-access work.
“The biggest challenge is training, with new people coming in and not having the proper skills,” he says. “CTSP has taught me how to train people the right way and make sure they have absorbed the knowledge that I’ve presented. Younger generations are starting to explore this kind of work, and they’re inexperienced, not in a negative way, but just because they’ve never done it before.”
Although BluRoc’s Civil Construction and Access Matting divisions have many safety requirements, one that stands out is the EHAP training, which involves the Minimum Approach Distances (MADs) to power lines for arborists, depending on their qualifications. Adams explains, “Our tree care professionals have the ability to work at the Qualified MADs, whereas most of our Civil Construction personnel must work at Unqualified MADs.”
Adams pursued the credential because he had to deal with workers with varying qualifications. The more he got into it, the more he liked it. “The CTSP training gave me more comfort when I went out and talked to our tree crews. I had a better understanding of what they’ve done and why they’ve done it, why they climbed a certain way, and I was able to monitor qualified distances rather than unqualified distances, and proximity to working on a power line according to the worker’s specific training.
“It makes me nervous,” he admits. “I have an electrical background coming into this industry, so it wasn’t too far out of my wheelhouse, but it was definitely a learning curve. The best way I tell it is, I used to be the guy who put his hand in the panel and would not care, and now I’m the guy who says, ‘You are probably too close, stand back a bit,’” says Adams, who is a journeyman electrician by trade and has worked for BluRoc for three-and-a-half years, from Maine to Florida. He is a “road warrior” based in West Virginia.
What was the most memorable take-away from the CTSP classwork?
“It was actually a quote from the guy who taught the course. ‘Adults don’t like to have their time wasted. Have a structure, have a point and get to it. Make it relatable.’ I try to use that when working with the crews and even when I’m writing a report,” he says.
How would he like to see the CTSP program evolve?
“Honestly, I would like to see this program become part of the certification for the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, because it would make more people want to take it and get the certification under their belt,” says Adams.
To learn more about the CTSP credential, click here.
