Five minutes of planning. That's what separates a crew that's ready from a crew that's just there.

Today’s Focus: The tailboard covers the work. But it also has to cover what happens if the work goes wrong. Two different conversations. Both need to happen before hands go on the job. Where are you? How does help get to you? How do you get out? Those answers change every time the site changes.

A crew that skipped the tailboard because "we've done this before". They hadn't done it on that site, that morning, with those conditions. Emergency action planning isn't about predicting what goes wrong. It's about making sure that when it does, nobody's figuring out the answers in real time.

At today's pre-job brief, ask two questions out loud before you close it out. "If something goes wrong, how does help get to us?" And "How are we getting out?" If nobody knows the answers, you're not ready to start.

You don't get to plan the emergency after it starts.

Use this before your first task. Then go deeper, Thursday's full edition drops today.

— Lito Wilkins