That sentence has never once made a job safer.

You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it. The schedule is tight. The weather is closing in. The customer is waiting. Somebody upstream made a promise that your crew has to keep. And now the pace picks up.

Today's Focus: When a crew speeds up, something gets compressed. The tailboard gets shorter. The second check gets skipped. The question that should have been asked gets swallowed because there is no time for it. And every one of those compressions is a bet. A bet that nothing goes wrong on the one step you decided to skip.

The schedule does not care about your safety. It is your job to care about your safety despite the schedule.

Before your shift today, ask one question out loud. "Is the pace we are working at right now the pace we should be working at?" If the honest answer is no, say it. Before the work starts, not after something goes wrong.

Speed is never worth the shortcut.

— Lito Wilkins