Understanding and Preventing Cold-Related Incidents

Kellen Schmidt | Xcel Energy 

Dr. François Haman | University of Ottawa

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

For those that haven't met, I'm Doctor Kevin Rindal. I lead Vimocity where we work with utility and construction organizations to embed human performance, physical readiness and injury prevention directly into the workday so people can perform at a high level and go home safe. Joining us today are two voices on workforce readiness in cold weather conditions. First Doctor Francois Hammond, a scientist, researcher and professor with over twenty years of experience studying how humans adapt and perform in extreme environments, including prolonged cold exposure. We're also honored to welcome Kellen Schmidt from Xcel Energy in Minnesota. And Kellen is a safety leader and former journeyman lineman with more than fifteen years of experience supporting crews in cold, high demand environments.

With that, I'll turn it over to our speakers to introduce themselves, and we'll get started. Doctor Hammond.

And I think you're on mute, Doctor.

Hammond, so Sorry about that.

So I'd say I'm really happy to be here and to be able to talk about this topic. So I'm a full professor at the University of Ottawa and I basically, a lot of the work that I've done has been in the Arctic conditions. So I worked with natives in Northern Canada for many years doing some research but also going on the land. And more recently my work has been focused on military operations in the Arctic and cool weather conditions. So I'm really happy to talk to people about the effects of cold.

Thank you. Kellen.

Hey. Thanks for the opportunity this morning. My name is Kellen Schmidt. I was a journeyman lineman for twelve and a half years at Xcel Energy up here in Minnesota.

Unfortunately, that came to an end when I was sitting at a stoplight and hit by a semi truck. A distractor driver took me, out of that profession, a profession I dear loved.

I spent nearly, a year and a half recovering with a TBI, partially disabled on my right side, but I found myself, coming back to Xcel Energy as a safety blue hat. Really, was a great role when I got offered that position. I did not want to go into the safety world but understanding that it was a role that really rooted me coming into Xcel Energy.

Safety is everything right so I did that position for about three years and then I found myself most recently last September taking over the operations role with our Xcel Energy hydrovaccinated group. So very honored to be at Xcel Energy and very honored to be part of this call, so thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much both of you for being a part of this. Doctor Francois, think we'll start with you and I'd just love to hear from your perspective, especially from a performance perspective, what's actually happening to the body with prolonged cold exposure?

Yeah and that's a very important question because again we often think of cold as something that could be dangerous to a certain extent, but it's also kind of if you're well equipped, well trained, can be a very comfortable condition too, on the extent of this cold. So it's kind of a double edged sword, right? You need to be able to understand what is the impact of cold.

But in this case, basically what you get is cold is an additional stress that is added onto the body where basically we end up in a situation where we're already in the high stress conditions with the job that needs to get done. You need to perform to the best of your capabilities and then you're adding cold on top of it which is going make everything more complicated. Wearing more equipment, there's more risks of slipping, there's more risk of again of having the extremities being cooled down, frostbite and all these types of things. So I think at the end of the day, cold is having many different impacts and the one we need to really focus on is on our capacity to make decisions.

So one of these components that is key is if as we're adding on this additional stress related to cold, which could be increased wind, lower temperatures, there could be snowfall, there could be multiple things going on, we end up in a situation where capacity to make decisions is being affected.

And just to double down on that, let's get our audience grounded, it doesn't mean that it has to be sub zero temperatures either, it could be you know forty five degrees Fahrenheit but there are all these factors like the wind and the wet that impact the cold impact on our body. Can you explain what non freezing cold injuries, just give us a framework for how to think about that?

Yeah, so that's a very important point because even when you look at NATO, way they define cold exposure is actually at temperatures around fifty to even sixty degrees Celsius Fahrenheit depending on the conditions that you're facing. So it actually does not need to be sub zero to actually have a potential effect. So if we look at the general response in terms of cold, Even at temperatures that are not below zero, you can end up with non freezing cold injuries, which is there's another word to describe this, which is trench food, which a lot of people I've learned from from the first world war where people were getting their feet wet and cold chronically days after days after days. So if it's something you're doing repeatedly, it's the first time you do it, it's a different situation.

But as you're doing this repeatedly and constantly, you end up creating a neuropathy which is gonna be, and I think Kellen, did talk about this that you might think that you have some of these injuries but you end up in a situation where you're constantly exposed and you become very sensitive to these cold temperatures. So these are called non freezing cold injuries. So we can kind of see on the slide there that we're talking about the different cold zones and these cold zones can actually occur at almost every single temperature. So even if not below zero, if I'm chronically exposed over prolonged periods of time, I can hit any of these zones.

So if talk about the green zone, the green zone is where I'm getting no effects of cold at all. I'm not even, my hands are warm, my feet are warm, I'm feeling all toasty and my life is going on and I can do my job extremely well. The yellow zone is when we start getting these decreases in hand and feet temperatures, where suddenly my feet become cold, my hands become cold and we need to start making decisions. Part of these decisions is to get dry socks on, dry gloves and try to remain dry and maybe add some layers to control our temperature so we can go back to the green zone.

When we get to the orange zone, we start getting shivering and shivering is the indication that my skin temperature is decreasing and I'm getting way more of an impact on my whole body and I start shivering. This is when I need to make drastic decisions, maybe look for shelter and start rewarming. We do not want to make it to the red zone. The red zone is when I start getting decreases in body temperatures.

This is literally when you're ignoring all the signs. You're ignoring all the signs that I've told you that you're going towards the red zone and yet you haven't made the proper decisions to go back to the green zone.

This chart is so helpful because I think it does give us a decision making tree in terms of when we need to take action and you know, we talk a lot about dehydration oftentimes and heat exposure and when somebody starts to hit the point of they're feeling really thirsty, they're already dehydrated at that point. So it's almost like we could take this chart and think about what are the signs and symptoms that we might be experiencing and how does that inform us where we're at on this point because you know, core temperature things like that are being impacted by the time we get into shivering or maybe your hands and feet tingling, so how should safety leaders and frontline workers interpret this chart for decision making on a day to day basis? When should they start to warm themselves up? At what point on this chart?

Kellen, do you want to go? Maybe because I think it might be more related. How does this chart apply to actually the field conditions?

Yeah. So to be honest with you, wish I had this chart out in the field. When was in the field, I could call myself a superhero, right? The lights are out, you don't listen to your body, you go ahead and want to get the power restored. Looking at this chart here, think it's fair to say that you're either in the green zone or you're getting very, very close to that red zone as a frontline worker.

As a lineman out in the field, typically when you're rubber gloving high voltage, primary voltage, Especially up here in Minnesota, you could have the polar vortex coming through, could have sixty below wind chills. You don't listen to your body, but you know your hands are cold, know your fingertips are burning, but it's gonna take two more minutes to get the lights back on.

We as frontline employees, frontline leadership really need to show this chart that you have in front of us Francois and really educate the frontline of why this is important. A lot of times I see guys struggle up in the air because they're cold. Well, it's okay to come down. It's okay to come down and get a break. It's okay to come down and warm up. Believe it or not, it's not a race, it's a marathon and you only get one body, you only get one set of hands and and it's important to listen to yourself and go down and warm up.

Lineman, the lights are out. It's always an emergency. So, I would say a lot of times, there's individuals putting themselves in that red zone because they wanna get those lights on. That's what's in their blood.

Yeah. And I I would say with the military, this is something that we observe quite a bit. And it's kind of the interaction of people.

It's kind of the interaction of people being able to, even some of the supervisors to be able to indicate these things being important and also that there's no repercussions if you decide to basically, stop the job and take a break from it to be able to rewarm. So I think it's kind of a balance between all these things. Within the military this is something very common where people ignore, they play superhero a little bit at times, and I think it's to make sure that everybody's on the same wavelength that you know maintaining your body healthy and safe is actually tremendously important to allow you to do your job for the rest of your life.

Yeah, and just to touch on that too, tell my employees, it's my job to tell the customer why it's taking so long to get the customers back into power. I don't want it to be my job to tell your family why you're in the hospital because you have frostbite, right?

And Kellen, just to double down on this, how do you create a work environment, where we you know we talked a little bit about like psychological safety, how do you create the environment where people feel comfortable on a crew to say my hands and feet are tingling, think I'm starting to go into that you know orange zone, how do you create an environment where a team can actually follow this protocol, so that they don't just say oh man two more minutes, I can do two more minutes, and then it leads to something that's, a bigger issue.

You know, it's work in progress, right? I think we've came to a spot in our career in the utilities, where these kind of conversations are acceptable with the different safety initiatives, individuals that are very passionate for safety. Now I'm not saying that the environment is perfect, The personalities are perfect, but what's really important is we hold one another accountable to doing the right things, to speaking up, see something, say something.

When I was in the field or if I go out as a leader and I can tell the guys are shivering. I can tell they're in that orange category becoming that red category. It's on me as a leader. I expect my leaders, the general foreman, the foreman, again, anybody is a leader out in the field, right?

To say something, say, hey, it's time, let's go cab up for a little bit. Let's warm up. Let's go to the gas station, grab that cup of coffee. Let's rehydrate.

Let's do what we need to do. Now I know coffee isn't always the best for rehydration, but it's going to warm you up. So I think it's really important to stop the job.

Everybody, especially at Xcel Energy has the right to stop the job and really focus on them. The work's going to get done. If my employees or our employees at Xcel Energy and other utilities are cold, just can't go on, again we can call for backup, we can call for support, there is no job where we need to put ourselves in jeopardy with safety or jeopardize our bodies.

Thank you Kellen and you'd mentioned that you wish that you would add a chart like that earlier so just for everyone's knowledge we are going to make that chart available so that it's something that you can bring back to your team as a tool or maybe a safety talk just so that everyone's on the same page. Doctor. Francois, I do want to double back on a couple things that you said and really align this with safety because we oftentimes talk about serious injury and fatality prevention and a big part of that is our cognitive capability and our ability to make decisions at a critical moment. So I'd love you to maybe explain how cold impacts cognition, but then also follow-up by talking about what are some of the other safety impact on our body, maybe it's coordination, maybe it's it's the shivering that you talked about, maybe it's slower movements and slower reaction times that also make somebody more prone to an injury as well.

Yeah and this is a very important question again coming to cognition because a lot of the job requires brain capacity to be able to make these right decisions. But one thing to keep in mind, it's never just going to be the cold that's going to be having an effect.

So one thing I like to mention when I talk about this training is what you've been eating. Like if you haven't been eating well and you're in negative energy balance or you're starving yourself for some odd reason and not eating enough, if you're dehydrated, if you have stress at home, everything accumulates on top of the stress that's going be the additional stress of the cold and the cold just piles it on, if you want to a certain extent. And then if I'm not sleeping and I'm showing up in cold conditions, everything will be worse. So it's hard to just focus on saying cold is causing this because cold is an added stress that goes on top of it, but your actual state showing up into the field actually matters tremendously. And again, this is something I've talked to soldiers about quite a bit because in their job they keep pushing and I'm sure Kellen you probably have a million examples of people just want to get the job done and keep pushing through.

At the end of the day, the way you come in and you need to be able to discuss these things and actually put them on the forefront to a certain extent and not see it as a weakness, but actually as a strength to be able to have these conversations and understand your limits to a certain level. So cold per se is an additional stress. It's something you need to worry about constantly, which means that the decisions that you would make in warmer conditions are different because you need to manage your sweat for example. Like you don't want to be over sweating when you're in cold conditions.

You need to work at a constant pace. If you're working too fast and the natives used to say, you sweat, you die. So if you end up in a situation where you're pushing so hard, I mean, I remember going hunting and trapping, and what we would do is just work at a constant pace, slow down our pace a little bit so we're not sweating bullets in temperatures that are sub zero where we end up in way worse conditions. And again, you also need to practice to do certain things with the additional equipment.

And I don't know if it's a common practice, but as you're adding on equipment, it might be more difficult to do certain things and you do need to practice with that type of equipment to understand, okay, what can I do? What are my limits? Because the reflex is to, let's say, take gloves off, which is very important, you know, it's kind of a very common reflex. I do it, I'm guilty.

I hate wearing gloves or mitts when I need to do things. It doesn't matter what temperatures are out there, I'm going to be taking my gloves off.

Everybody does it, but the consequences are tremendous as you're doing this. It's also making sure you got the right equipment and you practise with that equipment to be able to do certain tasks where you should not be taking off your equipment. So it's a more complex setting in terms of making the right decisions and I think some of it has to be practiced to a certain extent, but a lot of it has to do with also making yourself a bit vulnerable and humility to say, okay, this is extending my limits.

Thank you. And Kellen, from a frontline worker perspective, you spent years on the lines working in really cold conditions, what was your experience of the impact that cold had on cognition decision making and maybe even just your ability to perform a task in those, especially the intricate tasks?

Yeah, so out on the line for twelve and a half years working through a lot of cold nights, windy nights, I would definitely consider talking about your body kind of like your cell phone. When your cell phone gets cold, it doesn't work. When your body gets cold, your mind is like your cell phone and it is just not working.

Everything gets slow on your screen and your phone gets cold. That's what's going on in your brain and your body's getting cold.

What we've always said is you know you need to treat your body like a a truck with hydraulics. You just don't start up a truck with cold hydraulics and go to work.

Right? You need to make sure your body has warm hydraulics. So that's the time you go and cab up, you stay warm. Up on the lines, you have to take your gloves off or even working with your rubber gloves on and you have these little itty bitty bolts you have utilize you got to tighten them and your body gets so cold you cannot get so cold and it's really important that you stay warm, you stay cognitive.

Superheroes have capes, right? Linemen like to consider themselves superheroes but we don't all wear capes. We're not as powerful as a superhero. So it's really important we really take that superhero mindset again, out of our day to day work and realize that every superhero goes home, goes home healthy, goes home with a good cognitive attitude, right?

Making sure that yes, we do have the lights to keep on, we do have lines to build, but the superheroes, they never get cold. So let's be a superhero. Let's stay warm. Let's get our work done.

Let's be smart out on the line and let's make sure that we keep our bodies warm like we want the trucks to stay warm so we can function properly.

It's a great analogy, Kellen, thank you for sharing that. And you know, I'm thinking about pre job briefs are a really important part of the workday because you're talking about the work that you're going to be doing, you're talking about the risks that are associated with that. Would imagine cold exposure could be one of those talking points in that pre job brief and a time to come up with a plan for everyone in terms of, hey, these are the things that you're going to potentially encounter. Here's our chart. Here's where we're going to stop work if we need to.

But the other thing too is that, you know, work environments are very dynamic. So at six am, seven am in the morning, you may be faced with one condition, and then the wind kicks up and three or four hours later you're talking about a totally different environment so let's create a scenario where you've been working for three to four hours and the environment has changed, it's cold, Francois, what are some things that if people were to regroup and do another pre job brief to assess the conditions, what are some things that they could be doing from a conversation standpoint in that pre job brief to be checking in with people about where they're at from the cold exposure and then some recommendations that they could be thinking it through.

Yeah, that's again, time matters when you're in the cold. We often focus on the actual temperature, the wind and all these things, but how long am I going to be out there matters. What equipment do I have? Planning is key. When you plan anything in the cold, you need to plan well. So you need to make sure you got ways to warm up, you got to make sure that you know where everybody is, what everybody's doing.

And I think part of the brief is also going through that green, yellow, orange and red zone on a regular basis. So there's something that's been done in a lot of Arctic military is on the hourly basis, they actually go through the list.

So the patrol commander is going to go through, check out feet to make sure that there's no cold weather injuries setting in, have conversations with their soldiers to make sure that everything's okay, but one thing that could be interesting in the planning stage is actually to discuss that we can give these colors and say, okay, this is where I'm at right now.

We have to remember that everything is time related. So the longer I'm going to be out there, the more we have a chance of moving on through these different steps and ending up in the red zone. But if I'm able to cut the work down in blocks and to plan it in a way that is allowing me to rewarm, suddenly end up in a situation where I'm able to maintain probably on average more capabilities than actually trying to stay out there too long. So I think the planning stage is tremendously important And then on regular basis, be able to report back where am I? And I think everybody say this where I'm at. Okay, you go warm up, we got this and we reorganize. So, I mean, that's the way I would see it.

Yeah. And, Kellen, any additional feedback that you have related to pre job briefs or, you know, checking in if the conditions have changed, to to be able to make sure everyone's on track?

Yeah, I apologize. My internet must be cold. It's dropping offline here. So the only thing I would say is we need to be really, really honest in our pre job briefs, know, make sure our people are on board. If they're cold, speak up.

A lot of frontline workers tend to have an ego. I can admit I probably had one on the field. You know, you're you're not gonna be out there being, again, the superhero. Right?

If you get cold, if you get tired, hey, speak up. Say, hey. Need to take five. Need to warm up.

Need to take a break.

Just really be honest and as crew leaders and peers right know the signs, know the signs of that chart, know when people are slowing down. Again we're all in this together we just need to know the signs and make sure we don't have those egos, those superheroes out there, take care for one another, be your brothers and sisters keeper.

Thank you Kellen, and any final thoughts that you would like to leave the audience with, in terms of how they can you know today take some action to bring some of these concepts to their organization that might impact how work is done and your organization is huge, cover I don't know how many states, probably eight to ten states, and so the needs are different in different regions but how do you how does someone get this information out across their organization?

Yeah we can definitely always do better with talking about cold stress you know we got Texas and New Mexico that don't deal with a lot of cold, But it does cool off in certain times of the year. What we really need to do is again put a lot of initiative in heat stress but talk about cold stress, talk about as you cool down how your body changes, how you're going to react, kind of like your brain in comparison to your cell phone, How when that gets cold things aren't registering. Really know the signs, sharing webinars like this is good. Really taking that chart that Francois is going to send me an email.

I know he's going to and share that with not only those at Xcel Energy but really the utility. Know the signs, the symptoms and really take an initiative to self educate and be that person that says, hey, I need to look out for myself. Yes, I need to get the lights on but I need to know the signs. I needed to know when to stop or raise my hand and say hey I need a break.

Thank you so much, Francois, any final thoughts that you'd like to leave the audience with and maybe if you could also briefly just touch on the importance of hydration in cold temperatures as well, because I think that that's oftentimes an overlooked thing and it, that impacts brain function as well.

So there's a big ecosystem here as it relates to Yeah, yeah, and with hydration, we just tend to be less thirsty in the cold.

So we don't feel our thirst as much, but it doesn't mean that we're not thirsty. So what we do is we stay within the one point five to two liters of water per day and we try to stay within that range. So even if we're not thirsty, we've to hydrate on a regular basis, but we're not going to feel the thirst as much. And I think as a final word, is something I've seen across the board a little bit is, especially with youth, actually think that we can be tougher than mother nature. At the end of the day, mother nature will kick your ass.

So even if you think you're going be able to just, you know, I'm going to be stronger than the person that went through before me, I don't need to listen to them, I know better. I can tell you that systematically I've seen people with that attitude that ended up injured and dealing with injuries for the rest of their lives. And when you think about non freezing cold injuries, these are neuropathies that will actually be permanent and it's going to be permanent pain, which means every single time you go back into the cold, will feel that pain.

And to remind you of maybe the bad decisions you've made in the past. And some soldiers have actually ended their careers because of non freezing cold injuries. And this is stuff that I'm trying to, again, through the work that we're doing, I'm really excited to have this conversation, is to be able to prevent people from getting injured and staying healthy and strong for the rest of their lives.

Thank you so much for bringing your knowledge to this audience. Think, I mean, we all are better because of this conversation and Kellen thank you as well, just that operational and frontline experience, it was great to talk to you. So as we wrap this up, the key takeaway is that cold related risk isn't just about weather, it's about human performance. And when leaders understand how cold affects movement, cognition, and decision making, they're better equipped to plan work, set expectations, and protect their people before incidents occur.

So on the screen now you'll see a QR code that gives you access to sampling of our winter readiness series which includes short practical resources you can use immediately in safety meetings, tail boards, or pre job conversations with your crews. We'll make sure that you get access to this chart so that you're able to bring this information to your team as well. I'd encourage you to scan it, share it, and put it to work this winter, so thank you so much for investing in your people and the work they do, Stay safe, take care of your crews, and stay work ready. Thank you so much, and we look forward to having you join us again, next month.