Outfitting Crews for Heat Safety

Hello and welcome to today's live event. Today we're talking about outfitting crews for heat safety. This is a ongoing series of conversations that we have with experts in the utility industry talking about, relevant, topics that relate to workforce readiness, which is, the physical, mental, and job specific aspects of readiness. And our goal is to help, leaders help their teams to not only perform at their highest level, but to stay safe and healthy on the job.

I'm your host, Doctor. Kevin Rindal. So happy to be here today.

This topic about optimizing performance, especially when it relates to heat, is something that's near and dear to my heart. I spent over fifteen years working in sports medicine with the US Olympic, Committee, and a huge part of that experience was helping these athletes perform in whatever conditions they were in. And one thing that I can tell you is it doesn't matter how fit you are, how strong you are, if you don't take concerted efforts to help your body be able to perform in those hot instances, your body's gonna suffer and it's gonna have, an impact. But there are strategies that we can implement that helps dissipate heat, helps with thermoregulation, and helps people to be able to stay safe and healthy on the job.

And there is no one size fits all solution or any, silver bullet. And so we have to approach that from a bunch of different angles. And that's why today we are so happy to be joined by Scott Head, who is the, I'll read his bio here. Scott is the West Coast Account Executive for Dragonware.

He's been in the industry for over twenty years. And what I have so appreciated in my conversations with Scott, we've been on a few different panels, is just his knowledge about the different apparels that are out there. He grew up in the industry when FR clothing was being developed and optimized and, has really helped, develop some pretty cool products to allow for crews to stay safe and healthy and have, apparel that's actually comfortable when they're out there working and is gonna do some work for them to dissipate heat. So Scott, we are so happy to have you on this call today.

Please jump in and, and, provide a little more background, for some of the areas that I might've missed.

Well, thank you for having me, Kevin. And it's, it's a pleasure to be here.

I've been in the industry for, as you said, right around twenty years and was early on out of high school in the Navy for a couple of years.

Then after that, when I got into the apparel industry, I started work at a company by the name of Riverside Manufacturing.

And Riverside was a company that had been around for about a hundred years. And at that time, their core business was providing uniforms for some of the major brands within the US that we know Budweiser, Coca Cola, Frito Lay, Sara Lee. And then early in the 2000s, they made a decision that they were going to start manufacturing FR Clothing. And so and that was in the early years of when FR Clothing was starting to become a requirement within the utility industry across the country.

And I spent twelve years there and then I moved on to a FR clothing distributor by the name of Wayne Enterprises based in Houston and, got a chance to work there for about six years. And that was a great experience because it gave me the opportunity to work with all of the major brands within the industry.

Being that Wayne was a distributor, not a manufacturer. They depended on all the brands that are popular within the FR industry. And then from there moved on to Dragonwear. And while I worked at Wayne, Dragonwear was a brand that I thought very highly of.

I really I really thought highly of the fabrics they use, the products that that they made.

And, so when a position became available there and, I jumped on that opportunity to join Dragonwear and I've been here for about four years now and couldn't be happier.

Great. Well, thank you so much for that intro.

And really where we want to spend the bulk of the conversation today is talking about, the gear that people wear as it relates to working in the heat. And it's no secret that temperatures are getting hotter. We have several customers in Arizona, I think they had one hundred and thirteen days straight of over one hundred degree weather. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, and we get maybe one of those days per year. So across the country, there's a wide variance in terms of environments that people work in. But clothing does play a big role in how people dissipate heat or retain heat.

And with the requirements of FR gear, people have to make those choices of how do I stay compliant, safe from arc flashes, but also stay cool in the process. Can you walk us through a little bit of the history of FR gear and how it was first implemented in especially the utility industry and maybe some of the transformation that you've seen over time with how the gear has been manufactured?

Sure.

Back in the early days before it was, it was regulated, you know, by OSHA, a lot of utility workers wore, a hundred percent cotton and, and, and Nomex was of course very popular and still is within the firefighter industry.

And so in the early years, cotton, Nomex, those were kind of the first fabrics, fibers that were used and just single fiber products. And also in, in the early years, there was a fabric known as Endura Ultra Soft, which is a two fiber, fabric it's cotton and nylon, came in and that was very, very popular.

And, and so, and still is today. And, and so, and now we are in an industry that has like at DragonWear, we make a product called Pro Dry Tack and we use five fibers.

And so, and so that kind of just gives you an example of of just the fabrics that were used, the amount of fibers that were used, and how they have advanced over the years.

And and now, really, it's not just about protection from arc flash.

Whereas in the early years, that was the primary focus was just protect you from the arc flash, with not a lot of regard to comfort.

And if there was, at least the line workers didn't feel like there was a lot of regard towards comfort. And so and and comfort as far as just how stiff a product might be, how heavy a product might be.

And and although they definitely line workers back in those early years were protected from arc flashes, they were wearing very heavy fabrics that were uncomfortable, heavy, and, definitely made it difficult for them to concentrate on the job at hand. And, so over the years, the industry has advanced tremendously.

And, at Dragonwear, we really focus on performance type products.

Obviously, our our our number one goal is is is to offer arc flash protection. That's the whole point of of the product. But we feel that at the same time that we can add comfort and, and make a product that's light and comfortable and cool, all in one.

Yeah. And again, going back to sports, it's like, when you're out there competing, you have to be comfortable and you don't want something bulky. You want something that can stretch so that you're not limited in your movement by a fabric. And so that's absolutely, critical.

One of our good friends, Ken Lulu, I was just had, we were just on a panel with him and he was talking about in the early days with FR gear he found that you know sometimes in the heat people would like unbutton their shirts or they'd roll up their sleeves because they were just hot and they're trying to figure out how do I how do I stay cool and so then they were not wearing the protection the way it was designed to be, worn for those reasons. So I appreciate you talking about how FR gear, when it's comfortable, actually makes you safer. It's not just protecting from arc flashes, actually wearing it, correctly. Can you expand on that?

Yeah. And, you know, one of the biggest things that I think safety managers were up against in the early years of FR clothing was policing their crews to make sure that they were wearing the FR clothing, because it wasn't the most comfortable some of the products weren't the most comfortable products to be worn. And, and and especially especially during the summer. And, and and summertime is really when when a lot of those things just get heightened a little bit more because now you have this heat and you were wearing a product that you could wear in a shirt that could be seven ounces, which is really heavy, when it comes to the weight of a a a shirt. And so, and if you're not wearing it the right way, then you really put yourself in a position to where God forbid you are hit by an arc flash that you're really not doing yourself much service wearing a product.

If you're not wearing it the way it's supposed to be, worn such as, you know, the sleeves should not be rolled up. But when you are wearing a product that you want to wear, it definitely makes everybody's life a lot easier. It makes the safety manager's job a lot easier because they're not concerned about whether the employee is wearing the product because the employees are wearing it because they wanna wear it.

And that's one of the things that at Dragonwear that we try to do is our motto is the clothes clothes you live in.

And it's not the clothes you work in. And the reason that it's the clothes you live in because we wanna make clothes that people wanna wear all the time, even when they're not on the job. And so by providing a product that employees want to wear, it's gonna ensure that they're wearing it the right way. And also wearing it when they're on the job and need it the most.

Yeah. Thank you for expanding on that. So number one, for compliant wear, it's important to have something that's comfortable and, you're gonna better protect your, your crews when you can provide them with gear that is actually gonna be comfortable so that they wanna wear it.

Number two, I'd like to focus even a little bit more on the safety aspect. If any of you have ever had a rock in your shoe, you know how much that distracts you. I mean, it's all you can think about when you're walking. And, you know, I do a lot of competing in triathlons and stuff like that.

If I have a shirt or shorts that have a seam that is rubbing up against me, is all I can think about sometimes. And so if you're working in a high risk situation and you have bulky clothes or you can't quite maybe move the way that you need to because the fabric of your clothing is restricting you, how can that actually contribute to safety in different ways? I mean, if you look at an injury report and you see somebody had this injury, we may not necessarily think that restricted clothing or uncomfortable clothing could have led to distraction that led to a mistake or restricted clothing, caused somebody to put more restraint on their body.

Can you maybe expand on that?

Sure. And I think you kind of nailed it right there. I was talking to a safety manager up in the Northwest and one of the things that he mentioned was that the job itself is dangerous enough.

And so, and the job is dangerous when these line workers are giving it one hundred percent of their focus, one hundred percent of their attention. And so, when your focus or your attention, even just slightly is off of what you need to be doing, whether the shirt is too tight, whether it's too heavy, whether it's uncomfortable, whether it's wet with perspiration, all those different things take your focus off of the job that that you're trying to do.

Everybody at one time in their life or another has has worn something, whether it be clothing, a pair of shoes, whatever, and it's been uncomfortable. And as you're walking around or moving around, you know, it's all that you can think about.

And these line workers are doing a very hazardous job and it's a very important job, and all their focus needs to be on that job. And so, that's why it's so important so important that they're wearing clothes that meet that meet their needs.

And what I mean by meet their needs is they fit properly, they are comfortable, they are cool, they're it is the correct product for the environment that they are working in. So that so so so that the clothes are not even anywhere on their mind. The job that they're doing is front and center.

Yeah, that's great. Let's double click on the cooling aspect. This is a conversation about heat safety. Let's talk about the importance of fabrics and their capability for wicking away moisture and also helping to dissipate heat. So I'd love to talk about that, but also maybe also share us with our listeners the difference between inherently FR, fabric versus, chemical, treated fabric.

Sure. So inherent at its basic meaning means that in its natural state. So so so so so nothing had to be done to that for it to become. And so so what color eyes do you have, Kevin?

Brown.

Okay. So you inherently have brown eyes. So nothing you you didn't have to do anything to make your eyes brown. Just they're just inherently that way.

And so whereas I'll use cotton as an example. Everybody's very familiar with cotton. And when it comes out of the ground and it and it's going to it's not naturally FR. So it has to be treated in order for it to become FR.

And of course there are chemicals that are used, in, in for that to happen. And that's, that is the difference is that there are fabrics that are not, that are not naturally FR and they have to be treated. And there are fabrics that are naturally FR and nothing has to be done to them at, at all. They're they're they're naturally FR.

And when they're when they are when they are a a natural FR product, the term that we use is inherent. And inherent fabrics are all that we use at Dragonwear.

And the reason that we prefer those type of fabrics is because they they offer some things that are important to us at and and that we feel are important to the end user.

One, they're not treated, and so we feel that that is important and and we feel that employees do do wanna wear a product that is not treated.

Two, they do a great job of wicking. And so they do not absorb perspiration, whereas other fabrics do. There are fabrics that, and we'll use cotton as an example that absorb perspiration and hold on to it.

And, and that's dangerous for an employee when they're trying when they're working in a situation and and they're fighting heat stress because ultimately they wanna stay cool and they wanna stay dry.

Because staying cool and dry and you used the term, as far as that I learned yesterday from you as far as, you know, the thermal temperature. And and and as far as keeping that temperature where you want it to be, you really need to stay dry.

And so that's something that Inherent Fabrics allow us to do is spread the perspiration and dry it and keep the employee dry, safe, and cool.

Exactly. Yeah. The whole principle there is that we want our blood to go out to our extremities, to go to our skin, and we want that whole sweat response to happen efficiently. When the sweat is wicked away from the skin, it just allows evaporation to happen more efficiently.

It allows that cooling mechanism to be much more efficient. If you look at athletes today, they're actually wearing more clothing. I mean, a lot of athletes now, they have sleeves all the way down, to their hands. It's like, man, you'd think that that would be making them hotter.

But the way that fabric is engineered now, you can actually become cooler by wearing more coverage from that perspective. That's not the only benefit there. Also goes back to sun protection as well. That was one thing that I learned yesterday, just the origin of your hooded PDT shirt, relates to that sun protection.

So, that's one hundred percent one of the biggest risks out there. And I don't think we talk about it that much, but people who work outside on a regular basis, that could be one of those silent, risks that they just don't pay attention to is that exposure to the sun. So let's maybe talk about how in the heat we could also use our clothing to protect us in that regard.

Well, I'll go ahead and tell the story of how the Pro Dry Tech shirt, how the idea behind it came to be.

Dragonwear was at a trade show and we had a lineman come into our booth and he was wearing a hooded t shirt, non FR, and went on to explain to us that over the years of being in the bucket that with the sun beating down on the back of his neck that he had developed some skin cancer on the back of his neck. And he tried several different products that were on the market to try to protect the back of his neck neck and and nothing seemed to work great.

But he went on to say that the shirt that he had on that if there was a way that we can make an FR shirt that had a hood, that was light and could and could protect the back of your neck from the sun that he thought that there was a need for it within the industry.

So we at Dragonwear, it's one of the things that I really love about the company is our ideas come from the field.

Linemen have the best ideas. They're the ones that are out there doing the job. And so so we'd listen to him. We made the shirt and and he was a hundred percent right. And one of the things that we did in order to enhance the shirt was not just put a hood on a t shirt was we felt that one of the things and that we feel is extremely important is that it all starts with the fabric.

And so, and you could be wearing a shirt and has all these bells and whistles, but if it's not made of the white right fabric, it's not going to be comfortable.

And one of the, there are several things that line workers look for in order for comfort. And in this day and age, you know, stretch has become very popular.

And so we wanted to add some stretch which provides movement.

Another thing is, you know, they only have so much allowance to spend. And so having a product that's gonna be durable, that's gonna last is important. So we used a fiber that was gonna add some durability.

We have fibers in there that are going to wick. And then most importantly, of course, we have fibers in there that are going to protect them from an arc flash. So we took all those fibers and blended them, there's five, and came out with ProDry Tech. And the best way to explain it is that it is a shirt that is light enough to be their base layer, so be their undershirt.

However, the arc rating on the shirt is high enough that it can be their outer shirt.

And that's why it's a great shirt because it's a shirt that can be worn year round. During the winter, you wanna have an extra layer on, you can wear this. During the summer when you wanna wear as little as possible, you can wear this. And then of course we have the hood to protect the back of the neck from the sun.

And then the cherry on the top is that it also has a UPF fifty rating.

And so which gives that sun protection. So all of those things add a little something that make it comfortable and make it safe. And definitely we feel checks a lot of boxes of what wine workers look for within an FR garment.

That's great. So just to summarize, we've talked a lot about heat safety, but then overall safety as it relates to the clothing that we wear. So when people are thinking about different garments or options, it sounds like the key things that you honed in on are number one, it's got to be comfortable so that they wear it and they're compliant and they want to wear it. Number two, obviously it has to have that protection, the FR protection.

Number three, it also has to, have the UPF protection as well or protect them from the sun. And number four is that the wicking capabilities are really important when it comes to keeping people's thermoregulation, in check during the hot months. So I know that being on this panel, the other day and preparing for this, I learned a ton just about like, what is available from a technology standpoint. And I will say, coming from a sports medicine background, it's been pretty cool to be able to see some of those same concepts carried over to frontline workers.

I just am so passionate about helping people understand that they are workforce athletes. They're industrial athletes and they need to be able to start acting like that and leveraging the technology that's available. So pretty cool that, you've been able to see that whole transition and, be a part of that. I think a good spot for us to leave listeners with is just some recommendations in terms of how they can think about organizationally ensuring that people have access to the right gear. I know that everyone that I talk to who knows you sees you as a trusted guide, not a salesperson. Like you're just trying to help them be successful. And so like what are some general best practices when it comes to making sure people have access to the right gear, for them?

Well, when they're planning their day, you know, and they know it's gonna be a hot day. And when it, as far as a best practice goes, their their base layer, the layer that's gonna be up against their skin is the most important layer.

That's gonna set the tone for for everything else. That is their foundation.

Okay? And so so wearing wearing a base layer that that is inherent, that is going to wick and dry is extremely important, because that's where everything starts.

And so, as far as the accessibility, I mean, there are there are many FR clothing distributors within this market that do a great job and most of them offer many brands. And so there's there's many choices there. And so, but the one thing that I would always tell somebody is the base layer is the most important layer. And so that is going to set the tone for the day.

Great.

And for the people who are talking to the other people in the organization who sharpen the pencils and keep track of the budgets for this stuff, what is the return on investment that you see for people having access to the best gear for the work that they do?

Well, we've all heard that we've all heard that term, you get what you pay for.

And so and and that is is true in FR clothing too. And so fabric is is is the primary, cost when it comes to the price of an f when it comes to the price of an FR piece of clothing. And some fabrics costs more than others. And as I said, you know, there are single fiber fabrics that are not that expensive, but they're not gonna do a lot of the things that you're looking for.

And then there are fabrics like the fabric we use for ProDry Tech and it's five fibers.

And it's very difficult to to create a five fiber shirt, but it's going to provide you with everything that you need in order to get your job done. And you're gonna get the return on investment because you're not gonna have to keep searching around and keep buying the same shirt over and over and over and and be on this hamster wheel of using products that just don't work for you.

And whatever those might might be. So I would say that take the time to do some research. Take some time because there is no one product that works for everybody.

Everybody is made of different shapes and has different preferences.

And the great thing about the FR industry is, you know, there's a lot of choices and find the one that works best for you.

And if it costs a little bit more, go ahead and make that investment.

Not, and I wouldn't look at it making the investment in the product, but make that investment in yourself.

I love that. Thank you so much for that. Boy, we all, I think learned so much, Scott, and we appreciate, just your, knowledge that you're able to share with us today. Always tell people that failing to plan is plan to fail, and there are so many aspects of working out in the heat and staying safe and healthy that are important. I mean, it goes beyond hydration, nutrition.

It encapsulates, you know, this aspect, the clothes that you wear. And so, again, our goal is to just bring these conversations so that people have a better understanding of all the different factors and things that they can put into place so that they enable their workforces to stay safe and healthy. So you can definitely reach out to Scott and myself. Our email addresses and contact information is here on the screen.

We'd love to hear any questions, comments that you have.

This is something that, again, we're just focused on supporting the industry and providing people with access to these conversations that allow us to be able to all get better together. So Scott, we so appreciate your time today.

For those of you who would like to join future events, we try to do these pretty much on a monthly basis. You can scan the QR code or, enter this, information here, go to our events page. We will post this conversation on that page, but we can keep you in the loop for future conversations. So once again, Scott, thank you so much.

Really, really appreciate your Thank you, Kevin.

Yeah, this was fun. All right. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.

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