A groundbreaking revolution in workplace safety is reshaping how America’s leading industrial companies protect their workforce. Since 2022, energy giant Exelon has been spearheading this transformative approach, moving beyond outdated safety protocols that have failed to prevent serious workplace injuries and fatalities. This innovative shift represents more than just a policy update—it’s a fundamental reimagining of how organizations identify, assess, and eliminate life-threatening hazards before tragedy strikes.
Mark Musser, Exelon’s senior manager of performance assessment, identified a critical challenge during the initial rollout phase. “One of the challenges we had was, well, how are we going to practice what we rolled out? What tools are we going to arm our business with to reinforce the new safety journey that we are on?” Musser explained. The solution required developing practical mechanisms that would help workers apply newly learned safety principles in their daily operations.
A cornerstone of this transformation involves moving away from relying on lagging indicators like total recordable incident rate (TRIR), which has long served as the standard measure for OSHA and countless safety programs across industries. While TRIR effectively tracked minor injuries, research has revealed its limitations in preventing more severe outcomes.
Understanding Energy-Based Safety Principles
The company’s new approach centers on incorporating the Energy Wheel, an innovative construct that trains personnel to recognize potential hazards based on “high energy” triggers such as gravity, electricity, and mechanical movement. This framework provides workers with tangible criteria for identifying dangerous situations before incidents occur.
Matthew R. Hallowell, founder and executive director of the Construction Safety Research Association, provided crucial context for this paradigm shift. He explained that tools from past decades that successfully reduced minor injuries have not delivered comparable results for serious injuries and fatalities (SIF), indicating that “SIFs arise from different conditions and require a distinct approach.” Hallowell elaborates on these groundbreaking concepts in his new book “Energy-Based Safety,” published in September 2025.
The Data Behind the Change
Elif Oguz Erkal, CSRA’s associate director of research and strategy, presented compelling evidence supporting this transition. CSRA researchers analyzed approximately 3.2 trillion worker hours of data and discovered that TRIR lacks statistical significance for focusing on serious injuries and fatalities.
“This metric that we have been using was not predictive of future performance. It didn’t predict fatalities and it was statistically mostly random,” Erkal stated. This revelation has prompted industry leaders to reconsider their entire approach to safety measurement and management.
Real-World Implementation at Leading Companies
The energy-based safety movement has gained significant traction across multiple industries. Major construction employers, including Granite Construction and Centuri, have embraced this approach as integral components of their comprehensive safety programs.
Exelon’s Strategic Implementation
At Exelon, the transformation began with fundamental definitions. “How do you classify events? That was the spearhead to starting our revised safety journey or changing how we think differently about safety,” Musser explained. The company implemented an energy-based observation tool operated on electronic devices “which is what we use to capture and track data,” providing real-time insights into workplace conditions.
Musser emphasized that superior safety metric systems demonstrating each team member’s responsibility for information collection leads to accelerated behavioral changes throughout the organization.
Data-Driven Safety Performance Systems
Brian Karas, Skanska’s national environmental health and safety program director for building, reinforced the importance of data visibility. When performance metrics about who completes pre-task plans remained hidden, “we didn’t really get the same sort of turnover improvement.” However, when that information became visible organization-wide, “we saw very dramatic changes in performance just by putting the right information in the right place.”
Customized Dashboard Solutions
Bob Spencer, senior program manager with the Tennessee Valley Authority, highlighted the necessity of tailored information systems. He distinguished between TVA’s business planning requirements and the “wrench-turner” perspective that demands ongoing operational data. “We actually brought in the crafts and the frontline supervisors to learn what they want to see,” Spencer said regarding their operational database development.
TVA, currently navigating its typical outage season, has established a safety dashboard based on energy principles that “reports out” each morning to management, frontline supervisors, and craft workers. “We are trying to feed them real-time data,” Spencer noted, “mostly on observations, good catches, near-misses.”
Karas emphasized the critical importance of audience-specific data presentation. “If you can have the data actually mean something to them to inform a decision they’re going to make that day, you’re not going to have a lot of problems with people using it,” he explained.
Training and Integration Strategies
Exelon has prioritized comprehensive coaching and subcontractor integration, establishing a formal two-day onboarding process for safety personnel and field-facing supervisors. Day one delivers general field supervisor training, while day two now incorporates energy-based safety training for all staff members, ensuring consistent safety culture across all workforce levels.
This systematic approach ensures that every team member, from frontline workers to senior management, understands and can apply energy-based safety principles in their daily operations.
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