As the former manager/lead trainer for K.W. Reese – a TCIA-accredited utility contractor and a 17-year TCIA member company based in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania – Carl Calfo took on Electrical Hazards Awareness Program (EHAP) training as a pet project when the company decided to pursue TCIA’s EHAP credential for its employees. To gain more traction, he earned TCIA’s Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP) credential when it became available, then went on to become a TCIA Qualified Trainer.

“At first, it was a challenge that they were even going to listen to me,” Carl Calfo says of the crews when he first started training. All photos courtesy of Carl Calfo.

“The benefits were mainly being able to get across to the employees how to be safer with their work habits,” says Calfo of the CTSP and Qualified Trainer credentials.

His job involved visiting the various K.W. Reese crews, from Pennsylvania to New York, to present the annual EHAP training. “I was able to explain how and why the safety practices were presented, so they could understand them better and keep them in their minds throughout their workday,” he notes.

And it was not just throughout the workday, but throughout the year. The EHAP program is a once-a-year program, so Calfo had to come up with the best strategies to present the information, besides just reading it out of the manual, in order for workers to retain the information for as long as possible.

One of Carl Calfo’s trainees practicing aerial rescue.

Having been a climber and a supervisor on a utility tree-trimming crew, he was able to relate to the employees his experiences and why procedures should be followed, pointing out that all steps should be taken when on the job. That and other strategies worked.

“As I came back each year to give the class, we basically followed the EHAP book chapter by chapter, and before the test we would review it. After the first year, I had to wonder if I had done any good,” he says.

He notes he had never met these workers before, and it was all he could do to keep them awake, never mind get them to understand what he was trying to relay to them. He walked away the first year uncertain anyone would retain the information.

“However, with certain people – mostly young and outspoken – it was good to see, as the years went on and they matured, that they not only took part in the class but led the others in explaining parts of it,” he says. “At first, it was a challenge that they were even going to listen to me. The next year, suddenly someone jumps up and offers to help.”

As the years went by, they were offering to help more and more, as they went from ground workers to supervisor level. “It was gratifying to see how much they took the class seriously and showed me they were professionals,” he says.

Another value of the CTSP training, Calfo says, is the way it has evolved to keep up with new safety methods being developed in the field. One example is aerial rescue, where new methods developed to make sure a second person doesn’t get injured from the same incident. “That was good,” he says.

Calfo also convinced K.W. Reese’s president, Jeffrey A. Reese, to have other workers not necessarily involved in utility tree trimming take the electrical EHAP training, to spread safety awareness to anyone working near utility wires.

So dedicated was Calfo to the CTSP credential that, with his knowledge of utility tree trimming, he even assisted TCIA’s Katherine Ritchotte (program administrator at the time) in developing the program in its early years, to help make it more understandable.

Carl Calfo

“It was always about making a safer environment,” he says.

Even though Calfo has retired, he keeps his CTSP credential current.

“Retaining my CTSP is like retaining your CDL (commercial driver’s license). Once you have it, you hang on to it. You never know when you may have the opportunity to train others,” he says.

For more information on the CTSP credential and upcoming workshops, go to www.tcia.org/ctsp. Or, in the digital version of this issue, click here .

Tamsin Venn is founding publisher of the former Atlantic Coastal Kayaker magazine and author of the book “Sea Kayaking Along the New England Coast,” and has been a contributing writer to TCI Magazine since 2011. She lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.