My Turn at the Safety Congress
By Athena Chiera · Vice President, Athena Engineering
I took over our safety program in 2008, and for most of the eighteen years since, my job at safety conferences has been signing the registration forms. Foremen went. Project managers went. Apprentices went. I stayed in San Dimas and made sure the training and equipment were ready when everyone came back.
This year, the 2026 SMACNA Safety Sponsorship made it my turn. Here is what the sponsorship is, what I brought home from the National Safety Council Safety Congress & Expo, and what we are already changing at Athena Engineering because of it.
What the SMACNA Safety Sponsorship is.
Each year, SMACNA’s Safety and Health Committee and its RISE Committee (Representation, Integrity, Support and Empowerment) select one safety professional in the unionized sheet metal and HVAC industry for the SMACNA Safety Sponsorship. It covers up to $5,000 toward attending the NSC Safety Congress & Expo, which is the largest safety event in the field. Milwaukee Tool, which sponsors the program, also provided $500 in tools.
“I’ve spent 18 years running our safety program while sending everyone else to the conferences. This scholarship is the first time it’s been my turn.”
Athena Chiera, in SMACNA’s July 2026 announcement
My thanks go to SMACNA’s Safety and Health Committee, the RISE Committee and Milwaukee Tool. They opened a room I would not have sent myself to, and I came back with a 90-day plan and a report for the committee.
What I brought home from NSC.
The theme I heard in nearly every room in Indianapolis was that the total recordable incident rate (TRIR) is losing its place as safety’s scoreboard. TRIR counts a fatality the same as a first-aid case, so leading companies now track serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) on their own, and ASTM E2920 gives them a standard way to classify them. Scott DeBow of Rosendin showed how his crews circle every high-energy hazard on an “energy wheel” and name a safeguard for each one before work starts. The question that stuck with me was simpler: was it good, or was it lucky?
Lone-worker safety came up in OSHA’s keynote, and it hit close to home because our service techs often work alone on rooftops and after-hours calls. NIOSH puts the central risk at delayed emergency response. The wearable tech on the expo floor isn’t ready for a contractor our size yet — it’s expensive, short on battery and locked to one brand — so our first step is a one-page check-in procedure.
Jean Ndana’s session made the case that a near-miss report is a request for action. When reporting is quick and every report gets an owner, a deadline and a posted fix, people keep reporting. OSHA also confirmed it is revising its lockout/tagout standard, which every service contractor should be watching.
Worth a look from the expo floor.
Four products stood out for the work our crews do. I have no affiliation with any of these companies, and none of this is an endorsement.
- Guardian Hero SRLs are color-coded so a foreman can spot the right lifeline at a glance, and they took first place in NSC’s 2026 Best in Show.
- The 3M DBI-SALA Nano-Lok Edge is a leading-edge lifeline for deck edges and curbs, and it placed third.
- The Tie Down Squatch is a non-penetrating anchor for rooftop unit work on roofs with no permanent anchors.
- PIP’s smart hard hat with Quin detects a fall or head impact and alerts contacts, though it only works with PIP helmets.
What we are changing at Athena Engineering.
The SMACNA Safety Sponsorship only matters if something changes when you get back. Two of our programs are being redesigned now, and both target the high-energy hazards our crews face most.
Fall protection
One standard: Safewaze.
Roof and ladder falls sit at the top of our high-energy list, so we are rebuilding the fall protection program around a single manufacturer. Standardizing on Safewaze means every crew carries compatible harnesses and lifelines, and every technician trains and inspects to the same standard.
Lockout/tagout
Master Lock cloto™.
Live electrical work and stored pressure are the other hazards that can kill on an HVAC job, and a technician often locks out alone at a customer site. We are moving our lockout/tagout program to Master Lock’s cloto™ Connected Lockout Tagout solution, which puts each procedure on the technician’s phone and confirms every lock with a QR code and a photo. It also gets us ready for OSHA’s revised LOTO standard.
The rest of the 90-day plan from my SMACNA Safety Sponsorship report adds an energy wheel to our job hazard analysis, a lone-worker check-in for after-hours calls, a half-page “Good Catch” card for near misses, and tracking of verified safeguards next to TRIR and EMR.
Where this fits.
The SMACNA Safety Sponsorship builds on a program that independent reviewers have already examined. In 2025, our workers’ comp carrier ICW Group gave us its Safety Program Award, and ISN’s RAVS 360 audit rated us an “A” with a 96% safety culture score. That story is in The Safety Program, Reviewed Twice in 2025. SMACNews also featured me this summer in its Leading Without Limitations story on women in the sheet metal and HVAC trades, and our own feature on that story covers what I told them.
For the record, the SMACNA Safety Sponsorship is an honor I’m grateful for, but the point is the apprentice on the roof tomorrow morning. Every change in this plan exists so that everyone on our jobsites goes home with the same fingers, eyes and lungs they arrived with.
If your procurement team, general contractor or facility team needs our safety documentation for prequalification, reach out at info@athenaengineering.com or through our contact page.
About the author. Athena Chiera is Vice President of Athena Engineering, the San Dimas HVAC and building automation contractor her parents founded in 1984. She joined the company full time in 2006 and has run its safety program since 2008.
