Alexandria Renew, the wastewater treatment authority for Alexandria and parts of Fairfax County, uses National Safety Month, recognized each June, to promote awareness and best practices in the workplace and the community.
In past years, the authority has created safety themes as a fun and unique way to raise awareness about risk management throughout the month. Past themes have included the Safety Olympics, CLUE, superheroes and villains, March Madness, and more.
This year, the authority coordinated an “Escape Room” event, in which participants were tested on their safety knowledge to unlock clues and escape.
“We started with several clues and puzzles they had to solve,” said AlexRenew Safety Manager Alex Rigby. “We had a lot of posters on the walls with different safety training on them, and on those posters, I hid things like messages in black light to reveal clues to decipher one of the password words from periodic tables…”
Rigby said the event was a positive team-building exercise that brought coworkers together to solve puzzles and discuss what they learned.
“I think that was a positive thing for people to experience,” said Rigby. “Everyone has a valuable contribution to this and working and communicating as part of a team is a big thing.”