Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary’s Office of Safety ‘Safety Academy’

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) Safety Academy was developed to provide a structured and practical safety training program that strengthens safety leadership, planning, communication, employee engagement, hazard recognition, and continuous improvement across KYTC operations. The program was refined over the course of multiple discussions with Cabinet representatives to ensure that the content reflected the needs and responsibilities of KYTC personnel. The final Safety Academy consists of six modules: Safety Academy Welcome, Safety Leadership, Safety Planning, Safety Engagement, Hazard Recognition, and Safety Academy Closeout and Evaluation. The modules combine instructional content with discussions, practical examples, group exercises, and KYTC-related scenarios to connect safety concepts with day-to-day work activities. An in-person pilot session was conducted with KYTC personnel. Participant feedback was collected throughout the session to evaluate the clarity, relevance, pacing, usefulness, and practical application of the training. Overall, participants rated the content positively, particularly the relevance of safety leadership, serious injury and fatality (SIF) and near-miss content, safety planning activities, and root-cause analysis concepts. Participants also identified opportunities to improve the Academy through additional KYTC-specific examples, construction and work zone scenarios, clearer guidance on roles and authority, photographs and real field examples, and stronger alignment between training materials. The pilot results support the usefulness of the Safety Academy as a practical workforce-development program while providing clear direction for it continued refinement and future implementation.