What a Culture of Safety Means in FIRST

Safety is a value, not a rule sheet

The official FIRST Robotics Competition & FIRST Tech Challenge Safety Manual (Rev. October 2025) opens with a clear statement: instilling a culture of safety is a value that every individual in the FIRST community must embrace. Safety is not something you bolt on the week before competition — it is a habit you practice at every team meeting and during the design, build, travel, and event phases of the season.

FIRST believes teams that lead in developing safety programs have a positive, lasting impact on each member and mentor, and on their future workplaces. That is the real goal: you are learning a professional life skill, not just passing a pit inspection.

It is now tied to award eligibility

A key change you must know: to be eligible for any FIRST Robotics Competition award, teams are now required to follow FIRST Core Values, demonstrate Gracious Professionalism®, and implement and follow appropriate safety practices (a culture of safety). This wording appears on the official FRC Awards page, so judges weave safety into how they evaluate your whole team. The historical stand-alone Industrial Safety Award (sponsored by Underwriters Laboratories) was retired in 2021; instead of rewarding one team's safety activities, FIRST now emphasizes safety across all aspects of the program.

Who the manual applies to

The Safety Manual is an easy-to-use guide that gives students a basic set of requirements to maintain a safe environment during build season and at events. It applies to everyone involved with FIRST: students, mentors, volunteers, and spectators. Importantly, the manual educates and guides — but for enforced rules at events, teams must follow the relevant competition documents, primarily the Game Manual's Event Rules section (Section 14 in the 2025 and 2026 seasons).

The key objectives

Appendix D of the manual lists the FRC Safety Program's objectives. They are worth memorizing because they shape everything else:

• Help ensure participants, volunteers, and spectators have injury-free competitions.
• Motivate participants to learn and follow safe individual and group practices as a life skill, using a positive coaching approach.
• Empower all participants to be proactive in creating a safe environment.
• Publicly recognize teams and individuals for safe practices.
• Coordinate, deliver, and track safety training for individual members and the whole team. (Tip: keep a training log and bring your procedures to events, noting any infractions or improvement areas.)

Free online training

FIRST and UL Solutions also offer a free Safety Learning Portal with online courses your members can complete before the season. Completing and tracking that training is a concrete way to demonstrate the "coordinate, deliver, and track" objective above.

Why this matters to a beginner

When you walk into a pit, the excitement and noise can overshadow common sense — the manual explicitly warns about this. A genuine culture of safety means the newest student feels empowered to say "please put your safety glasses on" to a veteran or even a mentor, and everyone says "thank you." That mutual respect — Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Gracious — is the heart of it.