Safety

"Serious About Safety!" — Always
"Practice Safe Acts" — ALWAYS!

Let me begin by saying, we have an excellent safety program and an educated staff in the field with regard to safety. Our company is dedicated to educating our personnel on what safe working practices are, how to plan for safe job sites and globally to establishing safe working environments for our personnel on all of our job sites. We have an ongoing safety program and are continuously working to improve it. As aide to the education effort we have a full time safety manager and an assistant, who every few weeks visits each of our job sites to review ongoing practices and to provide on time advice and training where needed. Additionally we do quarterly superintendent meetings that include training such as fall protection, first aid and CPR, OSHA 10 Hour and OSHA 30 hour and various other safety training related to specific equipment we use and job site conditions our personnel are exposed to.

That being said, a few years ago as a result of a significant growth in our company, we experienced some challenges in safety incidents which has caused us to further focus on safety training, safety culture, safety policies and safety education. While growth is a good thing, it has presented some growing pains which include a higher incident rate and MOD. In studies we made to determine the cause, we found many of the incidents were occurring with the newer employees we were hiring; Over 60% were coming from employees working with us for 12 months or less. We have been working aggressively with our entire staff to reduce incidents overall which has produced position results.

We believe this to be an indicator that the procedures and processes mentioned below are working. These will be evaluated from time to time and added to, when and if necessary. Also, as a result, our annual incident rates have improved significantly. For 2009 it was 6.4, 2010 (0) as we had zero recordable cases and we finish 2011 with a 2.3 incident rate.

As mentioned above, beginning in the 2008 calendar year we have implemented a host of procedures and processes to remedy this spike in incidents and are now realizing what we believe is the benefit of these programs. Following is a list of the majority of improvements we have implemented:

September ’08 - PM’s and Superintendents thoroughly re-read our safety manual. Just as a refresher for everyone and so everyone is reminded what our program is all about.
September ’08 – Accident Prevention & Compliance Policy was added. This was to define or re-define to all new and current employees what their own responsibilities were with regard to accident prevention. This is now included in our hire-in packets so everyone must read and sign.
September ’08 – Injury, Illness Reporting & Compliance Procedure. Once again to define or re-define an individual’s responsibility to report all incidents, injuries immediately to their superior. This is also now included in our hire-in packets.
February ’09 - Job Task Analysis Form and instructions. This was implemented to give our superintendents a form to use for daily tool box talks. This form is also used for sign-in/out signifying they are prepared for work and that they do not leave without reporting any incident of injury. Also, begin and end each day with safety.
February ’09 – New Accident & Injury reporting documents. These documents were created to assist in on site incident/accident reporting procedures. It includes a checklist to be sure all aspects of all investigations are covered and recorded properly.
March ’09 - Safety Advisor Program. This program was created to provide an assistant to the superintendents with regard to safety. Each job site now has a trained Safety Advisor who can and do assist in all aspects of safety on site and who provides an extra set of eyes on site for safety purposes. They receive extra training like OSHA 10 hour and CPR/First Aid.
April ’09 – Green Hard Hat Program. This was started so we can easily identify new employees on our sites that have 12 months or less of service. These employees are assigned mentors when they arrive on site and are then watched and trained by these mentors.
April ’09 – We went to 100% eye protection.
May ’09 – rewrote New Employee Orientation. Created a power point presentation for all new hires. All new employees go through this information which is approximately 1 to 2 hours in length. After watching the power point, they are given a test on what they just watched. The test is reviewed and gone over immediately following with our administrator. If they have answered incorrectly, they are given the correct answer. They also receive all the appropriate PPE at this time and are sent out to their respective job location.
August ’09 – Zero Tolerance Memo/Policy. This was issued for hard hats, 100% safety glasses usage, body harnesses in all lifts, safety toed boots, no personal cell phone usage, etc. Basically, there are no verbal warnings for these items and you will be sent home or off site for a minimum of one week with the first offense and possible termination for a second offense.
September ’09 – References and background checks on all new employees. 100% screening of all new employees by checking with past employers, etc.
October ’09 – Revised and improved injury management/incident reporting program again to include more complete information.
October ’09 – We went to 100% terminator gloves for all tasks, this was added as a zero tolerance offense.
February ’10 – We went to 100% reflective safety vests for all field employees at all job sites, this was added as a zero tolerance offense.
June ’10 - Hearing Protection, we require all employees to carry ear plugs on their person for use when they encounter intense or questionable noise levels.
November ’10 – A new and improved Pre-task planning card program was implemented.
December ’10 – Started interviewing all clinics on our Panel of Physicians to improve communications in the event they would be needed for treatment of our employees.
January ’11 – Updated the New Employee Orientation.

As previously mentioned, we believe we have been experiencing the benefit of adding these new programs and will endeavor to continue these positive trends. We are very excited about our progress and feel confident that the implementation of the above programs has, and will continue to have, a positive impact on our safety program. After an unfortunate bump in the road in January ’11, we are back to 350 days without a lost time incident and more than 650,000 man hours. At your request we can provide customer references who will attest that our company is truly dedicated to seeing that our personnel are trained and vigorously encouraged to work safely and to cooperating with each customer to promote safe work environments for our and their personnel. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the information enclosed. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you and are sure you will find us to be a valuable and reliable team member.

Dan Ver Beek

Safety Director

The Sack Company & SCM, Inc.

danv@hasack.com

Safety

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