04/25/2012
2011 APA Safety and Health Award Winners Announced
Program honors manufacturers for safety strides.
LP, Nashville, Tennessee and Canfor-LP OSB Limited Partnership, Fort St. John, British Columbia won Safest Company Awards in their respective categories while Roseburg Forest Products Co., Riddle, Oregon, earned the coveted Innovation in Safety Award in the 2011 Safety and Health Awards Program sponsored annually by APA for the structural wood panel and engineered wood products industry.
LP, a leading North American manufacturer of structural wood panels and engineered wood products, earned top honors among companies with four or more mills with a 2011 average Weighted Incident Rate (WIR) of 2.35. Canfor-LP, which produces oriented strand board, won its award in the category for companies with three or fewer mills. The company posted a perfect 0.00 WIR for 2011.
Roseburg’s Riddle engineered wood products mill took the innovation prize for the implementation of the “Glass Walls” program. Every shift in every department has a cell lead that is responsible for monitoring safety, quality, delivery and cost information daily and briefing the rest of the crew through a “Report Out”. Safety is the first item of discussion at every Report Out, and each team member is encouraged to voice all safety concerns. Daily safety topics are also discussed. Along with the addition of mini safety audits, the Glass Wall program has significantly increased safety awareness and communication at the Riddle mill.
Innovation Award entries can be submitted by a mill, a group of mills or an entire company. Eighteen Innovation entries were submitted in 2011 from four member companies.
The awards program, begun in 1982, honors the managements and employees of companies and mills with the lowest severity-weighted incidence rates based on guidelines established by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). It employs a Weighted Incident Rate that is calculated using both the number and severity of recordable incidents. Since 2008 was the first year that WIR was used, awards and reports for 2009 through 2011 continue to also show Total Incident Rate (TIR), the measure used in previous years.
Sixty-seven APA member structural wood panel and engineered wood product facilities in the U.S., Canada and abroad participated in the 2011 program. A total of 26 mills representing 9 APA member companies— Abitibi - LP Engineered Wood; Anthony Forest Products Co.; Anthony EACOM Inc.; Calvert Company, Inc.; Canfor-LP OSB Limited Partnership; LP; Norbord; Roseburg Forest Products Co.; and RoyOMartin—earned awards in various competition categories of the 2011 program. Some of the mills were multiple award winners.
All major product categories produced by APA’s membership were represented among the winning mills, including oriented strand board, plywood, glulam timber, wood I-joists and structural composite lumber.
In addition to the Safest Company and Innovation awards, other competition categories include Safety Improvement, Annual Safety and Health Honor Roll, Three-Year Safety Average, and Incident Free Honor Society. Sixteen mills achieved a zero incident rate for the year and thus were named to the Incident Free Honor Society. The annual honor roll, three-year average and safety improvement categories are divided into two divisions based on hours worked annually—more than or fewer than 400,000 hours.
While the program awards are limited to APA members, data is collected from both member and non-member mills in order to provide a broad-based industry performance benchmark. A total of 89 mills reported data for 2011. The 2011 industry Total Incident and Weighted Incident Rates were 2.31 and 10.37, respectively, down slightly from 2.44 and 10.94, respectively, in 2010.
The winning facilities and companies will be recognized and their safety accomplishments celebrated during the Chairman’s Dinner at APA’s annual meeting in November in Amelia Island, Florida. Award plaques also will be presented to the winning mills by APA President Dennis Hardman or other APA management staff.
The 2011 safety awards program was the fourth year under a revitalized safety program effort spearheaded by an APA Safety and Health Advisory Committee comprised of several APA member company safety professionals. Under the committee’s guidance, three main goals were established: make the APA program the premier safety awards program in the industry, encourage the sharing of best practices as a means to improve the industry’s safety culture and programs, and most importantly, improve the industry’s overall safety performance.
View the complete list of the 2011 Award Winners. Additional program information is available on the APA Safety and Health webpage.
