Year after year, the team at Associated Asphalt are proud to decorate their walls with awards for safety practices.
As an industrial company, it’s our obligation to make sure safety training is a top priority to keep our employees safe. Whether they’re working at an emulsions plant, mixing new paving grades in the lab, or driving a tanker truck – our employees are required to live up to high standards in safety.
“Nothing we do is so important that a person does a task and risks not going home at the end of the day. Safety is a top priority and not negotiable,” says Terry Adams, EHS Manager of Training and Development.
Here’s how we do it.
Proactive Organizational Processes
Part of our 2018 initiatives for Operational improvement included our Operational Capability Programming, Life Critical Skills Standards Development, and Incident Reporting & Analysis Process. These initiatives aided in making sure that our terminals are operating at the right capacity, that our employees are equipped with the proper skill sets to do their jobs safely, and that in the event of an incident, we can learn from it and prevent it in the future.
These initiatives were built on the input of our team members and we are confident that as we continue to fine tune these processes, our employees will continue to work in the safest environment possible.
Continuous Safety and Skills Training
Some of the most common injuries on the job include light burns, sprains, and strains. With the right training, we can help employees work more mindfully to avoid injury. In the second half of 2018, out of our entire company, there were only 2 OSHA recordable incidents, down from 5 at the beginning of the year.
We start with common sense training. Encouraging our people to ask themselves what kind of dangers are in their current work environment and what they need to do to avoid injury. From there, we do more specialized training for different groups of employees to increase hazard recognition in their work environment and which safety measures to take to protect themselves. For example, lab technicians must wear protective sleeves and lab goggles at all times.
Trainings take place year-round at each terminal by our Environmental, Health, & Safety team. We have also established a safety bonus program to encourage employees to go above and beyond in sticking to safety guidelines.
At the end of the day, we’re nothing without our employees. Our tenets of Safety, Integrity, Relationships, Excellence, and Innovation can only be achieved when we are all working towards the same goals.