Local 69 (Little Rock, Ark.) BM-ST Rodney Allison, center, accepts the top NACBE safety award on behalf of his local. Joining in the presentation are (l. to r.) NACBE Exec. Dir. John Erickson, IVP-SE Warren Fairley, IP Newton Jones and NACBE Pres. Greg Purdon.
Compensable injury rate reaches record low
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Construction Boilermaker Employers (NACBE) presented its annual safety awards to the 2014 top-performing locals from the Boilermakers’ four U.S. vice-presidential sections during the Construction Sector Operations conference held at Marco Island, Fla., March 2-5.
Local 69 (Little Rock, Ark.), representing the Southeast section, took national honors for the third straight year, with zero lost-time accidents, zero compensable injuries and zero OSHA-recordable injuries. BM-ST Rodney Allison accepted the award on behalf of the lodge.
The three other lodges finishing first in their sections included Northeast Local 237 (East Hartford, Conn.), Mark Pinard, BM-ST; Great Lakes Local 105 (Piketon, Ohio), Scott Hammond, BM-ST; and Western States Local 92 (Los Angeles), Mark Thomas, BM-ST.
NACBE Executive Director John Erickson said the safety index covered nearly 58 percent of all construction Boilermaker man-hours worked in 2014. Incidents are calculated per 200,000 man-hours worked.
The compensable injury rate improved from 5.58 in 2013 to 5.01 last year, setting a record low. (By comparison, the rate stood at 83.02 in 1990, the first year NACBE began tracking safety performance.) OSHA recordables showed a small uptick for 2014, coming in at 1.69, up from 1.66 in 2013. Meanwhile the lost-time injury rate for 2014 inched up to 0.16, slightly above 2013’s record low of 0.12. Forty locals had zero lost-time injuries, down from 45 in 2013. Sixteen locals recorded zero compensable injuries for 2014, down from 21 in 2013.
Safety awards are based on the lowest injury rates followed by the highest percentage of Boilermaker man-hours from NACBE contractors participating in the index.
