News

1/1/2009

Safety Accreditation Maintained in 2008

President to Member

by ROGER YODER

When I took over managing the Cooperative 17 years ago, I had a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish. At the top of my list was obtaining the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's Safety Accreditation. The program is coordinated through the safety and loss control department of our state association, the Ohio Rural Electric Cooperative. The goal of the Safety Accreditation Program is to preserve life and prevent injuries; to establish electric utility safety and loss control standards some of which exceed OSHA minimum requirements and recognize our employees for providing quality and reliable customer service in a safe manner. Accreditation is for a three year period thus cooperatives must reapply and be scrutinized by a team of safety professionals from around Ohio. Cooperatives are graded on an array of operations including random observations of our crews in the field, our construction and maintenance of our distribution facilities including our substations, underground transformers, inspection of our pole yard and office facilities, etc. In my opinion Safety Accreditation is all about developing a safety culture attitude in the work place which should make a statement to the employees, our members and the public that URE takes safety seriously.
Back when I took over the reins at URE, I mistakenly believed Safety Accreditation could be reached in three to four years. It took ten years with URE achieving Safety Accreditation for the first time in its history in 2002. Part of the time required was due to changes in the rules and regulations and related documentation of compliance but a large part was a change in employee attitude. It wasn't that our employees were that unsafe as much as it did require change in some of our work practices, wearing of certain personal protective equipment and years of documentation. Most of you probably know when it comes to changing one's behavior it is not something that happens overnight particularly when there is a "We've always done it this way and no one has ever been hurt" attitude. It was at times very frustrating as we would take two steps forward then one step backward.
Credit goes to the board of trustees that place safety as "priority one" at URE. It must start at the top and the board sincerely believes in this priority and demonstrated it by giving their blessing to allow me to hire a full time Safety Coordinator back around 1999. This position is dedicated to the safety of our employees, members and general public. Progress toward obtaining Safety Accreditation really took off after this position was filled and a lot of that credit goes to the person chosen.
Robert McClintock, or Cricket as most people know him, is URE's Safety Coordinator. Cricket also serves on the statewide team of safety professionals that evaluate other cooperatives for safety accreditation and is highly respected among his peers. URE is fortunate to have him in this role. He also receives a great deal of assistance from Hedy Nelson our Engineering Clerk whose responsibility it is to maintain the mandatory documentation.
However, I am most proud of our men in the field that experience the daily dangers related to their line of work and how they have accepted their responsibility to protect themselves, their fellow employees and the general public. Safety Accreditation means so much more to me than that certificate we receive acknowledging URE is safety accredited. Thanks to the employees and trustees for making safety our number one priority and maintaining Safety Accreditation in 2008.

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