Safety awarded: more than 500 of the 685 plants that entered the contest won awards

Concrete Producer, The, Nov, 2004 by Rick Maidens, Mike Taylor

The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association Safety Contest is a safety performance and incentive/award program aimed to foster safe practices at ready mixed concrete plants across the nation. THE CONCRETE PRODUCER is a co-sponsor.

Before 1993, NRMCA annually sponsored a safety contest that gathered industry accident data and recognized member companies that had commendable safety records. The original contest was based on company-wide production criteria making it difficult for large, multi-plant ready mixed producers with an outstanding safety record to be recognized.

The Safety Task Group of NRMCA's Operations, Environment and Safety Committee restructured the contest in 1996. Over the past few years, the program has grown to become NRMCA's most popular award recognition program. It's designed to be simple, while providing meaningful and fair criteria to recognize individual plants for their commitment to safety as evidenced by their record.

The secondary goal of the contest is together thorough and accurate industry accident statistics. The data are analyzed and used to establish industry benchmarks for safe operations.

The 2003 Safety Contest is a per-plant contest open to all facilities operated by NRMCA member companies. The contest entry form was made available to members in March 2004; the deadline for entries was May 31. Companies with more than one division were encouraged to distribute entry blanks to those responsible for keeping safety records at each location.

The data submitted are kept strictly confidential by the NRMCA. After verification of all data entry and calculations, NRMCA destroys the entry forms and specific company information.

Categories

To be fair, plants are divided into three categories, each based on the number of ready mix trucks that are stationed at each plant. Today, unlike just a few years ago, it's very common, if not the norm, to have trucks that service two, three, or more plants. In these cases, the producers are instructed to estimate the percentage of their fleet that could be theoretically assigned to a particular plant. Or if the number of trucks fluctuated significantly, the average number is used. Producers are divided into groups with 20 or more trucks, 10 to 19 trucks, and nine or fewer trucks.

Basis for Winning Entries

The following information was requested on the entry form:

* Total number of cubic yards shipped during 2003 from that particular plant. This value was used to "level the playing field," assuming that more yardage shipped produced a greater opportunity for accidents.

* Number of Lost Time Accidents at each Plant in 2003 (LTA). This includes all accidents that caused one or more employees to miss a complete shift of duty.

* Number of Mixer Truck Accidents (MTA) in 2003 resulting in damages of more than $5000. These were mixer truck accidents only where the mixer driver was at fault.

* Number of fatalities in 2003 that occurred in accidents in which company employees were at fault.

A safety score was calculated from these factors. The safety score or Accident Frequency Rate (AFR) is the sum of LTAs, MTAs and fatalities divided by concrete shipped in 100,000 cubic yard increments.

Am Excellence is Safety certificate is awarded to individual plants that are above the 70th percentile in scoring within each of the three categories in the contest. An Excellence in Safety certificate also is awarded to all plants with no accidents recorded during 2003.

2003 Results Summary

The 2003 NRMCA Safety Contest received 685 individual plant entries. There are 6000 to 8000 ready-mixed plants in the United States, NRMCA estimates. The largest category was for plants with fewer than nine trucks, with 363 entries. Those with 10 to 19 trucks tallied 264 entries, and plants with 20 or more trucks had 58 entries. A total of 509 plants received Excellence In Safety awards in 2003. More than 400 million cubic yards of concrete was shipped in the United States in 2003.

2003 Excellence in Safety Awards

20 or more trucks