Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Potlatch Safety Record Touted

Potlatch Corporation's Ozan Unit in Prescott was recently recognized for its outstanding safety record by receiving the Southern Wood Products Division award for best overall safety record, according to Dick Bullard, Potlatch Southern Wood Products division vice president.

The division also recognized the Southern Unit in Warren with the award for most improved safety record.

Both awards were presented during the division's fourth annual safety conference held at DeGray Lake Lodge. The units were presented with wood plaques laser carved with forest scenes and each employee at the units will receive jackets for their hard work in improving safety.

The Ozan Unit finished 1996 with a safety rating of 5.0.

Safety records for Potlatch operating units are determined by the job related injury incident rate, frequency rate and severity rate giving each unit a rating for overall safety.

The Southern Unit improved their safety rating 57 percent from 1995 to 1996. The division again lowered their safety record for all units and were recognized by Penn Siegel, Potlatch president and chief operating officer, who presented the division with a special Potlatch president's award recognizing significant safety improvement. The division has lowered its safety record by 72 percent over four years.

"We are very proud of our employees' individual and team efforts in improving safety," Bullard said. "We have seen a 72 percent improvement over four years and an 18 percent improvement from our incident rate in 1995, but there is still room for improvement.

"Safety is the number one priority at Potlatch and the Southern Wood Products Division. That means that every employee should go home each day in the same condition as when they came to work."

Bullard also recognized and commended the units' employee-directed safety programs and safety teams. "The Southern unit's PINE (Preventing Injuries Never Ends) process, Ozan Unit's FIRST (Formal Involvement Reinforce Safe Thinking) process, and Bradley Unit's DuPont Keep Yourself Safe program, along with safety audits, safety teams and employee participation, are all keys to our improving safety record," Bullard said.

In addition to these safety programs, the Southern Division has no tolerence policy for willful violations of the lockout-tag-test policy.

PINE, chaired by Gary Langford, and FIRST, chaired by Billy Rash, are Behavioral Science Technology (BST) programs which use a behavioral approach to preventing accidents.

This employee-directed process is designed to prevent accidents before they happen by changing at-risk behaviors through a series of employee observations.

Each BST committee is comprised of an employee steering group that works with other employees to train them to conduct on-site observations of their peers.

The DuPont Keep Yourself Safe program, used by the Bradley Hardwood Unit, consists of five cycles that train employees in different safety areas and procedures. The program includes employee meetings and participation.

The fourth annual safety conference was attended by more than 90 employees, whose cumulative years of experience topped 1,400.

The annual conference stresses the importance of safety at work and home and was attended by employees from the Southern Wood Products Division, including Bullard; Potlatch chairman John Richards; Penn Siegel, president and chief operating officer; Tom Smreker, wood products group vice president; and guests from other Potlatch operations who are involved with safety.

Arkansas Labor Department director James Salkeld and Labor Department safety director Clark Thomas also attended the conference.

Within the Southern Division there are several departments that have reached safety milestones with no accidents, including the Bradley Hardwood stacker and takedown which have had no incidents in two years. The Southern Retail Yard has been incident free since 1981; Warren and Saline River Railroad has been incident free since 1984; and the Prescott and Northwestern Railroad has been incident free since 1989.

In addition, several Departments at the Southern Unit have been incident free, including purchasing and stores, since 1974; garage, since 1981; and shipping since 1988.

Potlatch owns and manages about 500,000 acres of Arkansas timberland and employs approximately 1,000 people at its operations in Warren, Prescott and McGehee.