Twelve Win Awards at Oregon’s GOSH Conference
- By OH&S Staff
- Apr 04, 2007
Oregon OSHA has announced 12 winners of safety awards presented at the 30th biennial Oregon Governor’s Occupational Safety and Health conference, which took place March 12-15 in Portland. Winners included Associated Builders and Contractors’ Pacific Northwest Chapter, and the Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia Chapter.
The Employer Award for an employer with 31 to 99 employees went to Pence/Kelly Concrete, which “has created a vibrant safety culture featuring worker safety training held early and often, job-specific safety planning, drug-free workplace screening and monitoring, and a zero-injury philosophy,” the agency said. For 100-299 employees, the winner was Streimer Sheet Metal Works, Inc., whose workers fabricate and install sheet metal ductwork for industrial and commercial customers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California. The Individual Award went to Joe Soares, who has worked for LTM Medford for eight years. “Soares is respected as a proactive superintendent who stays on top of all the changes in construction work zones. He is a hands-on supervisor who is only in the office when conducting safety meetings. Otherwise, he is out on the job sites, conferring with workers and making their safety his top priority,” OR-OSHA’s announcement said. “In 2006, Soares came close to achieving an injury-free year. His department logged nearly 147,000 injury-free work hours until late September 2006, when an OSHA-recordable injury occurred - ironically while Soares was on a well-deserved vacation.”
The Industrial Hygienist award went to Alden Strealy, an industrial hygienist at Associated General Contractors since 1999. Pacific Power’s safety committee won the Safety Committee award for the largest employer category.