Submitted by Chris Kittleson, Director of Loss Control Technical Services - Public Risk Underwriters of Florida, Inc.
Preferred would like to congratulate Keys Energy Service in earning the American Public Power Association’s (APPA) Safety Award of Excellence for safe operating practices in 2018. KEYS earned a first place award in the Group- E category for utilities with 110,000 – 249,000 worker-hours of annual worker exposure. Keith Cutshell, Chair of the Association’s Safety Committee and Safety Director at Clarksville Department of Electricity in Tennessee, presented the award during the Association’s annual Engineering & Operations Technical Conference, held in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“Safety programs are paramount to the well-being of employees that work for electric utilities,” said Cutshell. “The utilities receiving this award have proven that safety is of the utmost importance in the operation of their companies.”
More than 325 utilities entered the annual Safety Awards, which is the highest number of entrants in the history of the program.
Entrants were placed in categories according to their number of worker-hours and ranked based on the most incident-free records during 2018. The incident rate, used to judge entries, is based on the number of work-related reportable injuries or illnesses and the number of worker-hours during 2018, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
“KEYS is proud of it safety record,” said Lynne Tejeda, General Manager & CEO of KEYS. “This award is a testament to the hard work that goes into ensuring that our team members go home safe to their families every day.”
The Safety Awards have been held annually for the last 60 years. The APPA is the voice of not-for-profit, community-owned utilities that power 2,000 towns and cities nationwide.