Aligning with OSHA

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a presentation made at the Fabricators & Manufacturers Safety Conference 2015 in Ramsey, Minn.

Anderson Dahlen got its start like many other fabricating companies. Founded more than 70 years ago as a heating and air-conditioning company, it has expanded its capabilities in the subsequent years, moving several times and even making a few acquisitions, the most recent of which was Applied Vacuum Technology in 2013. Today the Ramsey, Minn.-based fabricator designs, engineers, and manufactures capital equipment for the food processing, pharmaceutical, energy, and industrial markets, employing about 225 people at three facilities.

One way that Anderson Dahlen is unlike most other fabricating companies is that it has fostered a safety culture by working with state occupational safety and health officials. The firm finally had enough of injuries and near-misses and decided to work with state regulatory officials, not fight them.

The result has been a more engaged and safe workforce.

An Unsafe History

Anderson Dahlen had a less-than-stellar safety record. The company experienced frequent visits from Occupational Safety Health and Administration (OSHA) officials over the years, typically resulting in high insurance rates. The workforce also had a poor attitude about working safely and viewed OSHA as the enemy—government bureaucracy looking to make life hard on employers and employees.

One of the incidents that slowly got management and workers to reconsider that thinking was a press brake accident in 1990. An operator lost two fingers while running a job. Most people in the small company knew the operator was a gifted guitar player who wouldn’t be able to continue with his passion. The incident struck home with everyone.

It also led the company to rethink safety efforts. This was a terrible accident, so what could have been done differently?

At that time, Anderson Dahlen didn’t engage its staff with a lot of safety training. That thinking was set to change after the press brake accident, and one of the first things management did was create a team to investigate how the injury occurred.

The investigation revealed three major points:

1. The company had a lack of formal equipment training. The person who lost his two fingers wasn’t a regular press brake operator. He had only about a day’s worth of training before manning the machine.

2. The press brake was an old mechanical model that didn’t have any guarding on it.

3. The brake also was poorly maintained and had clutch issues.

Anderson Dahlen also found out that it was mostly in the dark about OSHA regulations. The agency investigated the accident and quickly enlightened everyone as to what needed to be done to meet basic guarding and training requirements. It also fined the company heavily for not having those safety programs in place.

The company reacted quickly after the incident, investing in safety equipment and programs to meet OSHA compliance, but problems still existed. It was hard to change employees’ thinking about OSHA, even with the accident. They still saw OSHA as a predatory operation aimed at hurting businesses, not helping them. Skeptical management didn’t help the situation.

The shop actually enjoyed a fairly good safety

record for the remainder of the 1990s, but it seemed that every three years or so an accident would occur, causing everyone to scramble and try to figure out what went wrong. This reactive approach to safety ultimately led to a near-miss accident in 2004 that could have been disastrous for numerous workers.

The company was installing a new horizontal boring mill, and the installation technicians wanted to use an overhead crane. Meanwhile, an electrical contractor was installing power conduit and pulling wire through that while he was in a vertical lift. The lift was in the path of the overhead crane, and the installation technicians ran the crane into the lift. The electrician grabbed onto the crane rail as the lift tipped over, knocking down two manual mills as it fell to the ground.

That was another wake-up call for the company. This time it was a reminder that no contractor safety training program was in place. “Winging it” almost caused several contractors to be injured.

Around that time, OSHA came through again, but this time with a different approach. An inspector from the consulting division of OSHA came and talked about the Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP). The inspector acknowledged that Anderson Dahlen had a lot of safety programs in place, but the company was missing quite a few pieces of a comprehensive plan. By participating in SHARP, Anderson Dahlen could improve employee safety and boost morale, the inspector said.

Management looked at the federal program and decided to commit to it. A manufacturer simply can’t decide to participate, however; it has to be selected.

The program—in Minnesota it’s called MNSHARP—is focused on companies that have fewer than 250 employees. It’s site-specific, so if a manufacturer has multiple sites and they all want to be a part of the program, they all have to qualify separately. A multisite organization can have no more than 500 employees total at all of its sites. Other prerequisites for being a part of MNSHARP are that a company has to have a high-hazard environment, which most fab shops do; at least one year of operating history; and injury rates lower than the national average.

Learning to Work Together

As part of this newfound willingness to work with OSHA officials, Anderson Dahlen started to welcome visits from agency officials. These visits covered an initial in-depth review of the facility and subsequent meetings to go over everything they found. The company agreed to correct and pay for any deficiencies over an agreed-upon timeline.

Moving forward, Anderson Dahlen had to maintain a safety and health management system and meet minimum guidelines, which are reviewed regularly using a master check list that includes 58 different criteria in the following major categories:

• Hazard anticipation and detection
• Hazard prevention and control
• Planning and evaluation
• Administration and supervision
• Safety and health training
• Management leadership
• Employee participation

Inspection officials grade a participating manufacturer on a scale of 0 to 3 for each of the 58 criteria.

In this scoring system:

0 = not compliant.

1 = partly compliant but major improvement required.

2 = mostly compliant but minor improvement required.

3 = fully compliant.

A company needs a score of 2 or better on all criteria to be a part of the MNSHARP.

When Anderson Dahlen first began the program, it didn’t do very well. On the first evaluation, the company didn’t get any 3s. It scored 2 on six questions, 1 on 50 questions, and a zero on two questions. A lot of safety programs were in place, but they weren’t up to standards stressed by OSHA officials.

It took two years and several hundreds of hours of work to boost safety training and awareness, but in 2008 Anderson Dahlen received its MNSHARP certificate.

As part of the select group participating in MNSHARP—only 34 companies were qualified as of 2014—Anderson Dahlen has to work constantly to stay on top of its safety efforts. This means not only correcting all hazards and maintaining the basic elements of an effective safety program, but also management and employees working side-by-side conducting worksite analysis to identify potential hazards. They review accidents and near-misses and put corrective actions into place. Prevention programs are a regular part of the new proactive approach to safety. All employees, supervisors, and managers participate in annual training that focuses on what makes a safe work environment.

Anderson Dahlen also has a closer working relationship with OSHA officials. Anytime changes are made to correct a hazardous condition, management contacts MNSHARP officials and requests a new consultation. Also, OSHA officials have regularly scheduled inspections; there are no surprise visits. (An OSHA inspector once showed up for a surprise visit, saw the MNSHARP certificate on the wall, and turned around, realizing his inspection wasn’t necessary.)

A Safe Result

Since being a part of the program, Anderson Dahlen has seen several benefits. The most obvious is a 43 percent savings on workers’ compensation insurance rates from 2008 to 2014.

The company also has established a Workplace Accident and Injury Reduction Program, which is a continuous improvement program focused on reducing accidents and improving safety. A safety committee, which has a rotating membership of management representatives and front-line workers, meets monthly and performs regular safety audits. Safety training now occurs on a routine basis for everyone in the facility.

As mundane as it might sound, Anderson Dahlen also has developed new forms, including risk analysis plans that are completed when new equipment is installed or facility updates take place. These forms cover the scope of the change, initial hazards, parties involved in the installation, and other basic knowledge.

From an employee standpoint, everyone is much more engaged. Everyone feels that safety is their primary responsibility. Reportable accidents and injuries have been trending down from a high of 38 in 2007 to just 13 in 2014. Employees are really focused on identifying and reporting hazards so they get corrected before someone gets hurt.