The TCIA Safety Awards recognize exemplary action in two areas. The Outstanding Individual/Crew Performance award recognizes an individual's or crew's heroic reaction to an emergency situation. The Outstanding Company Contribution award recognizes a member's proactive program to address safety issues within its own company or within a larger sphere of influence.
To submit nominations for the Safety Award, Click Here or watch for application forms printed in the Reporter.
With your application, please provide a photo of the individual(s) being nominated, and be sure to include as much detail as possible. Artwork and/or photos are requested to depict your recognition efforts. (If you are unable to download the nomination form here, request one by calling TCIA at 800-733-2622.)
The deadline for submitting nominees for Safety Awards is in November. Safety Awards for the current year will be presented at the next Winter Management Conference.
With respect to the Outstanding Company Contribution Award, please note that a year of no accidents - while commendable - is not grounds for recognition unless you can point to specific activities that resulted in an accident-free year.
2007 Safety Awards honor companies and individuals
for excellent safety programs
TCIA Safety Award Winners - 2007
Every year with its Safety Award recognition program, TCIA recognizes individuals for their heroic efforts and companies for their outstanding contributions to tree care safety. There are numerous, exemplary activities and actions that merit the industry's recognition and praise this year.
The Bartlett Tree Expert Company - Outstanding Company Contribution
David Anderson, who is Bartlett's Western Division Safety and Training Coordinator, undertook an ambitious project to protect workers from the hazards of strains, strains, and muscle injuries.
Over one-third of Bartlett's personal injuries are soft-tissue injuries such as sprains, strains, and muscle injuries. About a year and a half ago, the Bartlett Safety Committee committed to address the issue with Anderson heading up the effort. Working with ergonomic consultants, sports doctors and leading university researchers, the group began by isolating the activities in tree care that led to ergonomic injuries.
They used a series of field inspections to photograph and video tape employees working. Information was processed through a series of software programs to provide a three dimensional model of precisely which area of the body was being overloaded during a given work practice.
Once this information was confirmed, the group explored alternative positioning methods and work practices designed to reduce the probability of injury. This work led to company-wide instruction in work practices while ascending trees, chipping brush, lifting wood, and using pole tools, The Bartlett Company is already experiencing a substantial drop in these injuries and the associated costs company-wide.
Anderson requested that the Bartlett Safety Committee extend this information and research to the rest of the industry. They authorized a series of lectures at various industry meetings and sharing his research with TCIA for the benefit of all employees in the tree care industry.
SavATree - Outstanding Company Contribution
Last year, SavATree began an initiative called "Safety Starts Here." The program is incentive-based with quarterly updates and awards. Gifts bear the company's safety logo and are appropriate to the theme: water bottles to stay hydrated and custom neck straps to assure that eye protection stays on and is always available. Crews' reported safety performance is carefully validated by regular, documented inspections. The goal of the program is to support the company's aggressive safety performance benchmarks, and thus far it has been very successful. As their first year closed out, the company posted losses that were only 25 percent of what their insurance company's actuaries had predicted.
Lewis Tree Service - Outstanding Company Contribution
Lewis Tree implemented a program called "Total Safety Culture" in 2007. The model they chose to emulate among their 2700 employees in 16 operating divisions is a product of Dr. E. Scott Geller of Virginia Tech. Dr. Geller happens to b be a colleague and mentor of Sherry Purdue, one of this year's WMC speakers.
TSC is a people based safety program built around the premise that most incidents occur as the result of at-risk behaviors. Lewis' objective is to reduce or eliminate these behaviors from their culture. Their adopted slogan, that "Safety is everybody's responsibility," is a cornerstone of their approach to TSC. The first step in the plan was to define safety responsibilities for every employee in the company, from the newest recruit all the way to the President. The common, shared responsibilities include reinforcing safety through crew visits, coaching employees at risk, participating in safety meetings, demonstrating active caring, and continually looking for ways to improve. Each of these responsibilities and more has a defined performance parameter. For instance, the number of worksites inspected or coaching sessions completed. With only one year of TCS under their belts, Lewis Tree cannot yet measure their success, but the increase in employee enthusiasm and participation is palpable.
Steve Castrogiovanni, ArborCare, Inc. - Outstanding Individual Performance
Steve is ArborCare's operations manager and safety officer. The company is based in Rockville, MD. Steve handles the duties one would expect of a safety person, such as conducting weekly production meetings and safety tailgate sessions, but more important he instills among all employees the notion that safety is everyone's responsibility. Due largely to Steve's leadership, this sizeable company went a full year without a single lost time injury, and its workers comp and general liability premiums are at an all-time low.
S & S Tree - Outstanding Crew Performance
On November 8, 2006, S & S Tree and Horticultural Specialists of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area experienced a terrible accident; however, due to the previous training and quick response of one of its crews, a tragedy was averted.
The crew consisting of Kevin Benbo, Mitch Bauer, Leonardo Molina, Juan Orozco, Ufrano Cortez, Antulio Perez and Richard Stanley was pruning large trees on a golf course. For an inexplicable reason, one crew member made the mistake of ascending in an aerial lift without his fall protection. He was alone at the time, and it is still not clear why he fell from the bucket, but fall he did. He ended up with six broken ribs, two collapsed lungs, a broken collar bone, multiple cuts, severe bruises and a concussion. The immediate, textbook response of the crew is credited with saving the employee's life.
Carolina Tree Care - Outstanding Crew Performance
The crew of Marvin Lyles, Manuel Lara, Antonio Garcia, Salvador Perez, Clint Gaines and Jamie Tucker received recognition for its response to a motor vehicle accident. On a Sunday evening the crew was en route from their homes in North Carolina to a project in South Carolina for the next day when they witnessed an SUV traveling in the opposite direction blow a rear tire, flip over multiple times and come to rest in the oncoming traffic lane. They reacted instinctively from previous training and sprang in action.
All five passengers in the SUV had been ejected. They were all Hispanic and spoke no English. Two of the crew members alerted oncoming vehicles while everyone else rendered first aid and comfort until paramedics arrived. The actions of the crew were immediate and responsive in a critical, high-stress situation.
Vine & Branch, Inc., - Outstanding Company Contribution
Vine & Branch, located in Carmel, IN, is recognized for its ongoing campaign of public outreach on hazard tree recognition, tree inspection and visual tree assessment. They maintained their efforts at public education this past year through public speaking, writing and educational displays. They had displays at four prominent consumer and professional conventions, they spoke to various audiences on five occasions and even participated in a radio broadcast, the placed information on their web site, sent information to numerous media outlets, they even had an article published in the May issue of TCI magazine. They sent our press kits and direct mail promotions. For all of their efforts they were recognized as an outstanding member company by their local Chamber of Commerce.
