Orange Tape on 3-Pronged Electrical Tools and Extension Cords

Good afternoon to all I.D.I. employees:  We begin a new quarter on Monday, 10/1/12 for our Assured Grounding Program.  The Safety Coordinators have been supplied with orange tape.  Just a reminder that we need for you are to inspect, test and color-code with orange tape all 3 pronged electrical tools and extension cords.  All electrical tools and cords need to be visually inspected.  If you see any defects in the cords such as bare wires, severe kinks, missing or damaged ground prong, the cord pulling away from the plug end housing, etc., then that tool or cord would need to be immediately removed from service and reported to your lead supervisor.  If your tool/cord passes the visual inspection, your next step is to test the cord with a receptacle tester.  First, you should test the outlet that you will be plugging your cord into to ensure that it is properly wired.  You should see 2 yellow lights lit up on your tester and the red light should be off.  This means the outlet is working appropriately.  Next, plug your cord into the outlet and then test the cord with the receptacle tester.  Again, you should see the same light pattern as mentioned above and this would mean the cord passed the test and it is good and safe to use.  Any other light pattern means that there is a problem with the cord and the cord needs to be removed from service and reported to your lead supervisor.  If the cord passes the visual inspection and the cord tester test, you should then remove the previous quarter's red electrical tape and install the orange electrical tape about 1" down from both plug ends.  Your cord is now in compliance with our 4th quarter's Assured Ground Program.  The orange tape shall remain in place from 10/1/12 through 12/30/12.  You are not quite done yet!  You now need to visually inspect all electrical cords and tools on a daily basis and if any defects are found, the cord needs to be immediately removed from service.  Thank you for taking the time to ensure your electrical tools and cords are in safe working order.  Your actions may prevent one of our family members from sustaining an electrical shock type injury or worse yet and electrocution.  If you have any questions regarding our Assured Grounding Program, please call our Safety Director, Peter Graham, at (847) 417-1689.

Have a Safe Day!

Quarterly Safety Meeting Attendance!

Good evening to all I.D.I. employees:  As you all know we had our 3rd quarterly safety meeting for 2012 on  Saturday, 9/8/12 and the make-up safety meeting was held on Thursday, 9/20/12. Now that the meetings are over, we tallied up the safety meeting attendance show up rates and we are extremely pleased to report that we had an overall field show up rate of 76% with our company goal of being at 75% or better. As far as Safety Coordinators, 40 out of 45 attended the meeting for an 89% show up rate.  Our Safety Coordinator attendance goal is to be at 80% or better.  We exceeded on both safety attendance goals.  We want to say thank you to all of you who attended the safety meeting.  This is a vital part of our safety culture to help ensure we are all on the same page with preventing injuries.  We are a much safer company because of you taking the time to attend our quarterly meetings.  We as a team are only as good as our weakest links so the more people involved at our quarterly safety meetings and the more involved with looking out for each other, the potential to have fewer employees sustaining injuries is much better.

The safety meeting topic was fall protection.  We hope that you took away something from the meeting that will help prevent you or a coworker from sustaining a fall related injury.  260 construction workers died in 2010 from sustaining a fall of 6' or more to a lower level. International Decorator's has never had a fall related fatality or any work related fatality since their inception in 1952.  This is something our owners, Butch & Bill and the founder of I.D.I., Tony Sr. are very proud of.  Preventing fatalities is our number 1 goal.  However, it is also vital that we prevent falls of any kind.  Again, if you see someone working in a position where they are unprotected and exposed to a fall of 6' or more to a lower level, do them a favor and stop them.  Call a time out and get a plan.  The plan could be as simple as obtaining fall arrest equipment and implementing the fall arrest or contact our Safety Director, Peter Graham and he will assist with a fall protection plan.

Have a Safe Day!