2 More Employees Caught Working Safely!

Good afternoon to all I.D.I. employees:  Two more employees were caught working safely on 11/28/11.  Framer's Lou Spalla and Daniel Dominick were caught in the act working on a roof deck on a baker scaffold with the wheels locked, safety rails in place on their fall exposure side, tied off with fall protection to the overhead steel beam and using a face shield & safety glasses while cutting steel track with a partner saw.  They were also wearing their hard hats, gloves, work boots, etc. 

Great job guys - keep it up!  Have a safety day everyone!

4th Quarter & Year End Quarterly Safety Meeting Attendance - Great Job Everyone!

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees:  We had our 4th & final quarterly safety meeting of 2011 on 11/5/11 and our final makeup safety meeting on 11/22/11.  Our final attendance results have been tallied and here they are:  For the 4th quarterly safety meeting we had a total field show up rate of 92% and a Safety Coordinator show up rate of 96%.  For the whole year, the total field show up rate was 86% and the Safety Coordinator show up rate was 91%.  We exceeded our attendance goals which are 75% for total field and 80% for Safety Coordinators.  We want to extend a big thank you to all of the employees who took time away from your busy schedules to attend our quarterly safety meetings.  This reflects your true colors and shows what you are all about.  Your attendance is vital to I.D.I. in helping us to maintain our strong safety culture and making us the industry leader in safety in the construction field.  Hopefully we reap the benefits of the strong performance of exceeding our safety meeting attendance goals by having fewer injuries which means less pain for our employees and overall should help us to be more competitive in our bidding of projects.  You may recall at the last quarterly meeting we announced that we also exceeded our injury cost per man hours worked goal which is to be at $0.50 or better.  We ended the year at $0.46 which was the first time we have exceeded this goal since we began tracking it 5 years ago. 
Now the challenge ahead is to keep the momentum rolling into 2012.  We cannot let our guard down when it comes to safety.  Safety is not something you purchase once and you own it.  Safety is on ongoing process.  Safety is something you do all the time.  The goal of safety is to make it become engrained and 2nd nature to the point where you don't even really have to think about it, you just do the right thing and make the correct safe choices because that is just how you do it. 
Great job everyone on having one of our safest years on records.  We can't do it without you!

Have a Safe Day!

Makeup Safety Meeting - Tuesday, 11/22/11 at 4:00pm

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees:  We have scheduled our quarterly safety makeup meeting for Tuesday, 11/22/11 at 4:00pm.  The meeting will be held at our Barrington office in the warehouse area.  If you plan on attending, please ensure that you contact our Safety Director, Peter Graham, no later than Monday, 11/21/11 so we can obtain a headcount for chair rental, etc.  This meeting is intended for those that had to work on Saturday, 11/5/11, during our regularly scheduled quarterly safety meeting and for those that could not attend due to special circumstances.  The 11/22/11 safety meeting topic is regarding our Safety Coordinator Program, our safety rules, policies and more.  If you have any questions regarding this meeting, please contact Peter Graham.  You can reach Peter via e-mail at pgraham@4idi.com, call our office at (847) 526-7477 or you can reach him on his mobile phone. 

Have a Safe Day and hope to see you at the safety meeting!

A Couple of Guys Caught Working Safely!

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees:  Last Tuesday, I caught a couple of I.D.I.'s finest working in a safe manner.  Carpenters Dave Snedecor & Earl Bingman were working on the exterior doing some framing.  Both were wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment for the tasks being performed and Earl was appropriately wearing a safety harness while tied off to the boom lift's anchorage point.  Mario was observed working in the interior of a structure brushing and rolling a block wall while in a boom lift.  Mario also was wearing the approprite PPE for the task being performed and he was also using fall protection and tied off to the boom lift's fall protection anchorage point.  Great job gentlemen on helping to make our safety culture what it is! 

M.S.D.S. Sheets - What Does Readily Available Mean?

Good afternoon to all I.D.I. employees:  You often hear that you must have the material safety data sheets (M.S.D.S.) available at your site for every product you are using or there could be big trouble.  For clarification, I called OSHA and discussed this topic.  OSHA informed me that M.S.D.S. must be readily available within 4 hours of request from OSHA.  We discussed this further and I was advised that it is o.k. to have a library of our M.S.D.S. in our computer as long as they could be on site within 4 hours of a request.  However, there are times when it is a requirement to have the M.S.D.S. on site.  The M.S.D.S. are required to be on site when required by the general contractor.  Also, if we are using a product that is harmful to one's health or could cause death, then we would be required to have the M.S.D.S. on site.  In general, for our drywall board, taping mud, metal studs, latex paints, fiberglass acoustic tile, and other non-hazardous materials that we use, it is O.K. to not have the M.S.D.S. on site.  If you are using a product that you are unfamiliar with, a highly corrosive product, a product that can harm your organs through inhalation or ingestion or severely harm you in any way, and if you don't have the M.S.D.S. on site for those products, you should contact our Safety Director, Peter Graham and he will get the M.S.D.S. to you.  Should you have any questions regarding material safety data sheets, working with chemicals, our hazard communication program, etc., please e-mail our Safety Director, Peter Graham at pgraham@4id.com.  Also, we do supply M.S.D.S. sheets to the projects we work at a majority of time.  Where it can be difficult to manage are the shorter-term tenant space jobs.

Have a Safe Day!

Reminder - Next Quarterly Safety Meeting on 11/5/11

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees:  As most of you know, our next quarterly safety meeting is on Saturday, 11/5/11 at our Barrington office location.  This meeting will be a little different than our typical quarterly safety meeting in that at 7:00am, we are going to perform Safety Coordinator training with the Safety Coordinators only.  We have invited the rest of our employees or non-Safety Coordinators to attend the meeting at 8:00am.  Starting around 8:10am, we will begin the 2nd half of the quarterly safety meeting with all employees and we plan on ending the meeting around 9:10am.  So, if you are a Safety Coordinator, you should arrive no later than 6:55am as we will start the meeting at 7:00am sharp.  We will then lock the doors to help keep the distractions to a minimum and we will re-open the doors at 8:00am at which time the rest of the employees should have arrived. 

The reason we are performing Safety Coordinator training is because over the past few years, we have promoted some employees into the Safety Coordinator role and we would like to get everyone on the same page as to what being a Safety Coordinator entails.  We are also doing the Safety Coordinator training to revive the Safety Coordinator program for the benefit of all employees in the battle against injuries. We will be distributing the Safety Coordinator manuals which contain the toolbox talks, weekly safety inspection forms, accident report forms, etc. to the Safety Coordinators at the meeting. 

If you are not sure if you should attend the 7:00am Safety Coordinator training portion or if you should arrive at 8:00am, you are advised to contact your Superintendent and he will let you know what time to arrive.  Should you have any questions about this meeting, you can also contact our Safety Director, Peter Graham at pgraham@4idi.com. 

Have a Safe Day!

Field Safety Committee Meeting Today at 3:00pm

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees:  We are having our bi-monthly Field Safety Committee meeting today at 3:00pm.  This is where our Safety Director gets together with representatives from each of our trades and we discuss safety.  We go over the recent injuries that occurred since we previously met and we develop corrective measures to help prevent reoccurrences to other employees.  We discuss our safety policies and procedures.  We discuss how our job sites are looking such as housekeeping, fall protection, electrical hazards, etc.  We discuss unsafe acts that have been occurring and many other topics.  We get together to help make your career and profession safer.  If you have any ideas, thoughts or suggestions for the safety committee to discuss, you can talk to the field representatives about it and ask them to bring it up at the safety committee so we can brainstorm the matter.  The field representatives are Joe Bellich - paint, Rafael Nunez - taping, James Millar - acoustic, and Matt Larson for framing and carpentry.  These guys are volunteering their time for 6 meetings for the year to help make your career with I.D.I. safer.  Please use these safety committee members as your mouth piece. 

Have a Safe Day!