Nooter Construction wins CURT Safety Award

The CURT CISE constructor safety award winner in the More Than 500K manhours/year category of Special Trade Contractors was Nooter Construction Company (Nooter)-a capital project, major equipment erection, pressure-vessel repair and turnaround/outage contractor for US heavy industrial clients including those in refining, chemicals, power, and steel. Nooter prides itself on safety, welding ability, rigging experience, and quality of work. It utilizes a "Go Forward Plan" including management commitment and employee involvement, hazard analysis, hazard prevention and control, and training. Its safety and health program manual has been accepted fully by the National Construction Management Services group (NCMS)_ ISNetworld. and other third party evaluators.

 

Nooter encourages managemcnt commitment in its safety program, emphasizing that safety, above production, is the most important aspect of the job-that a safe job is a productive job.

 

During thc bidding process, the Safety depanment rev icws the scopes of work and assesses the safety risks. If a similar project has been performed, the LAD (learning after doing) is pulled, rcviewed and incorporated into the bid.

 

Nooter emphasizes training, with annual weeklong safety training scssions for supervisors on topics such as Effective Leadership Skills, informative sessions on all OSHA Standard updates including the OSHA 10 hour course every three ycars, Substance Abuse in the Workplace, and Hazard Recognition.

 

The company's incident investigation procedure is an opportunity to "!ix" elcmcnts of thc systcm to continue to improve operations.

 

Communications processes arc establ ished within the organization regarding the effectiveness of the safety and management systems and involve staff nK'Ctings on a daily or weekly basis.

 

At weekly staff meetings the project teams evaluate their progress with an employee perception survey starting when the project is approximately 30% complete. The questions on the survey get feedback from craft employees and determine whether the field staff"s perception of the safety proccss matches the employee perception. Besides the daily informal audit, project managers cvaluate each project on a weekly basis to focus on such items as fire equipment, compressed gas cylinders, permits, and housekeeping.

 

The proprietary Nooter Management System (NMS) documents procedures and fosters a healthy culture to "blame the system and not the person." This systcm is compliant with ISO 9001 Quality Standard, the ISO 14001 Environmental standard and the ANSI Z 10:2006 Safety Standard. The NMS follows the same PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT cycle that is the motivation in the PACT safety system.