Salt River Project has earned the American Public Power Association’s Safety Award of Excellence for safe operating practices in 2012. It was SRP’s ninth first-place ranking since 1980 and third in the last four years in the category for utilities with systems with 4 million or more annual worker-hours of exposure.
SRP was one of 112 public power systems that were presented the 2012 Safety Award of Excellence on March 25 by Bob Rumbaugh, chair of the APPA Safety Committee and an energy services consultant for Columbus, Ohio-based American Municipal Power Inc., during the association’s annual Engineering & Operations Technical Conference in Kissimmee, Fla.
“SRP employees are proud of their safety record and we are striving to continually improve both our safety and the reliable electric service for our customers,” said Don Breiland, SRP’s director of Risk Management.
More than 280 utilities entered the 2012 contest, which is the highest number in the APPA contest’s history. Entrants were placed in categories according to their number of worker-hours and judged for the most incident-free records during 2012. The incidence rate, used to judge contest entries, is based on the number of work-related reportable injuries or illnesses and the number of worker-hours during 2012, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
A complete list of the 2012 winners is available at www.PublicPower.org.
The safety contest has been held annually for the last 53 years. APPA is the national service organization for the nation’s more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community- and state-owned electric utilities, serving more than 47 million people.
SRP is the third-largest public power utility in the nation, serving more than 980,000 electric customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.
