The National Safety Council recently presented its Green Cross for Safety Awards to Boeing, PotashCorp and Deputy Police Chief Lou Jogmen of the Park Ridge (Illinois) Police Department for their efforts to help save lives and prevent injuries.
PotashCorp received the Excellence Award for developing a system to empower workers to identify potential serious injury and fatality (SIF) exposure before an incident. The approach includes reviewing everyday tasks for risk, integrating injury prevention into all safety processes and following up on all incidents for SIF potential.
Boeing earned the Innovation Award for creating a fall protection system – the Piranha Lox True Interlock Harness – that disables a work platform if a worker is not properly hooked into his or her personal protective equipment (PPE). Falls account for 10 percent of all occupational deaths each year. In more than 75 percent of those fatalities, PPE is available but is either not used or used incorrectly.
Jogmen accepted the Advocate Award for spearheading the inaugural Illinois Rail Safety Week in 2014 by gathering more than 300 independent police agencies, county sheriff departments, private firms and state agencies to promote public awareness through education, enforcement and rail safety engineering advances. The model has been expanded to other campaigns in Illinois, including distracted driving awareness, and was used to introduce National Rail Safety Week in 2016, co-sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and Operation Lifesaver.
"PotashCorp, The Boeing Company and Deputy Chief Jogmen have helped make our world a safer place to work and live," said Deborah A.P. Hersman, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. "We are proud to honor them and to recognize all the outstanding finalists that share the Council's goal of eliminating preventable deaths and injuries in our lifetime."
The finalists were selected from more than 50 applicants reviewed and evaluated by an external panel. Other finalists included Odebrecht Construction, Tracey Holmberg of Swedish Medical Center and Trenda McPherson of the Florida Motorcycle Safety Coalition.
For more information, visit www.nsc.org.