When it comes to our team, and the teams we work with, our number one priority is safety. We want everyone to go home to their families in the same condition at the end of their shift as they were in when they arrived for that shift.
Prioritizing safety also benefits the work we do for your projects. When team members feel safe, and operate safely, they remain part of the team longer, gaining more experience in producing and installing the highest quality precast concrete components. And when team members keep mind on task and do not get complacent with safety procedures, it helps them to avoid errors and injuries, produce the highest quality products, and ensure delivery deadlines are met. Team members operating safely in the plant and on job sites for installation prevent injuries, keeping projects moving forward.
For Mid-States Concrete Industries, our commitment to safety is above all else. We treat our team members like industrial athletes – ensuring the highest quality safety program to keep them from getting injured, and to eliminate risks wherever we can.
Through things like partnering with Athletico to create a warm-up program designed to stretch and strengthen our team members for the movements required of their jobs, to putting a detailed housekeeping program in place to eliminate hazards, to constantly evaluating our safety procedures, we keep our team members safe.
In 2022, Mid-States Concrete renewed its SHARP designation through OSHA for the third time, making us the only precaster in the United States to have this elite recognition. Mid-States first achieved this Safety & Health Achievement Recognition Program designation in July 2017.
“The safety culture and sustaining it is something we are very proud of,” said Mike Wolff, Vice President of Safety and Quality.
Additionally, the entire Mid-States Concrete Field Crew and all Plant Foremen are OSHA 30-Hour Certified. All team members also annually participate in Safety Days – which serves as a refresher on all of our safety programming through both classroom learning and hands-on activity. Training is run by the Vice President of Safety and Quality, Safety Manager, and all Production Supervisors.
“We flow it through everyone to create ownership over safety,” Wolff said.
In 2022, Mid-States Concrete Industries had just five OSHA recordables. Mid-States Concrete Industries is also a PCI (Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute) Certified Plant and PCI Certified Erector. These certifications provide assurance to owners, architects, engineers, and contractors that precast concrete components will be manufactured and installed according to stringent industry standards.
To ensure we constantly live up to our high safety and quality standards, we have several PCI Certified Field Auditors who go on site to audit the safety and quality procedures of Mid-States Concrete’s work on your projects. They complete a detailed safety and quality inspection specific to precast concrete. Every foreman has at least two project installations per year evaluated.
For Safety Manager Tracy Miller, one of the best things about the safety culture is watching the team embrace it so wholeheartedly.
“The best part is when you see them do the right thing when they think no one is looking,” Miller said.
Miller and Wolff also really appreciate that the entire team takes ownership of safety. In fact, while Miller reports on near misses on a weekly basis, the corrective actions and retraining often come from the person with the near miss. Our team members always bring a solution.
The safety team continues to evaluate, improve, and grow the Mid-States Concrete safety program to ensure the team always operates at the highest level of safety, keeping our team, and your team, as safe as possible.