‘It doesn’t happen without the help of the employees’

Rockland’s Steel-Pro earns state safety award

Thu, 10/30/2014 - 9:45am

    ROCKLAND - Maine Commissioner of Labor Jeanne Paquette announced that Steel-Pro, Inc., a Rockland-based business, had earned the Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program Award (SHARP) in recognition of its rigorous safety achievement program. Steel-Pro is a custom manufacturer of ASME pressure vessels, biopharmaceutical equipment, modular skids, vacuum chambers, storage tanks and other custom designed equipment and stainless steel applications.

    Acceptance into SHARP by Maine’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognizes this worksite as a model for safety and health standards.

    A banner and certificate were presented in a ceremony on Oct. 29.

    Paquette said: “SHARP companies know that a safer facility is not only good for Maine workers, but also good for their businesses. Better safety means less lost time due to injury and illness as well as lower workers’ comp costs.”

    Fewer than 2,000 worksites in the United States have earned SHARP certification. Maine currently has 71 SHARP worksites.

    Steel-Pro was started in 1978 by Chris Beebe and Fred Carey. In 2014 it was converted to an employee-owned company.

    Recently, Penobscot Bay Pilot spoke with Steel-Pro Vice President Craig Wells.

    PBP: The award, what’s it all about? 

    CW: It’s a safety and health award for five companies that have met the standards of OSHA and in the state of Maine, Safety Works which is a branch of OSHA. We’ve had Safety Works come in and do a wall to wall inspection and anything they find we are obligated to correct. They review safety records that report both injuries and lost time injuries.

    They compare those with the National Average for this industry. You have to be below a certain level to even be qualified to be in the program. After everything comes into play it goes to the director of Safety works. They review the records and determine if any particular company is worthy to be in the program.”

    PBP: It has to make you feel good as an employer.

    CW: It does, but we’re certainly not perfect. We still have area where we can improve and we are constantly trying to do that. It doesn’t happen without the help of the employees.

    PBP: Who is the person here at Steel Pro who is directly in charge of safety?

    CW: That would be me. You’d be surprised that when OSHA comes into a facility like ours, the things they find might not be to you what you would consider the most dangerous. They are the common sense things that everybody should know how to do. For a number of years using proper scaffolding has been in the top five, working on elevated surface for one, wearing a harness and tying off.

    There are things here that could be considered more dangerous, but those are not the things where people get hurt. It’s not wearing your safety glasses; it’s not taking care of housekeeping and somebody tripping over something. It’s the common sense stuff, the easy stuff that ends up being the problem.

     

    Steel-Pro has 35 employees. Prior to 1978 the company was called Sea Pro and was a fish processing plant. When that market went away, part of that company made equipment for other Sea Pro plants. The general manager at that time teamed up with another individual and it became Steel-Pro. Steel-Pro serves a world wide market.