It’s already September and the year is racing by. Hard to imagine that 2020 will be here before we know it. I was thinking about safety and how critical being safe is in every movement of our daily activities as a way of ensuring our success into the future.

I often think about how those television commercials talk about, “If you have been injured in the oil fields …” and assert that all fault in accidents is the fault of the oil company. The commercials assert that whenever there is an accident that the company pushed the employee to break the rules or take shortcuts, all in the interest of making greater profits. I’m not sure that this is, truly, accurate, as all reputable companies I have encountered take safety seriously and spend huge sums of money on training their employees to operate in a safe manner.

I hope that here at Western, we all see safety as a partnership and not just hollow words that sound good. The end game is always to build a quality precast product safely without injuries. Western has established extensive safety procedures and trainings that are ongoing every day that we are in operation. We will never ask an employee to take a short cut or break a rule or endanger anyone in any way for any reason, the least of which would be to make a greater profit. In fact, the very opposite is true in any organization: accidents cost money and take away from profits that the company can use to increase salaries for its employees. There is nothing to be gained from operating in an unsafe manner and Western would never ask an employee to do so.

I submit that if we are to, truly, be an accident-free work environment, each staff member must follow the policies and training procedures provided to them. Safety lies in the hands of the staff member, and Western is here to provide the training and tools to achieve a, truly, safe environment. Finally, we ask that every staff member refrain from any activity that they may deem unsafe and report that activity to our safety director immediately.

Western will always work to reward staff members that take the extra time to expend the extra effort to keep everyone out of harm’s way.

We are proud of each staff member and wish everyone the very best as we head into the fall!