ROCKVILLE, Md. - The Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) has announced that member McKenney's Inc., of Atlanta, has achieved a safety milestone - one million work hours without a lost time case. According to the company, this is due in large part to its Field Incident Reduction Effort (FIRE) and the direct involvement of its upper management, John McKenney, president, and Donnie Woodham, vice president of field operations.

Ralph Blessing, McKenney's corporate safety director, said that the FIRE program helped the company focus its safety training and efforts on those areas that "plagued us the most over the years - ergonomics, cuts, and eye injuries. This included purchasing new and better gloves (cut resistant), mandatory implementation of a face shield program to protect workers from falling debris and dust, ergonomics training, and an aggressive return-to-work policy. In addition, we made our foremen more accountable for their crews by including their safety record in the end-of-year evaluations."

Blessing added, "Most of all, the program works because McKenney's employees are the best in the industry."

Publication date: 01/15/2007