Category: Safety Corner

Safety Corner: Commitment to Zero

COMPLACENCY AND FINISHING THE YEAR SAFELY It’s no secret that we’re not having the success we saw last year when it comes to safety. It’s been a reality check and we will work hard to get better. We need to get better. Please place an even higher emphasis on safety as we finish the year. […]

Safety Culture is Our Focus

Safety Opportunity Program Our Safety Opportunity Program is a hybrid safety observation and hazard identification program. It encourages employees to identify behavior-based safety observations and hazardous conditions and to correct the situation. Safety Opportunities are documented on our Safety Opportunity form. They are then sent to the Safety Department where they are reviewed, assigned points […]

ISHN Magazine Interview with UPI’s Mike Villa

We’re proud of how our leadership and employees have worked to build a world-class safety culture. Mike Villa, safety manager at UPI, spoke with Industrial Safety and Health News (ISHN) Magazine recently about how our team consistently meets and exceeds our safety goals. Here is an excerpt from the interview: UPI employees are held to […]

Safety Corner

DCA Arthur T. Everham Safety Award In March, UPI was awarded the 2018 Distribution Contractors Association (DCA) Arthur T Everham Safety Award in the 600,000 to 2,000,000 manhour worked category. The DCA established the Arthur T. Everham Safety Award in 1986 to recognize contractors with exceptional safety programs. Judging criteria includes: the number of OSHA […]

Safety Opportunity Program

Our safety opportunity program was strong last year. Over 4,200 safety opportunities were turned in; companywide, our employees earned 60,000 safety opportunity points. Our goal was to have 3.0 safety opportunities turned in per 1,000 hours worked and we exceeded that by reaching 4.5 per 1,000 hours. Our goal for 2019 is to reach 4.5 […]

Safety Recognition and Situational Awareness

Safety Recognition John Eastman, operator for our Access Division, was in our customer’s yard when he noticed a log truck driver (not associated with the project) in need of medical care. The log truck driver was using a cheater to release a lever style load binder when the cheater and lever swung back and struck […]

Certificates of Recognition

Mike Arneson, UPI foreman, and Scott Blacketter, UPI laborer, were recently awarded certificates of recognition by Enbridge for going above and beyond the call of duty to contribute to safety. Mike continues to demonstrate and drive a safety mindset every day and always conducts a very detailed morning meeting. Scott noticed that one of the […]

Border Patrol Training

On September 14th, Border Patrol agents utilized UPI’s lower equipment yard to conduct K9 training. The dogs are trained to detect concealed humans and the odors of controlled substances, which include marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and ecstasy. Both the agent and the canine are taught proper search sequences and the dogs must remember several verbal […]