Industry officials talk best safety practices, efforts at local conference

MICHIGAN CITY | The importance of safety in industry was at the heart of the discussion Wednesday during the Beyond Safety conference and expo.

Contractors, project owners, consultants and maintenance supervisors were among those who gathered at the Blue Chip Casino for the second annual event.

Representatives from steelmaker ArcelorMittal, oil giant BP and electric utility NIPSCO kicked off the two–day conference with a panel discussion on safety statistics, initiatives and areas of concern for next year.

"Safety is an increasingly important issue in the construction industry," said Dewey Pearman, panel moderator and executive director of the Construction Advancement Foundation.

"I would say in the past 10, 12 or 15 years, safety has risen to the very top of important issues for the entire industry, and it's driven in large part by the mandates that come down from owners like BP, ArcelorMittal, U.S. Steel and others. They're putting the pressure on contractors to work safely, and the contractors are responding to that."

Ron Peters, NIPSCO safety manager, said the appeal of the conference is how contractors and owners benefit when they get together.

"We're going to benefit from the knowledge we share with each other. We've got the vendors talking about safety equipment and policies and procedures, and we're all going to walk out of here better safety people," he said.

"Just a few years ago we looked at contractors as somebody who would just go in, do a rush job and leave. Now it's completely different because we've got them engaged in maintenance operations and other things, so now they are part of our workforce. They're part of our employment family. So we need to treat them differently because of that, and we want to treat them differently because of that."

George Porter, senior safety representative at ArcelorMittal, said it's always good for safety and health professionals to get together. Porter said it helps business owners because they talk about things contractors as a group need to hear.

"At ArcelorMittal, and I'm sure it's this way at NIPSCO, it would be extremely difficult for us to do our business without our contractors," Porter said. "So we have to have venues and opportunities so we can get out and speak to people."

Peters and Porter were joined on the panel by Greg Weber, turnaround maintenance manager at BP. Porter said he would write down some of the things his fellow panelists had said, with the intention of taking the knowledge back to his company.

"It's the sharing of knowledge and being among one another, not only talking about our successes but also maybe talk about our failures a little bit so we all can learn from one another," he said.