Tennessee Occupational Health and Safety Administration (TOSHA) officials traveled to Rogersville on Tuesday, March 20, to present the Governor’s Award of Excellence for Workplace Safety and Health to the ABB Rogersville Ball Bearing Plant. The award was presented to Plant Manager Tom Carpenter with approximately 100 first shift employees, and a number of ABB officials present from Fort Smith, Arkansas. TOSHA Assistant Administrator Tom Flanagan presented the prestigious award. Also on hand was TOSHA Voluntary Protection Program Manager David Blessman.

Before making the presentation, Flanagan congratulated plant personnel for having earned the safety award. Flanagan also noted that only about 16 of Tennessee’s approximately 140,000 employers qualify for, and receive, the Governor’s Award of Excellence for Workplace Safety and Health each year.

Jeremy Sacharnoski, the Rogersville ABB plant’s Safety Manager, explained how difficult it is for plant’s to qualify for the governor’s award. “To qualify for the award, we had to have three years at 10-percent below the industry average Total Recordable incident rate (3.0),” he said. “Our Total Recordable incident average rate is 1.14. Also you must have gone without a lost-time injury or restricted-duty case for more than 500,000 man-hours and have an established Safety Management System. ABB Rogersville Plant has not had a lost time incident in 6.5 year and has worked in excess of 3.5 million man-hours during this time. In addition the Rogersville Plant has gone more than 600,000 man-hours since our last restricted-duty incident.”

ABB officials who were in attendance for the presentation of the Governor’s Award of Excellence for Workplace Safety and Health included Mike Ball – Director of Health, Safety and Environmental, Ryan Waite – Director of Manufacturing, and David Gilbert – Vice President of Manufacturing. Rogersville Mayor Jim Sells also attended the ceremony.

This award, company officials said, demonstrates ABB’s and the Rogersville’s commitment to their Mission Statement of “Taking care of our Customer, Safely.”

Read the original article from The Rogersville Review here.