Olympic Steel’s Bedford Heights headquarters has more than its share of hazards, and its employees avoid them better than most. The shipping and receiving area alone is filled with hundreds of 11-ton steel plates in stacks nearly 6 feet high. The warehouse is stocked with heavy equipment that not only moves the steel plates around like so much drywall, but also slices through them like butter.
Across the plant, crews fabricate and process products from 1-inch square gussets for swing sets to wind-turbine equipment so big it leaves on a flatbed truck. So every employee is trained to contribute to a process that keeps the plant moving: safety.
In January, the plant received certification from the federal government’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program. The distinction is the culmination of a two-year process in which inspectors rate the company on 58 attributes, from written training for safety protocols to physical inspections of equipment such as ladders.
Dawn Baker, (pictured at left) safety and human resources manager at the Bedford Heights plant, coordinated the exacting SHARP process. She’s worked at other steel companies, and while all of them strive for safety, Olympic strives for it more, she says.
“If management is not committed to the program, it’s not going to work,” says Baker, a 20-year veteran of the business. “That’s one of the reasons I came to Olympic Steel. As a safety professional, I want people to know what they’re expected to do. I want to work myself out of a job.”
Bedford Heights was Olympic Steel’s first facility, opened in 1954. Now it’s the headquarters for a company with 17 locations from Connecticut to Washington state. It leads by example. The plant, which employs 114 workers, hasn’t had a time-lost accident in more than two years. This year and last, the plant also won the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association’s Safety Award of Merit, a prestigious recognition for having a safety record at least 10 percent better than the industry average.
“Safety is a core value,” says Steve Larson, Olympic Steel’s director of operations, who oversees the company’s 16 safety operations nationwide. “It’s part of the culture. It’s part of the fiber of how the plant works. Steel is not a forgiving thing. Anything could happen.”
Every employee attends at least 64 safety presentations a year, from monthly meetings to weekly team Tool Box sessions that cover topics such as applicable federal regulations. Whether they’re office or production employees, everyone at Olympic Steel receives pointers and classes for ergonomics, hazard communication, CPR training, blood-borne pathogen training and protective personal gear such as face shields.
When the Bedford Heights facility is in full swing, 15 production employees might be working on the floor in each of the campus’ three production-and-storage buildings, operating a loud, powerful cut-to-length line or programming a machine in the laser bay.
Each building is a garage the size of an indoor sports park, filled with steel sheets and rolls the size of cars, yet clutter-free. As sparks fly and metal clangs, various workers play their part in 20 processes: grinding, fabricating or laser cutting.
Signs reading “Think — Safety is everybody’s job” remind them that protective eyewear, reinforced Kevlar sleeves and steel-toed boots aren’t enough to keep them on the floor and out of the hospital. Once they’ve received safety training in an area, it’s only a matter of time until they return for more. From emergency communication (in the event of an accident, who calls 911, who remains with an employee, and who stops work flow) to operating an emergency defibrillator, Olympic Steel workers repeatedly drill until protocols become reflexes.
“Just because people have gone through their training doesn’t mean they’re trained,” Larson says. “You’ve got to make it stick. You’ve got to make it routine.”