March 1, 2018

(Chicago, IL) - Nearly 70 structural steel fabrication and erection facilities are being honored with AISC Safety Awards for their excellent safety performance records in 2017. Awards are given in the categories of "Fabricator" and "Erector" and include the Safety Award of Honor -- AISC's top safety award -- presented for a perfect safety record of no disabling injuries, as well as the Safety Certificate of Merit and the Safety Certificate of Commendation. All of the winners can be viewed at www.aisc.org/safetyawards.

"Nobody has a stronger commitment to safety than the steel industry," explained Charles J. Carter, president of AISC.

All AISC full fabricator members and erector associate members are eligible and asked to participate, and data for the program is solicited annually. In order to facilitate data collection and to make statistics meaningful in terms familiar to safety professionals, the program uses data that companies also report to OSHA. The program recognizes performance measured in terms of Days Away, Restricted or Transferred Rate (DART). The DART is a measure of the number of recordable lost work cases per 200,000 man hours worked. Only the number of cases (not days) that are required to be reported on the OSHA 300A form and that cause a lost work day as defined by OSHA are reported to AISC along with the hours worked in the year. AISC Safety Awards are given for perfect records (Honor, DART=0), excellent records (Merit, 0<DART1) and commendable records (Commendation, 1<DART2).

"AISC's annual Safety Awards program recognizes excellent records of safety performance, and we commend these facilities for their effective accident prevention programs," said Tom Schlafly, AISC's director of safety. "Periodic recognition of safety in the workplace has been demonstrated to provide worker incentive and a reminder of the importance of safe practices."

For more information about the program as well as safety resources available to the fabricated and erected structural steel industry, please visit www.aisc.org/safety.