A commitment to safety, employee involvement and continuous improvement makes Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies LLC (Honeywell FM&T) one of the safest workplaces in the U.S. Department of Energy complex. And the employees would agree: A recent employee satisfaction survey revealed that 98 percent of workers described the work environment at Honeywell FM&T as safe.
“Safety is essential to the way FM&T does business,” Don Fitzpatrick, director of HS&E and security, wrote in the company’s America’s Safest Companies application. “Its employees are safety pioneers, using precise procedures throughout production.”
FM&T employs several progressive safety-related programs, including the Laceration Prevention Committee, which introduced a sharps policy to communicate safe cutting expectations and to protect employees’ hands. The committee’s cumulative, plant-wide results led to 2,554 excess sharps to be removed from processes; 371 processes reviewed; 91 revised processes; 173 box cutters removed; correction of 511 incorrectly stored sharps; and identification of 236 potential hidden sources of lacerations. As a result, Honeywell FM&T experienced no OSHA recordables for lacerations this year.
Similarly, the company’s Slips, Trips and Falls Committee worked to reduced hazards associated with walking in cold, wet Missouri winters and deep snows. The team addressed internal aisles, restroom areas and other facility locations that might pose slip, trip or fall hazards. The lessons learned about winter weather preparation subsequently were published by the Department of Energy and shared through the National Security Enterprise.
As long-standing DOE-VPP Star Sites (the Kansas City site has been a VPP Star Site since 1996; the New Mexico location since 2005), Honeywell FM&T goes beyond simply meeting regulations. The company focuses on leading, rather than lagging, indicators; investigates near misses; and encourages employees to question health and safety conditions. When an employee noticed a laser accidentally had been left on in an interior laser bay, she immediately contacted her supervisor, which triggered a full investigation. As a result, no one was injured and all higher-class visible lasers were removed from the laboratory and replaced with lower- class alignment lasers to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future.
Finally, FM&T works to ensure that the safety culture created at work is carried into employees’ homes, as well. Safety therefore becomes a lifestyle for the Honeywell FM&T work force. After all, Fitzpatrick stresses, elements like PPE, training and signs can’t keep workers safe on their own. Real safety improvement comes from a deeper source.
“We have to change the way we think about safety; identify and address risk to ourselves and our co-workers; and take a critical look at the way we have always done things,” Fitzpatrick says.
Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies LLC accepting their awards at the American Safest Company awards ceremony at The Ritten House in Philadelphia, PA.
Read about this years America’s Safest Companies Winners
| ACCO Brands Corp. Buffalo Gap Instrumentation & Electrical Co. Inc. Caterpillar Inc. EnPro Industries EuroKera North America Fluor Corp. Gribbins Insulation Co. Inc. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies LLC Kennametal Inc. Nalco Co. Richard Goettle Inc. Savage Services |