Program Honors Manufacturers’ Dedication to Workplace Safety and Operational Excellence
APA – The Engineered Wood Association has announced the winners of its 2021 Safety and Health Awards. The APA Safety and Health Awards Program is the premier safety award program for the engineered wood products industry in North America. It encourages and recognizes operational excellence with the goal of reducing injury and illness rates.
Resolute Engineered Wood and West Fraser won Safest Company Awards in their respective categories, while the coveted Innovation in Safety Award went to two winners: Tolko Industries Ltd. of Athabasca, Alberta, for the Equipment-Based Innovation Award, and Tolko Industries Ltd. of Armstrong, British Columbia, for the Jeff Wagner Process-Based Innovation Award.
“We are proud of our members’ commitment to developing systems and processes that improve worker safety,” said APA President Mark Tibbetts. “People are the foundation of our industry, and we support making workplaces as safe as possible.”
Besides the Safest Company and Innovation in Safety awards, other competition categories include Annual Safety and Health Award, Safety Improvement Award (2019-2021) and 3-Year Safety Award. The annual award, safety improvement and three-year average categories are divided into three divisions based on the type of product manufactured at the mill (plywood; OSB; and glulam, CLT, I-joist, LVL and SCL).
Sixty-nine APA-member structural wood panel and engineered wood product facilities in the U.S., Canada and abroad participated in the 2021 program. A total of 16 facilities representing seven APA member companies earned awards in various competition categories. Some mills were multiple award winners.
While the program awards are limited to APA members, data is collected from both member and non-member mills to provide a broad-based industry performance benchmark. A total of 80 mills reported data for 2021.
The 2021 Safety and Health Awards program was the 14th year of the program under a revitalized safety effort spearheaded by the APA Safety and Health Advisory Committee comprised of several APA member company safety professionals. Under the committee’s guidance, three main goals were established: make the APA program the premier safety awards program in the industry, encourage the sharing of best practices to improve the industry’s safety culture and programs and, most importantly, improve the industry’s overall safety performance.
The full list of winners and more information on the APA Safety and Health Awards Program can be found on the Association’s website at www.apawood.org.
