Coast West Plumbing Says "Safety Pays"

by Joe Wheeler

From The Construction Zone: November 2000

"It works. It’s a proven method," David Keefe, general manager of Coast West Plumbing said of offering safety incentives to his employees. "We kicked off our incentive program in April, because that’s when our worker’s comp insurance renewed. We wanted to lower our claims costs."

Coast West Plumbing has been working out of Las Vegas since 1993, when owner Dennis Burk opened a new location in Nevada because the California construction industry was suffering a serious slump.

"We opened in 1977. We’re family owned and operated, with about 50 employees," Burk said. The sense of family runs deep. Burk said, "We still have the first employee we ever hired."

Safety is crucial to keeping worker’s comp claims experience low. Coast West Plumbing was 115 days without a serious accident in which an employee loses time from work, with only two "first-aid" incidents in that period when the employees were to draw for gift certificates worth $50.00 each.

Coast West’s insurance company is Nevada Contractors Insurance, and Keefe said the company has been a great help when it come to safety issues.

"Nevada Contractors Insurance helps protect you," he said. "It’s a great organization, and helped us form our safety programs."

H. J. Shewmake and Josh Schultz of NCI’s loss control team attended a foreman’s meeting recently, and talked about safety issues with the guys who make it happen.

"We do loss control," Schultz said. "We do inspections and find out what’s going on in the field and what can be done to make things safer. But it’s you foremen who are key to enforcement in the field."

Coast West provides personal protective equipment such as hard hats and safety

glasses, and even replaces electrical cords when frayed or damaged.

"We’ve been here seven years and been preaching to the project managers that it’s Coast West’s policy to work safe," general manager Keefe said. "We wear hard hats in the field and we don’t allow frayed cords or bad ladders. If we see people without hard hats, that job is shut down for a day without pay."

Keefe asked his foremen to be his "agents" in the field, and expects their crews to fully comply with the company’ safety rules. Keefe explained that nobody can afford on-the-job-injuries; they damage both employee and company.

"We care that you don’t get hurt," Keefe said. "If you do get hurt, who’s really hurt? You’re now on half pay (lost time). Can you live on that? But we’re hurt, too. We no longer have your talent on the job."

Coast West Plumbing’s Safety Incentive Program

Every month the company is injury-free, the company gives out a $50.00 gift certificate. The gift certificates add up each month and employees enter drawings for them by filling out a form at tailgate safety meetings and signing it.

The pot accomplishes two things: It makes the employees mindful of safety. The meetings in which the gift certificates are drawn are fun and profitable, and helps keep safety in a worker’s mind - a worker then takes that extra second to consider if a situation is safe or not.

The second accomplishment of the program is attendance at tailgate safety meetings, with worker’s signing off that they attended. This helps keep everyone focused on safety issues while providing the employer with a record of what training was offered and who attended.

H. J. Shewmake talked fire safety at the foremen’s meeting at Coast West Plumbing. A former firefighter, Shewmake spoke on fire safety issues pertinent to plumbers, especially when sweating pipe. "The extinguisher needs to be within arm’s reach when torching," Shewmake said. "The main concern is the immediate hot work area and the area below it."

Shewmake said that plumbers working on the second floor of a building often forget to water down or check the area below. Sparks can easily fall into debris or wood shavings or other combustible material, and smolder until many hours later when they burst into flame.

"There’s three things about fire extinguishers you need to know: 1) It must be fully intact, it has the nozzle, gauge and pin in place; 2) It looks good. That means it’s fully charged and not damaged in any way; 3) It has a current inspection tag on it."

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