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APA – THE Engineered Wood Association announced the winners of its 2022 Safety & Health Awards—the premier safety award program for North America’s engineered wood products industry. The program’s goal is to promote and recognize operational excellence and reduce injury and illness rates.
Structurlam Mass Timber Corp. and LP won Safest Company Awards, while the coveted Innovation in Safety Award went to two winners: Tolko Industries’ Plywood Division in Armstrong, B.C., as recipient of the Equipment-Based Innovation Award for its Veneer Loading Marking Robot, and Boise Cascade Wood Products, Lena, La., as recipient of the Jeff Wagner Process-Based Innovation Award for its New Hire Mentorship Program.
“We are proud of our members’ commitment to establishing processes that improve workers’ safety,” APA president Mark Tibbetts said. “It is important that we as an industry continue to implement best practices so we can continue to make our workplaces as safe as possible.”
Other competition categories include the Annual Safety & Health Honor Roll, Safety Improvement Award, and Three-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).
Seventy-two APA-member structural wood panel and engineered wood product facilities participated in the 2022 program. A total of 11 facilities representing seven companies earned awards in various competition categories. Some mills won multiple awards.
While the awards are limited to APA members, data is collected from member and non-member mills to provide a broad-based industry performance benchmark. This is the 15th year of the program and led by a revitalized safety effort spearheaded by the APA Safety & 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.
