A Berlin electric truck is pictured.
File photo

By Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

The Town of Berlin Electric Utility Department has earned a Gold Designation under the American Public Power Association’s Safety Award of Excellence for maintaining safe operating practices in 2024.

Per a release issued by the town this week, Berlin’s Electric Utility Department was recognized for its commitment to safety through APPA’s annual Safety Award of Excellence, receiving the gold distinction in the category for utilities with 15,000 to 29,999 worker hours of yearly worker exposure.

APPA’s website says their safety award “recognizes public power utilities prioritizing safety in their day-to-day operations.”

“The Town of Berlin is proud of our safety culture,” Town Administrator Mary Bohlen said in the announcement. “This award is a testament to the safety culture we have built and the hard work that goes into ensuring that our team members have a safe work environment.”

Utility departments are presented with Diamond, Platinum, or Gold-level designations based on factors like their incident rates and responses to an application that displays the effectiveness of safety programs.

Over 200 utilities entered the annual APPA Safety Awards for 2024. Applicants are categorized according to their number of worker hours and then ranked based on the most incident-free records and the overall status of their safety culture.

“The incidence rate is based on the number of work-related reportable injuries or illnesses and the number of worker hours during 2024, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),” the municipality’s announcement states.

Per APPA’s website, the application process involves providing facts and figures in three categories: lagging indicators, leading indicators, and optional, non-graded essay questions.

Lagging indicators measure the “occurrence and frequency of past events, like the number or rate of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities,” the award’s application guidebook says. These factors also show the departments’ historical safety performance and are “traditionally used to identify deviations from established safety goals.”

Organizations must also detail the leading indicators or proactive steps a utility prioritizes to ensure a safe working environment.

APPA’s application handbook maintains that these measures play a key role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses and promoting continuous safety improvements.

The leading indicators category asks utilities if they track metrics. Some of these evaluations could include near miss frequency rate (NMFR), injury frequency rate (IFR), lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR), injury severity rate (ISR), total recordable incident rate (TRIR), days away restricted or transferred (DART), and safety compliance rate.

The utilities are then scored based on their application responses. They can receive up to 60 points in the lagging indicators category and up to 40 points in the leading indicators group.

A diamond certificate is given to departments with 90 or more points, a platinum certificate is for those receiving 80 to 89 points, and a gold certificate yields 70 to 79 points.

APPA’s application guide website says that the method for awarding points for reportable cases was revised for the 2024 award year to include a weighted system that ensures smaller utilities with fewer worker hours are not “disproportionately affected by the number of incidents reported in the award year.”

Berlin, in the 15,000 to 29,999 worker hours of yearly worker exposure category, received a gold designation.

“Harnessing electricity to keep our communities powered is vital work that can be dangerous, even deadly if the proper attention isn’t paid to tried-and-true safety practices,” said Jon Beasley, chair of APPA’s Safety Committee and Vice-President of Electric Cities of GA in the Berlin-issued press release. “This award honors utilities that hold fast to these practices and put the safety of their personnel and their customers above all else.”

APPA’s Safety Award of Excellence is a 60-plus-year-long tradition.