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We recognize the need to track and report safety performance in the form of numbers of injured employees. However, we never lose sight of the fact that these statistics are not just numbers; they are our fellow employees, peers and friends. Their injuries may have been the result of a management system failure, or an individual performance error and may have been non-preventable. Regardless of the cause of the accident, we must learn from the incident in order to prevent similar injuries in the future.
As a corporation, we report on safety statistics in order to measure and improve our performance. In its 2005 - 2010 business Plan, "Owning the Challenge," APS has challenged its entire staff to be "the best of the best" as judged against liked-sized investor-owned utilities. APS' goal is to be ranked number one among its peer utilities by 2010 as measured by:
All Injury Incident Rate - total OSHA Recordable injuries reported;
Lost Work Incident Rate - total number of OSHA Recordable injuries resulting in lost workdays; and,
Severity Incident Rate - total number of workdays lost due to OSHA Recordable injuries.
While APS continues to be a top performer in safety performance in the electric & gas utility industry, our safety performance metrics has shown a downward trend over the last couple of years, as shown in the chart below. Safety is a top priority at APS, and we are taking steps to improve that performance in 2007, including holding all officers, managers and front-line employees accountable for safety performance in their operations.
(Note: 2006 Edison Electric Institute utility industry safety statistics were not available at the time this report was published.)
We have a formal electronic Event Notification and Tracking System, and strongly encourage reporting of all close-call events so that we can evaluate the circumstances behind the close-call in order to further improve our safety program, whether that be by changing procedures, improved training, equipment changes, etc. By evaluating close calls and making corrections when appropriate, we believe we can identify potential problem areas before they result in an accident. Our close call event numbers have increased over the past several years as we have been successful in improving employeecooperation in this important part of our overall safety effort.
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