Jonesboro Facility Receives ‘Million Work Hours Safety Award’

TrinityRail’s maintenance services facility in Jonesboro recently gained recognition from the State of Arkansas for reaching an incredible safety milestone – 1,000,000 hours without a lost time injury. The ‘Million Work Hours Safety Award’ was the culmination of more than two years of stellar safety performance, spanning March 5, 2020, to March 29, 2022.

The Jonesboro team celebrated the accomplishment on May 12 with an employee cookout and award presentation from the State of Arkansas’ Department of Labor director, Ralph Hudson.

“We’re making a big deal of this award, because it is a big deal,” said Plant Manager Bobby Ferrell. “At the end of the day, achievements like this are as important to your family as they are to Trinity.?This award means no workers over the course of 1 million hours were forced to miss work because of a workplace incident that would have prevented them from providing for their family.”

The Jonesboro facility was one of just five Arkansas businesses to receive the award in the past year.

“It’s incredibly rare, but very important, for a company to have this kind of safety performance,” said Aaron Gooding, Senior Vice President of Maintenance Operations. “I want to express my appreciation for everything the Jonesboro team did to achieve this result. Thank you for working safely and for taking care of each other and going home to your families whole every day.”

This achievement is the result of a joint effort by facility leadership and their employees to focus on safety. The Jonesboro facility has well-established safety programs and trainings, but also an employee-led safety committee made of team members from across the factory.

“We work with the EH&S (Environmental, Health and Safety) team to promote a safe work culture by engaging our coworkers, completing 5S projects, reviewing joint safety analyses, and making adjustments to ensure our work can be done safely,” said Kim Brown, Customer Service Administrator and Safety Committee Leader. 5S is a system for organizing spaces so work can be performed safely, efficiently, and effectively.

Brown got involved with the committee because she wanted to learn more about Trinity’s safety culture and how to keep everyone safe at work. “This recognition is a huge milestone for Jonesboro. Just to be a part of it and see others be more safety-conscious has been amazing.”

Simply put, it takes everyone working as a team and focusing every day on safety to achieve this type of success.

“When milestones like this are reached, it demonstrates to the organization that profound goals can be reached when the programs are properly implemented and embraced by the employees,” added John Nadzan, Senior Director, EH&S. “There is always room for improvement, but the Jonesboro team is raising the bar for the rest of Trinity.”