GreyStone Aces Safety Accreditation

GreyStone Power Corporation recently completed safety accreditation and received the highest safety accreditation score ever awarded by Georgia EMC, the statewide trade association that serves Georgia’s 41 electric membership corporations.

The accreditation process included three site visits to GreyStone, including two unannounced visits in previous years. For 2014, the safety inspectors also collected documents from 2011 to 2013, including all maintenance records, compliance documents and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) record keeping.

Both unannounced site visits earned GreyStone an extra five “bonus” percentage points to add to their final safety accreditation score. “During all three site visits, they were not able to find a single safety discrepancy. That resulted in an additional 10 percent in ‘bonus points,’ giving GreyStone a perfect score of 110 percent,” said GreyStone President/CEO Gary Miller.

According to GreyStone Safety & Loss Control Director Blake Pendley, this year’s site visit involved a day and a half of inspecting GreyStone’s offices in Douglasville and Dallas, visiting line crews and asking employees safety questions. Those safety questions required employees to understand GreyStone’s emergency action plan and to know the location of safety tools, such as first aid kits, defibrillators and fire extinguishers in the building.

In preparing for the safety accreditation process, GreyStone’s Safety Steering Team examined a different area of the cooperative each quarter, such as the office grounds and vehicle fleet. “Preparations for safety accreditation are done every day. GreyStone’s philosophy is not to just wait the month before they’re coming, but to be ready for safety accreditation on a daily basis,” said Pendley.

Following the safety accreditation, Miller thanked GreyStone’s employees and the Safety Steering Team, which includes Pendley and Operations Department Manager Steve Findley, who serves as the team’s sponsor.

As part of GreyStone’s safety excellence program, employees submit safety reports each month in which they describe safety issues and the steps they took to report or correct the hazard.

“It’s a tribute to every employee at GreyStone who is looking for safety issues and reporting those or fixing those. When you’ve got that many people looking, it’s no surprise that when these folks come in they can’t find any safety hazards because we have looked over everything very, very carefully,” said Miller.

“Earning 100 percent on a safety accreditation in general takes the whole employee group,” Pendley added.

GreyStone’s safety excellence program has also earned recognition on a national level. Pendley and Miller plan to attend a safety summit next year for Federated Insurance, where they will share their ideas with co-ops from across the country. Safety Steering Team Leader Chris Smith recently spoke at a safety conference for electric cooperatives held in Ocala, Fla., where he shared the team’s success stories.

GreyStone Power serves more than 108,000 members in portions of eight counties, including Paulding, Douglas, Fulton, Cobb, Carroll, Bartow, Fayette and Coweta counties. Learn more at www.greystonepower.com.