Someone Has Begun to Use Horse Sense!

Oklahoma Contractor Using Horse Sense

The following article below shows that Flintco has taken "the bull by the horns" and has come up with a comprehensive safety training agenda for it's crane operators as well as for some of it's subcontractors.

Many things have been written about the many crane incidents around the country. Many of the articles have purposed that MORE TRAINING would be a great help in preventing crane failure problems. This company is to be congratulated in putting the Donkey Way of doing business and replacing it with the Horse Sense way.

Published June 27, 2008 12:00 am - Flintco has a lot of reasons to be safety conscious.

With construction sites all over the country, there's a lot of room for errors. Errors that could cause injuries or even fatalities.
And in the game of construction, it seems the bigger the piece of equipment the more deadly.

The safer the sooner
(Note: the "sooner" can refer to the Oklahoma Sooners!)

By Julianna Parker

Flintco has a lot of reasons to be safety conscious.

With construction sites all over the country, there's a lot of room for errors. Errors that could cause injuries or even fatalities.

And in the game of construction, it seems the bigger the piece of equipment the more deadly.

"The crane is the most dangerous piece of equipment on the site, bar none," said Mike Bailey, director of operations at Flintco who has worked with cranes for more than 30 years.

During the first six months of 2008, there were 178 crane-related accidents in the U.S., resulting in 90 fatalities, according to CraneAccidents.com.

Flintco always has been safety-conscious, and recently was recognized by The Associated General Contractors of America as among the top three companies in the nation with the best safety record.

"It's a culture (of safety)," said Mark Grimes, Flintco Oklahoma City Division president. "It's something that everyone can say they're safe, but to actually do it and mean it is a different story."

That business philosophy should be reassuring, because Flintco has about eight cranes working in Norman on its construction projects.

The construction company recently launched a training program for those working on its projects with cranes, the equipment hundreds of feet tall that's used to move loads around on construction sites.

The training was initiated after a crane accident that fortunately didn't injure anyone, but was still alarming, Grimes said.

Since the time of the incident, Shawn Cosby has been hired by Flintco. He told his supervisors he could begin training for Flintco employees who work with cranes. Cosby worked with cranes for 22 years and developed a crane operator curriculum while teaching at the Oklahoma College of Construction.

In September, Cosby began teaching classes. Already 43 employees have completed the program and 19 employees of subcontractors have undergone the training.

There are five levels in the class, with each level taking about four hours of class time to complete. Employees must pass every level in order to work with cranes.

The training focuses on the knowledge needed to signal and rig, as well as the national standards that are being created, Cosby said. Workers are trained to American National Standards Institute and Occupational Safety and Health Administration specifications.

Certification is something that's recently come to national attention as more focus is put on doing construction well.