New Working Group to Review ILTA Safety Awards Program

ILTA formed a Member led Working Group to reevaluate and revise the ILTA Safety Awards program. Over the last several years, ILTA Members raised concerns about the quality and quantity of information that is used to determine eligibility for the ILTA safety awards.

The primary concerns are based on the lack of qualitative data found in existing OSHA standards and regulations. Specifically, OSHA uses an aggregated form of data that equates a worker dying from an allergic reaction to a bee sting the same as a worker dying from a fire. The reportable incident data and standard also does not allow ILTA Members to sufficiently distinguish their safety programs to allow for meaningful and qualitative assessment applied to reasonable objective criteria. The ILTA EHS&S meeting in New Orleans provided a session for Member companies to discuss their concerns about this issue.

As a result of the EHS&S Meeting and discussion, Shannon Caldwell of Zenith Terminals agreed to convene a small working group to discuss revising the ILTA Safety Awards program. The Working Group is scheduled to host a series of meetings over the next month and a half, with the goal of presenting its recommendations at the upcoming ILTA Health and Safety committee meeting in September.