On Tuesday afternoon the Fort Frances Power Corporation’s (FFPC) staff and board members gathered to celebrate the milestone safety marker with a pizza party.
President and CEO of FFPC Joerg Ruppenstein praised his team for staying safe on the job.
“We work in a very unforgiving industry, accidents often result in fatalities,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of the work we do is actually on energized systems, so if you touch the wrong wire it’s lethal, so it’s an absolute pleasure to have achieved this monumental milestone.”
Ruppenstein cited the math that the 250,000 hours has taken 16 and a half years to achieve, that’s half of a 30-year working career, he said.
FFPC has a staff of 11 with additional student hires in the summer months.
The injury free hours are denoted by the fact that there have been no claims through Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
“No one had to go on modified work, no one had to go on WSIB because of an injury,” Ruppenstein said. “Everybody was able to report to work every day for the last 16 and a half years, thanks to working safely.”
Ruppenstein says it’s a group effort including the linemen, those working in the office and the board of directors.
“From the board of directors, for all of their support for outfitting the line crews with grade-A safety equipment, right to the competencies of all of the staff and the linemen, they’re out there in the middle of the night restoring power,” he said.
Board chair Larry Cousineau addressed those gathered as well.
“Safe working hours is an item on our agenda every month and we try to do our best to give you the proper equipment to be safe all of the time,” he said. “We realize how dangerous it is, what you work with. Also for the office staff, even with them, they’re doing stuff every day lifting boxes and everything and they’ve been safe too.”
“Safety is within our culture,” Ruppenstein said. “It’s ingrained in all that we do, before every job we tackle, we talk about the hazards and talk about how the job is approached.”
