When it comes to safety lapses, our goal will always be zero – zero errors, zero incidents, zero harm. It is a very difficult goal to achieve but one that we are absolutely committed to. In three of the last five years, we have had no employee fatalities. Although 2010 was one of our best years for employee safety performance in terms of the number and severity of injuries, people were still harmed and that is not acceptable. Slips, trips and falls again accounted for the most incidents. Fortunately, there was a major reduction in injuries caused by electrical flashes, which are among the most life-threatening of injuries.
We completed our first five-year Path to Excellence in 2010, setting a course for achieving top-quartile performance among peer companies in terms of recordable injuries and the severity of injuries that result in lost work days. While our performance improved significantly during this period, unfortunately there were two employee fatalities in 2009 and one in 2006.
We will now set a new five-year goal to achieve top-decile performance. To reach this level, we must achieve a recordable injury rate of 0.97 and a severity rate of 19.94 for 2011. This compares with actual 2010 performance of 1.05 and 22.62 (excluding River Operations), respectively. Activities focused on proactive prevention will be reflected in how we measure success going forward.
- For more information, please see LA7 of AEP’s Global Reporting Initiative G3 questionnaire.