With the right standards and processes, leadership commitment, and a sense of responsibility and accountability among employees, we believe such a culture can be created and maintained throughout AEP. Leaders at all levels are expected to embody these values and cultivate an environment that encourages employees to make safety a priority and to look out for each other. This includes stopping a job when conditions change and safety and health are at risk. While we are making progress toward this goal, we still have work to do, including focusing more on behaviors and less on statistics. Too often we tell employees what we want them to achieve but not what we want them to do. They need to know both.

We want an environment where employees are encouraged to report all events. We recognize that, as people become more comfortable with reporting safety and health events, an increase in recordable events is likely. To get there, our employees need assurances of consistency, transparency and fairness in how they are treated when an event happens – in other words, a “just culture.”

There are still too many near-misses. These are events that may appear minor but could have had much more serious consequences. Several incidents in 2010 could easily have resulted in serious injuries or fatalities. We are analyzing such events to understand why they happened and how they can be prevented. We can’t rely on luck to prevent injuries. Creating and following well-designed policies and procedures, using error reduction tools such as Human Performance and looking out for each other are the steps that will get us to zero harm.

Whenever budgets are tightened or there is a work force reduction, the first concern is whether safety remains a high priority. Our commitment is that safety and health will not be compromised for any reason. For example, despite budget cuts during the past two years, we did not alter our plan to replace manlifts with elevators in our power plants. A power plant employee was severely injured while using a manlift in 2007, and we determined that the safety risk of keeping manlifts in service was too high and we needed to act. The manlift replacement program is on track to be completed by 2013 at a cost of approximately $20 million. Replacements have already been completed at our Kammer, Mitchell, Mountaineer and Rockport plants. Additional replacements at the Amos, Gavin and Cardinal plants are scheduled to be completed this year.

Among the operations modeling safe work practices are our five transmission dispatch centers, which prepare switch orders enabling field personnel to isolate electrical equipment from energized sources in order to perform maintenance. Employees at these facilities achieved a remarkable operational record in 2010 for the third consecutive year. Their accuracy rate was 99.9 percent – the same as in 2008 and 2009. Three of the centers went more than a year without any switching errors. They did it using Human Performance tools that focus on safety performance and operational improvements.

Within our Distribution business unit, pole-related incidents declined 58 percent in 2010, to five incidents from the prior two-year average of 12. We had only one incident and 12 associated lost work days caused by falls from poles in 2010. By comparison, in the previous two years we averaged 232 fall-related severity days per year. The use of fall restraints was a chief factor in this improvement.