Pala has created a culture dedicated to the safe completion of each project and emphasizes safety as the first of its five core values.  The Company believes its safety performance is superior to that of its competitors, as evidenced by its below-industry-average total recordable incidence rate (“TRIR”) of 0.37 for year-to-date 2007 and an experience modifier rate (“EMR”) of 0.79 for 2006.  Pala’s safety record provides a significant competitive advantage, as contractors must possess excellent safety records to pre-qualify to perform work in refineries and other petrochemical facilities.

Pala’s safety standards are important for both the recruitment and retention of its talented employees.  Management attributes its excellent safety record primarily to its employees’ dedication to the Company’s safety philosophy of emphasizing individual responsibility for on and off the job safety.  To ensure worker safety, the Company conducts regular safety meetings throughout each project, with crewmembers taking an active leadership role and provides site-specific training regarding work permit systems, confined spaces and emergency procedures. 

The Company’s project managers are responsible for on-the-job safety supervision, and instruct supervisors and crewmembers as to the specific safety concerns of each job using several tools:

  • Estimate Safety Checklists

  • Pre-Job Safety Analysis (PJSA)

  • Pre-Task Safety Analysis (PTSA)

These procedures help emphasize personal accountability for safety, and simplify complex processes into smaller, more manageable components, enabling employees to focus on the most important safety hazards during each step of the job.

Pala regularly provides its employees with safety and craftsman training courses designed both to improve efficiency and create a safer work environment.  The most critical piece of Pala’s safety process is to have Company representatives and staff members consistently conduct site safety observations and inspections, measuring statistics such as percent safe behaviors, number of improvement suggestions per man-hour and percent compliance with planning requirements.  The collected data is stored electronically for easy reporting, providing supervisors and project managers with detailed and timely safety information for their crewmembers.  Tracking data in this manner allows Pala to reinforce its behavioral based safety process by allowing management to spend time in the field to ensure unsafe conditions and behaviors are eliminated. 

The Company is dedicated to preventing incidents and to learning from them in the unfortunate event of an occurrence.  In the event of an incident, Pala applies its proprietary safety performance measurement system, the PALA Incident Index (“PII”).  The PII system is used to evaluate the before-the-fact prevention efforts of each incident and categorizes incidents based on cause, preventive efforts and severity.  Those classified as medium, high or recordable are investigated to determine the root cause, and statistics and descriptions are maintained and used by the Company to improve practices and minimize the potential for future incidents. 
 

Pala-Interstate, LLC - Diversified Construction Services
Baton Rouge, LA (225) 272-5194 | New Orleans, LA (504) 468-1489 | La Porte, TX (281) 470-7252