Executive Summary

The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association surveyed member companies to compile the 2010  Safety Benchmarking Survey Report.  The report is based on information contained in the OSHA 300A summary log of member companies that responded to the information request.  Fifty one (51) member companies collectively reported 25,172,758 million employee hours.  (This number of hours equals approximately 12,586 employees working for member companies).  The 2009 Survey had forty seven (47) member companies reporting 29.61 million employee hours.  This report includes a 3-year average based on all responses since calendar year 2007.  Table 6 illustrates the metrics derived from this year’s survey responses, which summarizes calendar year 2009 along with the three year average for 2007, 2008 and 2009.      

The companies are divided into three categories based on the number of employee hours:  less than 1 million employee hours, 1 - 3 million employee hours and greater than 3 million employee hours.  The lost-time incidence rate is termed days away from work injury and illness (DAFWII), and days away from work and restricted duty/job transfer are combined to represent the lost work days injury and illness (LWDII).  DAFWII is a measure of the number of cases that involve days away from work, and LWDII includes cases with days away from work plus cases with job transfer, restricted and/or both.

The primary goal of the NRMCA Safety Benchmarking Survey is to ultimately reduce the incident rate in the ready mixed concrete industry. The latest data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (as of 1 June 2010) indicates that the ready mixed concrete industries overall incident rate at 5.2.  Table 1 illustrates previous years for comparison:

 Table 1 BLS Incident rate data for previous years

Overall, the data shows a downward trend as the industry continues to stress safe and healthy workplaces along with the added emphasis on training and education.  NRMCA, for example, conducts safety courses, safety webinars and is constantly publishing updated safety related training materials.

Collectively companies reported thirteen (13) illnesses, with the largest category being ‘hearing loss’ cases, which accounted for seven (7) illnesses.  The combined industry severity rate (SR) was 64.82, which is an increase from last year’s survey (SR=57.7), indicating that injuries and illnesses required more time away from work in 2009 than in the prior year.  This means that an average of 64.82 lost days occurred as a result of injury or illness in calendar year 2009 for every one hundred employees. 

The most common types of injury are:

• slips, trips and falls

• strains and sprains

• being struck by an object. 

Mixer accidents that meet the definition of DOT recordable accidents are also tracked.  The definition of a DOT Recordable Accident is an occurrence involving a commercial motor vehicle on a public road in intrastate or interstate commerce, which results in:
1) a fatality;
2) injury to a person requiring immediate treatment away from the scene of the accident; or
3) disabling damage to a vehicle, requiring it to be towed.

 Table 2 Mixer Truck Accident data for previous years