APPA Report Compiles Safety Data Submitted By Public Power Utilities

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
Posted July 7, 2020

The American Public Power Association recently released a report that compiles safety data that was submitted by utilities for APPA’s annual “Safety Awards of Excellence” contest.

The report, “Evaluation of Data Submitted to American Public Power Association’s 2019 Safety Awards of Excellence,” provides both tabular and graphical evaluations of the data submitted to APPA’s annual Safety Awards of Excellence for 2019.

The purpose of compiling this data is to offer a benchmark for individual municipal utilities. The intent of the report is to help safety professionals analyze their utility’s yearly performance in relation to others in the public power community. Through the data presented in the report, APPA aspires to help safety professionals create a context for review of safety program efficacy at their individual utilities.

Each year, the safety awards are open to any APPA member utility, joint action agency, federal agency, and state association/agency that wishes to participate.

Since participation is voluntary, the rules are set up to encourage consistent involvement. Thus, to be eligible to win an award, participants must submit data for three consecutive years. In the third year, the participant will be considered eligible for an award. Consistent submission helps to minimize selection bias and skewing of yearly data, APPA noted.

Entries are sorted into groups according to the total number of hours worked by all electric utility employees at a particular utility in the designated year. The group categories are the same from year to year. A group-specific analysis is included in the report.

Along with group-by-group and regional analyses of data, the report shows data averaged for all groups combined over the history of the awards.

APPA provides the data presented in the report for use by its members in aggregate form only. The individual names of the utilities that have entered the awards are confidential. Each year, The Association releases only the names of those utilities that have received awards recognition, in addition to their calculated incidence rate and worker hours for the given year.

Since greater numbers of entrants enhance the value of the safety awards for all utilities involved, APPA encourages all members to continue submitting data on a yearly basis, regardless of the number of accidents/injuries that have occurred over the calendar year.

One hundred twenty-five utilities earned APPA’s Safety Award of Excellence for safe operating practices in 2019, APPA reported in April. More than 335 utilities entered the annual safety awards, which was the highest number of entrants in the history of the program.

The report is available here.