Photo courtesy of CB&I

View of the Power Block in 2011 (same as Photo 3). CB&I erecting the Steam Turbine Island and all building equipment components.

Photo courtesy of CB&I

Aerial view of the facility facing East. Taken in Feb 2013. Shows the size of the entire plant and the surrounding area (Greenfield site).

The entire project team, including the owners, contractors and subcontractors, recorded 12.8-million man-hours on the $1.7-billion facility. Despite the project's enormous size and the massive number of man-hours required to build it, the team logged a recordable incident rate of just 0.64 and a lost-time accident rate of 0.11, impressing this year's safety judges.

A job safety assessment process refocused the work force before, during and after each work task every day. CB&I performed 13 different safety audits weekly to ensure compliance along with trending of leading indicators. This audit process, plus a site safety committee made up of union and nonunion contractors, had a major impact on the project's overall safety and culture.

The project team was able to adapt and refocus its efforts on fallen-object audits at the end of 2009 and start of 2010, when CB&I was in a safety stand-down for several days as a result of dropped material while erecting boiler steel.

"Safety is always our number one priority at CB&I. Extensive safety training was given to all craft and management to continually adhere to a safety-first culture," says Scott Reschly, project director for CB&I. "Management led by example, and the craftsmen dedicated themselves to that philosophy because they understood how much they, as people, were valued by CB&I."

All craft workers and management were required to take site-specific safety orientations, OSHA 10, fall-protection, electrical-tagout and fire-watch training. Management was required to take even more training, including OSHA 30, core foreman modules, accident investigation, JSA, hazard recognition, substance-abuse training, barricade exclusion and other safety-driven training modules.

The owner, American Electric Power's Southwestern Electric Power Co., commended CB&I's safety program as one of the best it has been involved with as far as buy-in, execution and results.

Key Players

Owner American Electric Power’s Southwestern Electric Power Co., Columbus, Ohio

General Contractors CB&I (BOP GC) and The Babcock & Wilcox Co. (AQCS GC), both of Charlotte, N.C.

Lead Design CB&I, Centennial, Colo.