Zampell USA and Europe Achieve Safety Milestones

NEWBURYPORT, Mass. - May 24, 2019 - PRLog -- Zampell Denmark and Zampell USA each achieved safety milestones this year, marking continuous progress improvements as part of its overall goal to eliminate accidents.  Zampell Denmark achieved ISO 45001 certification and is possibly the first and only Danish refractory company to have this designation, and Zampell USA received the Diamond Safety, Training, and Evaluation Process (STEP) Award from the Association of Builders and Contractors (ABC).  Both awards show Zampell's continuous dedication to elevate its safety performance in all aspects of its operations, both in Europe and the USA.

ISO 45001 is an internationally recognized accreditation in occupational health and safety.  It unifies the former ISO 14001 and OSHAS 18001 standards into one management approach designed by occupational health and safety experts.  The ABC STEP Award is a national program that provides safety benchmarking and improvement tools that has been shown to dramatically improve safety performance among participating companies.   Established in 1969, STEP was developed and written by contractors, for contractors.  Companies measure their safety performance and policies through a review of 20 key components with a goal of enhancing safety programs and reducing jobsite incident rates.

Zampell A/S in Denmark received the ISO 45001 designation on March 15, 2019 and Zampell USA received the ABC Diamond STEP award on May 16, 2019.  Both the ISO 45001 and ABC Diamond STEP Award highlight Zampell's dedication to increasing standardization and continuous improvements based on the refinement of those standards.

Brian Zampell, CEO of Zampell, remarked, "In the last year, we made a considerable investment of time and resources to further standardization across all of Zampell.  We believe that by universally getting everyone to do things the same way, we can make incremental changes that will progressively improve our entire company.  Safety has to be a process, and both of these programs illustrate our dedication to making safety a process of success at Zampell.  I'm very proud of all of our employees since every individual has a role to play in both of these honors."

Participants in the ABC STEP program are rated and analyzed along four key areas, including current safety performance, leadership commitment to world class safety, cultural transformation and commitment to world class safety, and the level of introduction and deployment of world class safety.  The program requires evaluation, tracking, implementation, benchmarking, and leadership as components of the analysis and metrics that each participant supplies to ABC.  The levels of achievement are bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond.  Based on metrics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), participants in the ABC STEP program are generally 190% better than industry averages, platinum participants are 300% better than industry averages, and diamond participants are an astounding 680% better than industry averages.

One of the unique programs that Zampell is promoting to its employees in 2019 is its "STOP" program, with STOP being an acronym urging an employee to "Stop, Think, Observe, Proceed" before doing a task.  Each employee is issued a STOP booklet that has a page for every task they complete, allowing them to conduct a "Point of Work Risk Assessment" prior to each task.  A point of work risk assessment places accountability on each employee for their own safety by giving them a reminder checklist of the hazards that they should look to find and the measures to mitigate those hazards.  The STOP booklet is a concept that was initially piloted at Zampell's manufacturing site, Vulcan Refratories Ltd. in Stoke-on-Trent, England.

"Far too often, we find that our job sites evolve from what we thought would happen and what was covered in the tool box talk.  The STOP book helps our employees take a moment to figure out if anything changed from what they were told at the beginning of the day.  It gets every employee to act as their own safety advocate by having them run through a quick checklist on what to look for," commented Sean Case, Zampell USA's Chief Operating Officer.

Both the ISO 45001 program and the ABC Diamond STEP Award have the concept of continuous improvement built into them.  When asked about future objectives for Zampell in Europe and the USA, Gary Dukes, Managing Director of Zampell Europe, remarked, "I think one area that remains a challenge is the wide variety of safety cultures we encounter across our client sites in the USA and Europe.  The most important initiatives we can undertake are those that will allow Zampell to further insulate itself from these variables and ensure we can maintain our own high standards, no matter what the site standards may be."

Zampell is a family business that is chiefly involved with the engineering and construction of refractories, insulation, and scaffolding within the industrial and commercial sectors, and facilities management in all sectors. It was established in 1966 by Tom Zampell and continues to grow due to its core value of quality craftsmanship. Zampell is headquartered in Massachusetts and has branch offices in Maine, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Oregon, California, and Kentucky. Zampell also has a subsidiary, Zampell A/S, with locations in Jutland and Sjælland in Denmark, and subsidiaries Zampell Ltd. and Vulcan Refractories, Ltd. in England. It also operates a janitorial products company, Custodial Partners, in Massachusetts, ZAR-Tech, a refractories distribution company with locations in Massachusetts and New York, and Western Industrial Ceramics, a refractories distribution and fabrication company in Oregon and California.  Zampell also has a collaboration agreement with New England Mechanical Overlay in the USA to provide steel fabrication and pressure vessel repair services.  For more information on the Zampell family of companies, please visit their website at www.zampell.com.  For more information about NEMO, please visit www.nemoinc.net.