Construction season at ANTHC kicks off with safety conference
April 14, 2017
Each spring as part of the ramp-up to construction season around Alaska, ANTHC’s Environmental Health and Engineering leaders host an annual safety conference for construction staff. Along with honing safety knowledge and skills, ANTHC construction personnel share institutional knowledge and recognize staff achievements in projects to serve our rural community partners.
The conference was held the week of March 27. Forty-five superintendents, tradesmen, construction managers and project managers were in attendance on any given day during the week. Most of these staff members work at rural sites, so the meetings are the only time during the construction season that they meet as a team.
ANTHC’s Jerod Jones, Jeremy Bultman and Ed Slattery were recognized for their hard work keeping projects on schedule and under budget. While the conference focused primarily on safety topics such as working in confined spaces, fall protection, and recognizing signs and symptoms of impairment, the week’s agenda also included presentations on environmental concerns and cultural awareness.
In addition to these topics, Bradford Blackstone, ANTHC Construction Manager, also mentioned the importance of bringing workers together from around the state so they could share information about different projects they’ve been a part of and discuss strategies that allowed them to overcome challenges and make work more efficient and safe. For example, understanding how sanitation infrastructure in Kwethluk was constructed will help ANTHC personnel tackle a project on a similar site and scale in Akiachak, Blackstone noted. Passing along this institutional knowledge helps ANTHC plan for future projects and work in a variety of different job sites more effectively and safely.
As we approach summer, ANTHC has many active projects planned for construction. For information on our construction and engineering work around the state, visit https://www.anthc.org/what-we-do/construction-engineering/.