Two Paducah Contractors are Repeat Winners of Kentucky Safety Award

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Two prime contractors working at EM’s Paducah Site recently received the Governor’s Safety and Health Award at the Kentucky Labor Cabinet’s 34th annual Safety and Health Conference and Exposition.

   This is the second consecutive year the awards for outstanding safety and health performance were presented to Mid-America Conversion Services (MCS), the operations contractor for EM’s Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities, and the Swift & Staley Team (SST), the infrastructure support services contractor for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site.

   “The Department of Energy appreciates the emphasis the Commonwealth of Kentucky places on safety, and the awards that are given,” EM Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office Paducah Site Lead Jennifer Woodard said. “Ensuring our workers go home safe and healthy every day is important to us.”

   MCS achieved 1,197,209 hours and SST worked 814,122 hours without a workplace injury or illness resulting in days away from work through December 2017.

   “Without ownership of safety and all the Integrated Safety Management System Principles by each employee, the plant could not achieve nearly three years of excellence in the important safety measure of lost-time injury," said Sherree Shaw, MCS’s Paducah operations transformation manager.

   MCS is a joint venture of Atkins Global Nuclear Secured, Westinghouse Government Services, and Fluor Federal Services. MCS began processing DOE’s more than 700,000 metric tons of uranium enrichment byproduct in 2017. The DUF6 Conversion Project is carried out at EM’s specially designed facilities in Ohio and Kentucky and administered in Lexington. The project produces two materials suitable for beneficial reuse and disposal: depleted uranium oxide and hydrofluoric acid. The contractor also safely maintains EM’s DUF6 inventory at the two sites.

   Prime contractor SST, which consists of Swift & Staley and major subcontractors North Wind Solutions and Leidos, is responsible for Paducah Site roads and grounds maintenance, janitorial services, safeguards and security program, information technology, radiological monitoring, records management and document control, facilities maintenance, property management, and training. SST has earned the Governor’s Safety and Health Award seven times. 

   “SST has a strong leadership team and workforce that understand the importance of employee involvement in hazard recognition and injury prevention,” Environment, Safety and Health Manager John Hobbs said. “SST continually strives to maintain and improve a safety culture that supports open communication of hazards and employee involvement in the resolution of those hazards. This award would not be possible without the commitment of each and every SST employee to that objective.”