GCI Celebrates Safety Milestone: 3 million accident free hours.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: TELECOM & TECH

Homegrown Alaska telecommunications company GCI announced in September that it was celebrating more than 3 million hours of safe operations both on Alaska's North Slope and in the Gulf of Mexico, "a remarkable achievement for a company that specializes in climbing 300-foot towers, aligning satellite dishes during Alaska's Arctic winters, and maintaining networks on offshore oil rigs," according to the company.

A safety achievement of this magnitude is never an accident, and GCI deliberately built a company culture of safety. Director of Safety and Risk Management Philip Ulmer says, "Many years ago the company adopted its basic principles that established how every employee can create positive relationships with other employees and communicate effectively to promote ideas... The safety culture of the company evolved to where it was a priority to break down any barriers for employees to report unsafe conditions or processes. GCI's strength is to have a collaborative work environment to develop solutions to manage the risks to people, property, and the environment. The building blocks for our safety culture are the employees who have the freedom to speak up and believe they will be not be subject to explicit or implicit retaliation for sharing their concerns."

Ulmer says that from day one new employees are invited to participate in GCI's culture of safety: "During on-boarding the new employee is instructed to report unsafe work situations immediately to their supervisor. The employee also has computer access to the entire company safety management system process documents and other internal processes--examples include ergonomics, emergency response, and company fleet vehicle safety."

While GCI employees may face potentially dangerous situations at remote locations or on...