Safety becomes priority at city's Delta Star

Frank Goodwin came on board at Delta Star in 2007 with one mission: Find any accident waiting to happen, and make sure it doesn’t happen.

The company was gearing up for expansion — demand for electrical transformers has boomed — and company leaders wanted to take a pro-active approach to safety.

The result has been a growing mindset that Goodwin, Delta Star’s safety manager calls “a culture of safety.”

In the past year the company has spent millions of dollars updating circuitry and equipment at its Mayflower Drive plant to meet safety requirements.

“The attitude of the employees has done a 180,” Goodwin said. “They’re more safety conscious.”

He said he’s even had employees ask to have ear protection and back braces, something that was unheard of in Goodwin’s 36 years of providing safety training.

Delta Star makes huge power transformers, the kinds seen in electrical substations.

As electricity usage has climbed in the U.S., so has the need for transformers. Delta Star used to produce six transformers per month. It’s already increased to 10 per month, and could be at 12 by May 2009, when the company expects to finish expanding its production line.

State Sen. Steve Newman is Delta Star’s vice president of sales and marketing in Lynchburg. He said the increased business comes not only from growing demand, but also from gaining market share.

“I think, with the proper leadership, this company has roared ahead,” Newman said.

The company’s mobile transformer, which can be used to restore power in a storm-caused outage, has become especially popular, he said.

The making of the huge transformers presents multiple opportunities for hazards.

It starts with cutting thick sheets of metal into smaller parts, then welding them together.

When it’s nearly done, the transformer — which can weigh 35 to 150 tons — is hung several feet off the ground by two cranes as final parts are added.

Before it’s shipped out, a lightning generator shoots bolts of electricity at the transformer to make sure it can withstand the blast.

Goodwin has trained companies on the standards of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for decades.

He still does some outside work. This summer he taught a 30-hour safety course that Liberty University offered to local companies.

When Delta Star asked him to come in-house full time, one of Goodwin’s first steps was to call OSHA and ask for a safety audit.

“People hear the word OSHA and they get nervous,” Goodwin said. “I took a pro-active approach to OSHA.”

OSHA lets companies invite inspectors in for a consultation to identify workplace hazards that would normally result in a violation.

The results of the free consultation are confidential, and don’t result in fines or charges if the company agrees to fix any problems that are found, said Richard De Angelis, a media specialist for OSHA.

The consultative inspection program in Virginia is operated through the state Department of Labor and Industry.

In that inspection more than a year ago, 87 would-be violations were found.

Goodwin said the most extensive violations were in electrical wiring. The plant was built nearly 50 years ago without ground fault circuit interrupters, which help make sure electricity stays in the wires where it belongs.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that ground fault circuit interrupters could prevent two thirds of all electrocutions.

The inspector also told Goodwin that the company needed to repair several cranes and forklifts, replace old metal cutting machines with new ones that had safety guards, and install a new fire alarm.

Goodwin also invited the Department of Environmental Quality for an audit, and learned that the company’s 47-year-old oil tank farm needed replacement, a $2.5 million project.

Goodwin said all of the problems have been fixed except one part of the building that needs taller handrails.

The company has also established a regimen of safety training. Over 190 of about 250 employees have taken 10 hours of OSHA-certified training, he said.

Frank Berryman, who works in Delta Star’s machine shop, said there’s “a lot more safety training (for) everybody who comes through the door.”

Berryman said that Goodwin has taught a class about avoiding heat stroke while working with hot, heavy machinery.

“I don’t think we ever had one before about heat,” he said.

In August, Delta Star had no reportable accidents or injuries, Goodwin said. While Goodwin calls that a success, he’s equally excited to see the company invest in the changes that make that happen.

“When they hired me a year ago, they told me they wanted to make the company totally compliant with OSHA,” he said. “I’ve never met management that was so positive.”