Georgia-Pacific Construction Projects Recognized for Excellence in Safety

June 4, 2024

Atlanta - Georgia-Pacific's $550 million Brawny® site in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and its $425 million Dixie_® site in Jackson, Tennessee, were each recently awarded a Gold Safety Award by Liberty Mutual_® Insurance for exceptional safety performance. Late last year, our gypsum wallboard production facility in Sweetwater, Texas, received Liberty Mutual_® Insurance’s Silver Safety Award. The awards recognize an organization’s commitment to keeping employees and contractors safe during large construction projects. 

Safety is paramount at Georgia-Pacific's operations, whether it is the existing facilities where we make our products or constructing new sites. Everything we do is in alignment with our Values, which include Stewardship and Compliance. The company works hard to ensure everyone acts in accordance with safety laws and industry regulations and complies with environmental guidelines, as well as our internal safety practices. Georgia-Pacific also continuously works to challenge and transform how we do business by constantly assessing safety practices and guidelines to ensure they are effective.  

Before any work began in Texas, Wisconsin, and Tennessee, Georgia-Pacific and our partners began to develop safety plans for each of these sites. In exploring these plans and what made them successful, there was a focus on three key factors – communication, culture, and behavior.  

“Culture and communication are very important with large scale projects such as the new Dixie plant in Jackon, Tennessee,” said Mike Evans, senior project manager, Georgia-Pacific. “Our partners played an integral role in developing safety plans for the construction site. We selected partners that make safety for employees and everyone on a worksite important, just as we do here at Georgia-Pacific. We collaborated to create safety plans and revise them as needed. We also worked together to communicate with everyone on the site, and cultivated a culture where everyone contributed to the plan and brought their comparative advantage – the knowledge and experience they had – to the project.” 

At the construction site for the new through-air-dried (TAD) product system in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Dean Wesolowski, operations manager, Georgia-Pacific, shared how the importance of implementing the Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) framework with Georgia-Pacific employees and more than 500 contractors played an important role in the project's outcome. HOP focuses on understanding how humans interact with their work environment. It is based on the principle that errors are a natural part of human behavior and the way to improve safety and performance is by having conversations to better understand different conditions and implement controls to help prevent potential negative outcomes. 

Throughout the entire project, collaborative conversations, culture, and communication were not only an integral part of the overall safety planning, but they also created the opportunity for people directly doing the work to discuss different work conditions, ask questions and learn the types of controls available. All these learning opportunities allowed the Green Bay team to build a stronger capacity to "fail safely." 

"HOP cultivated a continuous improvement culture driven by proactive problem solving," said Wesolowski. "The ability to have both Georgia-Pacific and outside contractors engaged in safety helped create a successful project." 

Ben Niemuth, project safety leader, Georgia-Pacific, also explained the importance of communication and work culture to facilitating a safe project site. “More than 500 contractors worked on this site every day. We wanted to ensure that everyone felt empowered to participate in the safety plan process, by not just following procedures, but contributing their ideas and sharing feedback. It was important to the work culture that everyone at this site felt valued, that their opinions mattered, and that Georgia-Pacific cared about their safety.” 

Liberty Mutual® Insurance is the underwriter of Georgia-Pacific's owner-controlled insurance programs for each site. The Gold Safety Award recognizes companies that have achieved an 80% better than industry average with a minimum of 200,000 labor hours Days Away Restricted Transfer, or DART, rate. The Silver Safety Award recognizes companies that have achieved a 60% better than industry average score. DART measures the number of on-site, nonresidential building construction injuries that require lost time or days away. Currently, the Brawny® site, which is more than 95% complete, has experienced zero incidents with lost time days due to accidents resulting in a DART score of 0.00. 

Georgia-Pacific's commitment to safety for its employees and contractors supports our value of Principled Entrepreneurship, and creates long-term mutual benefit for customers, communities, employees, suppliers, regulators, and other partners.  

Learn more about Georgia-Pacific's businesses at https://news.gp.com/.