The Gold Shovel Certification Committee has recently notified Summit Drilling of their approved Gold Shovel Standard Certification
Gold Shovel Standard (GSS) is a nonprofit organization that provides third-party confirmation of baseline Safety Management Systems for the protection of buried assets, and a fair and transparent metric for damage prevention. A company that is Gold Shovel Standard Certified has policies and procedures, which, if followed, make it unlikely that the company will cause at-fault damage to buried infrastructure. Gold Shovel Standard certified organizations are recognized to be Best-in-Class.
“We are very proud to have been approved by the Gold Shovel Certification Committee”, states Tory Donnelly, President of Summit Drilling. “Qualifying for this program further demonstrates our ongoing commitment to Health and Safety. The well-being of our field teams is paramount, so additional processes and metrics can only improve our already rigorous programs”, concludes Donnelly.
Gold Shovel Standard provides two very basic services for industry. First, it provides third-party confirmation of an in-place Safety Management System (SMS) for the protection of buried assets. And second, it represents an ambitious effort driven by industry to create fair and transparent metrics for damage prevention similar to other safety metrics (LTIR, EMR, TRIR, DART, etc.)
This program confirms the adequacy of the participant’s policies and procedures, and produces a rating, known as an EICO™ score, short for “Excavation Incident Calculated Occurrence” which is a measure of how carefully a company excavates around buried infrastructure.
The EICO Score was created to address a gap in the general knowledge about how carefully or carelessly companies excavate around buried infrastructure. One way to think about EICO Scores is by drawing a parallel to general safety ratings. Over the last decade, what was considered acceptable performance in the safety arena has steadily increased, and now all contractors must be attentive to safety of their workforce.
“The timing for this certification is ideal”, states Summit’s CEO, Robert Kreilick, Jr. “We’re seeing an increase in health and safety requirements across a wider span of industry segments. As infrastructure spending accelerates, companies that have made the investments proactively, as Summit has, will be in an excellent position to address the growing needs of their environmental and geotechnical clients. Adding this layer of reporting and transparency, continues Mr. Kreilick, will only deepen the trust our clients currently extend.
Over the next decade, the Gold Shovel Standard will be used to first measure the performance of companies and then slowly ratchet up the expectation of how carefully a company must be when excavating around buried infrastructure.
Summit Drilling provides a wide range of environmental and geotechnical services throughout the Eastern US, from Vermont to Georgia, including sonic, air rotary, hollow stem auger, mud rotary, direct push and injection services. In addition to their industry-leading field services teams, Summit Drilling has been honored for the seventh consecutive year with the Governor’s Annual Occupational Safety & Health Award. For more information about Summit Drilling services, or attending a Health & Safety meeting, call 800-242-6648. To submit an online request for proposal, click “Start A Project”.
