American Society of Safety Professionals Conference 2025
In October, the American Society of Safety Professionals Southern Oregon Chapter had their annual conference in Ashland, Oregon. This is the largest workplace safety and health conference in Southern Oregon and a few of our Timber Products team members attended. Throughout the conference there are professional development opportunities, as well as various breakout sessions and a keynote speaker.
During the conference, there is also an award ceremony for those who have won Safety Committee Recognition, Outstanding Safety and Health Program, Safety Committee Champions and Business Leader Who Gets It. At this conference in 2023, Timber Products was awarded the Safety Committee Recognition Award, our Medford Plywood mill was awarded the Best of the Best Safety Committee Award and our employee, Dan Hagedorn, won the Safety Committee Champion award. This year, we had another employee, Jose Alcantar, get nominated for the Safety Committee Champion award and win! This is a great achievement and we wanted to share some of the reasons that Medford Plywood Safety Manager, Jaime Ludwig, nominated Jose for this award.
“Jose Alcantar is one of our Medford Plywood Millwrights who joined our safety Committee Team on March 15, 2023. Jose has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to his safety and safety for his fellow employees. For example, after every safety meeting, Jose will take the time to fix and correct hazards identified during our monthly inspection “See It – Fix It”. Having Jose on the safety team is a great asset because when we have a mechanical concern brought up it is corrected immediately. Jose will diagnose process upsets and with good intention will take immediate action to correct the hazard without having to wait for a work-order through our MMS (Maintenance Management System). Jose has been a contributing factor in our LOTO Committee, Fire Committee and our monthly safety observations to fix and correct hazards.
Jose has been an influential change in our safety because he demonstrates leadership qualities that we all want to see out on the shop floor. For instance, his consistent positive attitude geared towards safety and willingness to listen to his fellow team members, to come up with ideas for improvements. His overall approach to safety is to identify and correct hazards, share the items corrected so we can improve together as a team. Jose’s willingness to engage in our see it, fix it observations, helps promote safety out to our production employees and share our continuous safety improvements; therefore, we are a productive and safe facility. We are not perfect, but we have Jose to help us get there and with your support on this nomination will significantly increase this well-deserved award as the Safety Committee Champion for the Medford Plywood Team.”
We are incredibly grateful to have people like Jose who are part of the Timber Products team and continually work on improving our mills.
In addition, we are excited to say that our Table Rock Composite Specialties mill and our Grants Pass mill each won the Bertak Award for Safety Committee Recognition. This award is to recognize safety committees, its members and activities that have made a significant contribution towards the company’s overall success. We are proud that two of our mills received this award and thank everyone for their continued efforts in and outside of our safety committees.
