KR Yarbrough Construction Co. Inc. has gone a whole year without a nail gun accident.

“In 2005, we averaged one nail gun accident every 40 days, then in the first six months in 2006, one nail gun accident every 60 days,” said safety coordinator Victor Moreno.

As you can imagine, nail gun accidents are pretty common with framing contractors, but that’s not the trend the family-owned business wanted to see.

Moreno, who is bilingual, was hired to turn around the accident rate. Cheryl Crawford, the daughter of retired owner Ken Yarbrough, is running the show now and has supported big changes made by Moreno.

When accidents were more common, workers weren’t getting good instruction on using the nail guns before they jumped in, Moreno said.

“We had a lot of guys coming in with bad habits and no experience with nail guns,” Moreno said. “There was also a poor attitude among the foremen. They would say ‘accidents will happen.’ ”

To improve their record, Moreno said the company took a few key steps:
• Implemented of a “Safety Incentive Bonus program.” Every 90 days the workers get a safety bonus. They get 15 cents an hour if their crew has no accidents, safety inspections aren’t skipped, corners aren’t cut and no OSHA citations have been issued.
• Created a fall protection plan in nine bilingual safety meetings. “This allows the crews to train in a specific issue depending on the job being performed that day,” Moreno explained.
• Created a bilingual nail gun safety meeting with specific instructions on how to properly use the tool.

The company is also at 260 days with no accidents. In 2006, Yarbrough averaged 140 employees with 8 accidents, Moreno said.

In case you’re having a hard time visualizing it, here’s a picture of the last nail gun accident, a year ago.