JSS Becomes Gold Shovel Standard Certified
JSS has recently been awarded the Gold Shovel Standard Certification. Gold Shovel is a nonprofit organization committed to improving workforce and public safety and the integrity of vital buried infrastructure.
Gold Shovel Standard is a novel and ambitious program driving unprecedented cooperation between contractors, cities, utilities, telecom companies, and water and wastewater companies, to dramatically curtail excavation damage.
http://www.goldshovelstandard.com/
To achieve this certification JSS policies include the following:
- Annual basic awareness training for all affected workers
- Whistleblower and stop-work authority for workers
- Adherence to Common Ground Alliance Best Practices 13.0 guidelines
- A policy to hire Gold Shovel Standard subcontractors (with few exceptions)
- Thorough investigation procedure to be used in the event of an incident
- Corrective action procedure with root cause analysis
- To continue participation in the program, an excavator must agree to:
- Report all damages (which are in-turn uploaded into the DIRT database)
- Share limited information about the volume and scale of their excavation business to normalize metrics
JSS in partnership with Gold Shovel Standard seeks to create an environment where all excavators demonstrate exemplary caution around buried infrastructure, all locators demonstrate top-tier performance in locating buried infrastructure, and where both can be recognized and rewarded for their superior performance.
“At JSS, safety is the overriding principle and core value by which we measure our success. We are committed to exceeding the expectations of our clients”, said Derek Marranca, president and CEO of JSS. Partnering with Gold Shovel Standard is another step in our process of continuous improvement and delivering exceptional value without safety compromise to our clients.