Nominations are being accepted for the second annual Prevention Through Design (PTD) Award, which is presented each year by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) and the National Safety Council (NSC).
The award recognizes individuals, teams, businesses, or other organizations that have improved worker safety and health by designing out hazards or contributing to the body of knowledge that enables PTD solutions.
Nominations for this year’s award will be accepted through May 2. For more information, or to nominate a safety professional, team, business, or other organization, visit NIOSH’s PTD Award website.
PTD aims to prevent or reduce occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities through the inclusion of prevention components in any design that impacts workers. This includes the design, redesign, and retrofit of work premises, structures, tools, equipment, products, substances, and work processes. In addition to minimizing risk, PTD solutions can lead to cost savings through hazard elimination and the application of engineering controls.
“Prevention Through Design is an important step in proactively reducing workplace risk,” said ASSP President Brad Giles, P.E., CSP, STS, FASSP, GIOSH. “Throughout my career in construction, PTD has created safer environments for those who are building a facility as well as those working there afterward. And projects are typically completed more efficiently and economically.”
Since 2007, NIOSH has led the PTD National Initiative that includes partners in industry, labor, trade associations, professional organizations, and academia. In 2021, ASSP revised the ANSI/ASSP Z590.3 Prevention Through Design standard to expand its usefulness worldwide. The standard was first published in 2011.
The inaugural PTD award winner in 2021 was longtime workplace safety and health expert Fred Manuele, whose groundbreaking safety achievements have prevented harm to workers across many global industries.
