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Quesnel man the go-to safety man for many years

West Fraser’s Kerry Douglas received a lifetime achievement award for safety
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West Fraser’s Kerry Douglas was one of the winners of the BC Forest Safety Council’s 2017 Safety Award Winners for lifetime achievement in safety.

The Quesnel resident won the 2017 Cary White Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award for Commitment to Safety Excellence.

Douglas, who is the safety manager, West Fraser Mills Ltd., started his career almost 47 years ago when he was 15 years old. He worked in the same Rayonier mill as his dad did, in New Westminster, doing clean-up work on weekend nights during his high school, college and university years.

He realized early on (late 1960s or early 1970s) that there was not a lot of safety in industry – certainly it was not something that was talked about in those early days.

That started to change in the late 1970s and for Douglas, becoming the maintenance foreman for a Canfor mill in Northern Alberta, helped shape his appreciation for safety and the importance of a strong safety culture.

This experience, coupled with him receiving his commercial pilot licence in the mid-1970s, gave him a real appreciation for safety and good safety systems, serving as the foundation to Douglas becoming a life-long safety champion and leader.

After Canfor, he moved to Prince George to work for WorkSafeBC as a safety officer for 17 years, where he quickly became the “go-to sawmill person.”

During that time, Douglas also carried out investigations into 30 fatal workplace incidents, many of them at sawmills. He then moved to West Fraser Mills Ltd. in 2004 to become the organization’s first safety manager.

He was instrumental in improving safety practices and integrating safety systems into all the mill operations, resulting in significantly improved safety performance.

His peers say: “Kerry is the go-to leader for industry in mill and combustible dust safety” and tribute his safety leadership as a key reason behind much of the safety success of the Manufacturing Advisory Group (MAG), an industry group that was honoured in 2013 with a Lieutenant Governor Safety Award for Excellence in Systems Safety (multi-technology).

Douglas, in turn, attributes MAG’s success to the leadership industry CEOs have provided to the group, recognizing that for safety to succeed, it has to come from the top and be sustained at all levels of industry.

When he isn’t at work, he enjoys spending quality time with his wife, two children and six grandchildren, as well as golfing and walking.