August 2009 Employee Achievement Award

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UNK Employee Achievement Award
August 2009
Lee Ann Purdy – Environmental Health and Safety Specialist

The UNK Staff Senate is honoring the achievements of Lee Ann Purdy, by recognizing her as the August 2009 UNK Employee Achievement Award. In her duties, Lee Ann has been instrumental in making UNK a safer campus. Through her efforts, Facilities Management & Planning employees have been trained and equipped to make their job functions safer. She has developed and implemented Hot Work and Lock Out/Tag Out procedures that protects workers and facilities when projects included welding and controlling energy delivery systems. She also has developed a post-test system that will assess Facilities staff on what they have learned from their safety training.

Lee Ann monitors and identifies areas of campus that require repairs or upgrades to provide safer environments. One example was that she observed the lighting over the west steps into Health & Sport Center were not bright enough to safely light the steps. That issue has now been corrected. Lee Ann also coordinates UNK tornado drills and fire sprinkler tests.

Another responsibility of Lee’s is to work with the campus risk manager to monitor repairs made on campus as a result of storms or other factors that caused damage to UNK property. She is proficient at tracking the cost of repair to help submit insurance claims and then monitoring the repairs as they are made so that the cost of repairs match what was collected from the insurance coverage. Lee worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on the 2007 ice storm damage and the 2008 tornado damage to obtain funding for costs not covered by the University’s insurance policy. She was instrumental in obtaining about $25,000 for the ice storm and almost the whole $200,000 deductible covered for the tornado. This took a lot of work, patience, and follow-up working with FEMA representatives to obtain this funding.

In order for Lee Ann to accomplish what she has done with campus safety and coordinating insurance claims, she has used her ability to work with all groups in Facilities Management & Planning and across the UNK campus. Lee is persistent in reaching her goals and does that by working as a team member. She has advanced campus safety through her management skills and by working with others.

In recognition for her outstanding achievements to keep UNK Faculty, Staff, and Students safer, the UNK Staff Senate would like to award Lee Ann Purdy with the August 2009 Employee Achievement Award.

University of Nebraska Kearney