Johns Manville Plant Replaces Eyesores with Awareness

Concrete barriers are found throughout Johns Manville plants to safeguard pedestrians against mobile equipment. While they are in place for everyone's safety, they don’t pretty up the place. In fact, they can be an eyesore. That’s not the case anymore in Richmond, Indiana.

Quality Technician Debbie York pitched an idea recently to raise awareness and bring some beauty to the plant.

Similar to an Adopt-a-Highway program, employees at the in Richmond plant can nominate an awareness ribbon to be painted on a barricade. The goal is to paint every barricade with awareness ribbons representing issues affecting employees, their families and friends.

In addition to the ribbons, employees can dedicate the barricades to loved ones , by having a placard affixed to a barricade, reading the affected person’s name. ID plates will also be secured to the barricades so others may know what each ribbon signifies.

“My mother died of breast cancer. A ribbon will be painted to represent breast cancer as well as my mother’s name will be put on the barricade,” Plant Manager Don Heaslip said.  York is leading the effort to paint the ribbons on the barricades, but other employees are helping with the effort, too. So far, 22 of the 44 barricades at the plant have been painted.

“We have an employee who is a recovering addict and asked if we could paint a ribbon for that cause. We painted that ribbon immediately,” Heaslip said. He added, “Ribbons for all kinds of awareness have been painted, and it has served as a great program to get personal involvement and support.”