Safety First – Take Five With Joe Avila

Joe Avila knows safety. In fact, J-W Power Co. hired Avila full-time to help establish a corporate Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Department for what has become the largest privately owned natural gas compressor rental fleet in the U.S. Since then, he has served in several roles of regulatory compliance.

He currently serves as chairman of the Gas Compressor Association’s Health & Safety Committee and has given presentations on safety for the organization. He is also president of NTEPS, the North Texas chapter of the National STEPS Network. He holds numerous certifications, including being one of only a handful of certified H2S Master Trainers in the oil and gas industry, and is a two-time recipient of the GCA Significant Achievement Award.

He served four years in the U. S. Army before leaving to pursue college. In 1996, Joe started a part-time job for J-W Power Co. as the plant safety coordinator in Longview, Texas. This led him to obtain an A.A.S. in Environmental Health & Safety from TSTC-Marshall, followed by a B.S. in Industrial Safety from UT-Tyler in 2001. Avila lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife and daughter.

What would you say is the most common safety problem at compressor stations?

I would definitely say surface hazards that pose slip, trip and fall hazards. There are many possible contributing factors for these.

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This story first appeared in the June 2019 issue of COMPRESSORTECH². We only publish a fraction of our magazine content online, so for more great content, get every issue in your inbox/mailbox and access to our digital archives with a free subscription. Click here for a new subscription or here to renew your current subscription.