Author: Richard Gottwald

CGA and GAWDA recently partnered again to host the 3rd annual Young & Emerging Professionals Summit. Sponsored by Weldcoa, this year’s program featured a series of eight technical webinars which followed air gases from production to end use.  More than 700 industry professionals joined us for the Summit, which has gained a reputation as a one-of-a-kind technical training event. The sessions, which included presentations, case studies, and panel discussions, were led by 25 industry subject matter experts.  Throughout the Summit, one point became abundantly clear, prioritizing the development of young and emerging professionals doesn’t just benefit CGA and GAWDA –…

Garry Sears, President of Eleet Cryogenics, Inc., won’t be displaying the company’s most recent Leonard Parker Pool Safety Award in the lobby. Rather, he says, it will go in the room where employees congregate for monthly safety meetings. That way, whenever they gather, “They get to look at the wall and see those awards that they’ve achieved,” he says. “This belongs to them.”  Eleet Cryogenics, based in Bolivar, OH, has earned the distinguished honor three times. Sponsored by Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., the awards are presented annually to the participating CGA member companies that have recorded the greatest improvement…

As COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rise in hotspots such as Florida, member companies of the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) are taking extraordinary measures to respond to surging demand for medical oxygen in those communities. Our members are committed to deploying all available resources to respond to the increased demand for medical oxygen and working collaboratively with health care providers, as we fight this pandemic together. Health care remains a top priority for our industry. Medical oxygen plays a crucial role in treating those who are seriously ill with COVID-19, and the compressed gas industry continues to work diligently to safely…

CGA Helps Provide an Essential Safety Foundation First launched in 2011, the partnership between GAWDA and the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) provides participating GAWDA distributor members with complimentary access to CGA’s electronic safety publication library, enabling one employee per company location to gain free access to CGA’s library of over 350 electronic publications for a total value of more than $19,000 per user. For Ben Polavin, Safety and Compliance Officer with GAWDA member Purity Cylinder Gases, that’s the most valuable benefit of the program. “I’m on the CGA website just about every week. Without their publications library, it would be…

The CGA sent a letter to all 50 state governors asking that essential workers be prioritized in vaccine distribution By Rich Gottwald and Steve Guglielmo On December 23, 2020, the Compressed Gas Association sent a letter from CGA President & CEO Rich Gottwald to all 50 U.S. governors and the Mayor of Washington, D.C. urging that portions of the essential medical, food, and industrial gas workforce be included in each state’s Frontline Essential Workers (Phase 1b) prioritization to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the CGA has been an indispensable resource for the compressed gas industry. Its COVID-19 Industry…

As GAWDA members know, medical oxygen has played an essential role in delivering patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some therapies require large quantities of oxygen or its use in areas of health care facilities not designed for oxygen use, which can create oxygen-enriched atmospheres containing greater than 23.5% oxygen. Although oxygen itself does not burn, in oxygen-enriched atmospheres, materials can be easily ignited by ignition sources such as friction, open flames, heated surgical equipment, or electrical equipment. To avoid incidents involving oxygen and oxygen-enriched atmospheres, it is important that health care personnel handling and using these gases and associated…

In response to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) continues to shift how we operate. We are committed to meeting our members where they are in this moment – whether they’re working from home, in the office, on the road, or on the manufacturing floor. As we move into 2021, we will continue to focus on providing industry leadership in support of our safety mission, while adopting new ways to effectively get our work done and best serve our members, our valued partners including GAWDA, and the compressed gas industry as a whole. The…

Ibn late 2019, Abydee Butler Moore, head of Butler Gas Products and President of GAWDA’s Board of Directors, approached CGA’s Vice President of Operations and Administration Laura Brumsey with an idea for a Young Professionals Summit for Compressed Gas Association and GAWDA members. CGA’s Young & Emerging Professionals Committee had just recently been formed, and Laura was excited to work with this new group to bring Abydee’s vision to life. Then COVID-19 hit and plans for the Summit got put on the back burner. That is, until April, when the committee’s technical education task force made it clear that this…

Knowledge management and succession planning are both vital to the continued growth and success of our industry. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than one-third of the U.S. science and engineering labor force will turn over in the next 10 years. Coupled with economic growth, that retirement rate is projected to create more than 511,000 job openings in science and engineering fields. While the gases industry represents a small portion of the national figure, those statistics hold true for Compressed Gas Association (CGA) committee participants, as well as our industry at large. As Hector Villarreal, President…

With the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, the compressed gas industry has faced tremendous challenges and risk. Never before has it been so crucial for all members of the industry to work together to serve the needs of customers, while striving to keep employees, vendors, end users, and all others across our supply chains, safe. To that end, we at the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) are taking ongoing action, coordinating with our members as well as government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, and sharing new resources to aid in our industry’s response to…