PTP Highlight: Priority One Safe-T

Priority One Safe-T is an industrial rescue services company located in Joplin, MO. Inducted as a PTP in 2020, Priority One Safe-T provides standby rescue services, instructor-led safety and rescue training, hands-on scenario-based training, and emergency management consulting services for Industrial and Municipal Fire Service.

As part of a new 2023 series highlighting the Petzl Technical Partner Program, we’re featuring a different Partner each month. The PTP Program aims to develop a diverse network of training company partners and recognized leaders that can help Petzl promote our products and solutions to a wide variety of industries and end-users. Our PTPs are recognized experts, companies, or individuals in vertical environments that demonstrate a thorough understanding of their respective industry, contribute to the development of best practices, and meaningfully integrate Petzl into their systems and curriculum. 

Petzl recently spoke with Chris Koester, owner of Priority One Safe-T, about their company and partnership with Petzl. To contact Priority One about their services, email inquiry@priority1safe-t.com.

What is your company’s mission statement?
To keep our customers safe by providing world-class higher performance training, rescue services, and emergency response and safety consulting led by real emergency responders who have years of experience teaching and responding to any type of industrial emergency. Our focus: Higher Performance Saves Lives. Before, During and After an Incident.

Briefly describe your company’s history. 
Proudly, 2023 marks our 20-year anniversary. We began with teaching industrial companies and developed training curriculum and hands-on exercises that were applicable and specific to industrial customers with emergency response teams who have minimal staffing on shift to respond. Our training services evolved into offering our consulting services, onsite rescue services and equipment sales.

How is your company a leader for those you serve?
We employ real rescuers. I am an actual first responder with years of experience in municipal and industrial emergency response. I have personally trained over 15,000 students and responded to over 20,000 emergency service calls as a public service firefighter. 

Our Priority One Safe-T team is comprised of first responder professionals (active and retired firefighters) who have years and years of real-world experience in emergency response and rescue and are certified instructors and rescue experts.

The Priority One Safe-T team strives to be the best in the world, leaders in the industry, and we have pledged, both as a company and as individuals, our commitments to those we serve:

• Commitment to Experience: Over 150 combined years of real-life emergency response and rescue and most advanced technical skills, knowledge, and capabilities in the industry. 
• Commitment to Excellence: Deliver a higher level of service, far in excess of what is expected, at all times.
• Commitment to Quality: Unlike other job fields, the role of an emergency responder is to save lives in real-life situations in a matter of seconds.  Quality is our highest priority. 

What does success look like to your company? 
Success for our company is being a trusted partner of our customers. By delivering quality and providing a higher performance level of services to keep everyone safe, we not only educate our customers' ERT members on preventative actions and technical skills to prevent emergencies but, more importantly, teach them critical thinking skills so they have the ability to respond to a real emergency when, not if, an incident occurs. Our 6-story world-class training center in Pryor OK allows us to train over a hundred students a day. We achieve and maintain our success by employing well-trained, experienced emergency first responders who understand safety, training, and technical rescue services, who perform at a higher level, and who add value over and beyond when they are assisting our customers with job walk-downs, permitting, safety walks, safety audits, rescue equipment, and more.

What is your favorite part about being a Petzl Technical Partner?
Our favorite part about being a Petzl Technical Partner is that they view us as a trusted partner. This valuable partnership provides us the opportunity to share technical knowledge, real-world experience, and our industry commitment to safety shared by Petzl and Priority One Safe-T and Rescue Gear Pro (our online e-commerce website). When Petzl says they are your partner, they stand behind their word! They have supported, and continue to support, us with the latest information, equipment, testing new equipment, and assisted us with marketing and social media.  Petzl sent their experts to support our in-person rescue conferences and rescue competitions events. We are honored to be a Petzl Technical Partner; it has been a mutually beneficial partnership and we are excited for the future.

What is your favorite Petzl product? Why?
This is a tough question since Petzl has so many great products. It’s difficult to name just one so here are our top two: The Petzl ASAP Lock and the Petzl MAESTRO. 

We love the ASAP Lock as it is so easy to use and so versatile. One major application where we use the ASAP lock is for Reactor work. Welders and inspectors typically get lowered into a tall reactor with a cable winch and cable SRL. The SRL is spring-loaded and constantly pulls on the worker who may be 60 to 90 feet down. We win big when we use a rope and the ASAP Lock. The worker is tied off and they don’t have the spring-loaded cable pulling on their fall protection while they are working. The ASAP Lock revolutionized the industry for fall protection and back up fall protection. 

We also love the MAESTRO due to the fact it is easy to load and use. We primarily teach industrial emergency response teams who do not get much time to train throughout the year. So, we always look for products that are easy to teach how to use and easy to remember how to use it if you haven’t trained with it for a while. Basically, make a bite in the rope, make sure you’re putting the load to the load side, and insert the rope. So easy, and not complex, to load rope - it even has pictures! 

Our industrial customers love both these products and, we do too.