At CB&I, safety is a core value. We are proud of our safety achievements, but we also know that safety is not a numbers game. We understand that our employees' lives are behind these numbers, which is why our focus on safety is never compromised.
The total number of hours worked by CB&I employees (including subcontractors) in 2008, up 65% from 2007. While we have greatly increased our work-hours in recent years to meet the demands of the market, we have been unwavering in our focus on safe practices. In fact, for 2008 we had a lost-time incident rate of 0.04, which means we worked about 5 million hours for every lost-time incident recorded. At this rate, an employee could work 2,500 years without a lost-time injury.
We attribute this exceptional achievement to our relentless focus on incident prevention. We believe that all workplace incidents, injuries and illnesses are preventable, and we take a proactive role in protecting every person in our work force and on our sites. We also design and build safety features into all our projects, enabling our clients to operate and maintain their facilities safely.