Field Notes: Staying Safe on Sites

By Andy Peters

Safety is a top priority in the construction industry. Although many general contractors have made good progress to ensure the safety of all workers at every stage of a project, there are still instances where accidents happen.

The Construction Industry Institute’s latest report, “Improving Site Safety Performance through Operational Excellence,” indicates the rate of improvement among industry leaders has slowed down. The Total Recordable Incident Rate for the construction industry shows as flat between 2010 and 2013 (range 4.0-3.8). The CII member companies (a subset of the whole construction industry), has also been essentially flat at .43 in 2011, to .37 in 2013.

The CII study points out that this “plateaued” performance is a concern that needs to be addressed; work is under way to spread this awareness, and educate management and staff on what they can do to mitigate future risk: accountability and training are key.

In a former career as a miner, I was required to complete 40 hours of safety orientation at a local university before even entering the mine. And, following that, I had to have three years of experience with a college degree to become a mine inspector; a series of further extensive training sessions and examinations were necessary as my career progressed.

This is not the norm across the construction industry, but perhaps it should be. By adding more stringent requirements and competent supervision, safety outcomes could be improved in the U.S. Using the right training and tools, and following stronger safety mandates, would allow companies to go beyond today’s norm.

For example, the construction industry in the U.K., Ireland and Australia are highly performance driven and safety guidance is written in a way where failure to comply can result in significant penalties, including imprisonment of executives. It is no coincidence that in countries with the highest safety requirements and the direct accountability of company management, the construction industry has much better safety performance with fewer injuries and deaths. This is why I believe that in the U.S. there should be regulations in all industries for supervisors to have a formal knowledge of the laws pertaining to safety and a certification that validates their knowledge.

Safety Firsthand

At my firm, AECOM, safety excellence is crucial to operations — both in the way we run our own offices and how we manage and work on project sites. For every job, a site-specific safety plan is implemented with a set of procedures that comprehensively address hazards and risk. In 2016, the company’s global recordable incident rate was one-tenth of the current U.S. construction industry average. Employees are trained to identify and understand risks and how to mitigate them. Specific processes are added in, such as hazard assessments for detailed analysis of risks; individual and group work plans are developed each day to mitigate the hazards associated with ongoing work.

A company-wide culture of caring means that supervisors check on employees throughout the day to ensure they are following the plan and to determine if they need any assistance. Tools employed to enhance these efforts include a third-party software program called LifeGuard, an employee-observation tool that has an impact on human factors where senior managers can make observations on the office and field work environment. Using LifeGuard, employees can identify unsafe conditions and potential hazards on projects and immediately alert contractors working onsite of the condition to be corrected. Employees are empowered to participate and to be individually responsible for ensuring their safety and that of others.

Another third-party tool, IndustrySafe, enables companies to run trend analysis from a global basis on all incidents that are reported through an online incident reporting system. This allows employees to identify near misses and report first aids, recordable injuries and lost time work cases. Processes for investigation then kick in, which set into motion executive and senior leadership participation and incident reviews.

Set measurable goals

Accountability for the safety process must be measureable. It is not fair to judge construction management personnel solely on lagging indicators such as injury frequency rates. What is more important is to measure leading indicators, which is best accomplished through conducting safety activities that support the safety program and culture. Good examples are:

• Setting a goal for reporting safety observations and measuring each month if the goal is achieved
• Participating in new hire safety orientations
• Setting a monthly and annual goal for completing safety training
• Rewarding employees for safety performance

At AECOM, executive and senior leaders are assigned annual safety goals. If goals are not met, personnel cannot achieve more than an average rating on their performance review. This ranking thus impacts any financial incentive payments they may have been entitled to receive.

As far as training is concerned, project management staff must have a fundamental grasp of risk. To ensure this works seamlessly, goals are set for personnel to attain Safety Trained Supervisor certification from the Board of Certified Safety Professionals. On projects in the U.S. and Canada, project management personnel are trained in the safety standards that apply to their specific operations.

In addition to regulatory training, START training is also required. START is an acronym for Supervisory Training in Accountability and Recognition Techniques, a Caterpillar Safety Services product. Companies rely on this program to teach employees the importance of safety culture, demonstrating a commitment toward safety and the linkage between achieving safety goals and profit and loss. In 2018, AECOM will be rolling out Speak Up! Listen Up! (also a Caterpillar product) to encourage construction employees to say something when they observe unsafe acts or conditions.

In the final analysis, the successful formula to achieve world-class safety is for leadership to be highly involved in the safety process and to continually demonstrate its commitment to safety. Combining this with employee engagement creates a work environment that supports proactive and positive attitudes toward safety and the elimination of hazards. The best safety systems are management driven and employee owned. This approach is critical to reducing the frequency and severity of incidents and enables all parties involved to become safer on the jobsite.

Andy Peters is global lead for health and safety at AECOM.