The previous safety blog discussed the importance of owner involvement. Without it, fostering a strong safety climate is nearly impossible. What steps can owners and top management take?
- Active Presence
Owners and top management presence on-site demonstrate safety buy-in and provides the foundation for a strong safety climate:
- Participate and lead employee orientation; site orientations help familiarize employees with potential hazards they may face on the job site.
- Orientation also helps establish a foundation for two-way communication between project owners, clients, contractors, and employees about safety issues.
- Workers are more confident that participating in safety efforts is important when employees see project managers and owners demonstrate that they value safety.
- Devote adequate resources to implementing safety programs and enforcing policies.
- Make available adequate resources to those managing the safety plan.
- Safety policies and plans are meaningless unless they are effectively implemented, enforced, reviewed, and if necessary, modified.
- Create mechanisms for contractors to voice safety concerns.
- Create a climate where contractor concerns are heard and those who identify hazards are recognized.
- Offer contractors alternative ways to communicate with owners about potential hazards including:
- Suggestion boxes;
- Surveys; and
- Informal, non-threatening interviews.
- Join daily strategy meetings and safety walk-arounds and ALWAYS wear appropriate PPE!
- Participate in daily pre-task planning meetings and joint site safety inspection with contractors’ management and employees;
- Ask workers on the ground for solutions to safety-related issues; and
- Act upon good ideas that are feasible.
Project owner’s participation in safety activities and following safety rules helps employees trust the values that management talks about. “Do as I say, not as I do.” will just create distrust and annoyance.
- Design and planning
Incorporate safety throughout the design and planning phases of the project:
- Take safety into account when selecting and evaluating contractors.
- When pre-qualifying a contractor for a project, review the contractors’:
- Safety program;
- Policies; and
- Safety performance.
- Review bids for:
- PPE;
- Safety supplies; and
- Training.
- Data on lagging indicators (e.g., injuries) may reflect under reporting rather than a strong commitment to safety.
- Responsibilities, expectations, and evaluation metrics based on safety climate indicators should be specified in the contract, and selected contractors should be held accountable for meeting those expectations.
- Make sure a proper training course is being implemented for immigrants lacking English proficiency.
- Use Prevention through design methods.
- Train in-house and contracted architects and engineers on strategies they can use to exclude hazards from equipment, structures, materials, and processes that may negatively affect employees and end users.
- Factor in the prevention cost through design engineering and the scheduling involved.
- When pre-qualifying a contractor for a project, review the contractors’:
- Accountability
- Project owners and subcontractors should participate in regular safety committee meetings.
- Rotate leadership roles; project owners or subs should periodically take the lead as the safety committee chair.
- Project owner and management should have an open-door policy for contractors to discuss safety issues and ensure that their representatives in the field comply with all safety rules.
- Project owners and subcontractors should participate in regular safety committee meetings.
The final topic in this series on safety climate will highlight special consideration for immigrants. Hispanics alone form 30% of the construction industry; failing to take them into account can leave a massive weakness in your safety program and negatively impact safety culture.