ROLE OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Ellahi M. Ishteeaque, AIA

RA, M A ARCH

SUMMARY OF ACTION STEPSFOR CHIEF EXECUTIVES

– Chief executives of a construction firm do not directly supervise construction

– workers on a daily basis. Nevertheless, by the image that they project and by their behavior

on and off the projects, they have a greater impact on the firm's safety performance than any

other managers. Chief executives affect the firm's safety performance in three ways:

– 1. They create an organizational culture in which safety is a high priority.

– 2. They h~d line managers directly accountable for the safety of their subordinates.

– 3. They provide and focus staff support to help line managers meet their safety

goals.

BUILDING A SAFETY CULTUREHigh-performing organizations with strong cultures are created by managers who inspires other to share their goals. The chief executive of a construction firm must lead as well as manage in the area of safety.1. Promote the right people - those who show by their action

and their words that they share your goal of outstanding safety performance. This rewards the safest managers and

sends a powerful sign to others.2. Communicate the message that safety is of critical

importance in a direct contacts with employees at all levels.

a) Talk about safety on job visits; this sends the message that safety is a high priority.

b) Take the time to attend safety functions.c) Write personal letters of congratulation to managers

who achieve unusually good safety performance.

Getting Safety from Line Managers:

Line Managers at all levels must be held accountable. for the safety of those they supervise. This is the key to running a safe construction firm. In addition, workers must know how to work safely, supervisors must know safe methods of supervision, and work operations must be thoroughly planned in advance.

1. Set up a strong safety accountability system.a) Choose a measure of safety performance that makes sense for your type and scale of operations. We recommend measures

based upon accident costs per work hour supervised.b) Set ambitious but achievable goals in terms of the chosen

safety measure for all managers in the organization.

c) Have reports produced and distributed that track and compare managers their safety performance in terms of their safety performance.

d) Reward the safe managers and let the least safe managers know that they must improve in this area.

2. Twenty-five percent of all construction accidents happen to workers who have been on the job for 1 month or less! Insist on safety training for newly hired workers and for newly appointed foremen.

a) All workers new to a given job site must receive a thorough orientation to the hazards unique to that job site and to the work operations currently going on.

b) All newly appointed foremen should be trained to manage crews for safe construction and especially to manage new workers safely.

c) Whether or not companies conduct drug screening programs, foremen should be trained to spot and deal with situations involving drug or alcohol abuse.

3. Require planning checklists or develop some other mechanism to ensure that all work is planned in advance.This reduces the number of crisis situations and means that essential safety equipment will be available when needed.

4 Consider selecting subcontractors based, in part, on their safety records and have your legal counsel provide up-to-date guidelines for intervening in

unsafe subcontract work operations. A "hands off' policy is no longer a legal defense in case of an injury to a subcontractor’s worker.

Focusing the Staff on Safety:

Safety is first and foremost the responsibility of line managers. However, staff specialists have important roles to play in support of the line managers' efforts to manage safely.

1. The accounting or data processing department must help to establish and maintain the safety accountability system and to

eliminate accounting biases against investing in safety. The accounting department must be instructed to:

a) Assist in defining the best measure of safety performance for line managers at all levels.

b) Develop the input forms, procedures, and systems to produce reports that track safety performance.

c) Produce and distribute these reports periodically.d) Establish charging procedures that make it as easy as possible for line

managers to purchase needed safety equipment on projects.

2. Safety specialists can contribute in many ways to improved safety performance. The chief executive must provide them with the training, financial resources, and personal support to bolster their authority.

a) Safety representatives rely primarily upon their expert authority in dealing with line managers in the field. They must be well trained or they will be in a very weak position with field managers.

Leadership and Organizational Culture Case # 1:

A worker on one of Brown Industrial Constructors best projects described his job as, "I am building a power plant to light up the Southwest," whereas one of his peers, on another of Brown's projects which was way over budget and 2 years late, described his job as "I am terminating cable connections in areaTB-3-1A."

Promoting the right people Case # 2:

In HOS, a medium-sized heavy construction firm which we studied, hiring the wrong manager had a strong negative impact on a company that had been improving its safety record in many of the other ways cited above. The aging principal of this firm brought in a young, technically competent manager to take over the firm's operations so he could start to reduce his own commitments to the firm. This younger manager felt that the firm had been over emphasizing safety at the expense of costs and schedules, and he said so on many occasions. Even though the firm had already implemented, and continued to follow, many of the safety practices

that we recommend in this book, its safety performance took a steep nose dive. Two years later, the firm's experience modification rating caught up with it, and it began to experience severe difficulties in competitive bidding, especially for underground work for which workers compensation insurance premiums average around 30 percent of labor costs.

Talking about safety on job visits Case #3

The chief executive of Pike, a large, very safe marine construction company told us, If I always asked about costs and schedules when I visited projects and sent te jobs letters or brochures telling them to be safe in between visits, they would correctly infer that the safety letters or brochures were just window dressing and that what I really cared about were the things that I discussed with them in person. So the first thing that I discuss when I meet with a superintendent or foreman on a job is his safety record. That way he knows its my top priority

Taking time to attend safety functions Case # 4

The president of RRS, a medium-sized building contractor, always shows up at the firm's monthly safety breakfast. He takes the safety quiz that is administered prior to breakfast and reads out the ranking of projects in terms of accident frequency. Obviously this sends a very strong signal to superintendents and foremen who attend these meetings, and the results bear it out. This firm has a remarkably good safety record.. Its experience modification rating is around 50 percent.

Using written communications to promote safety Case # 5

Personal letters do not have to stop after a new employee is hired. The president of RRS noticed that his company's outstanding safety performance had slipped just a little during the past year. He sent out a letter with a reply card to each foreman in the firm, asking them to join him in signing a pledge to work toward the company's safety record~ This pledge letter got virtually a 100 percent response from the foremen. A number of the foremen turned it in to the president at the company's next safety breakfast.

Setting safety objective for senior line managers Case #6 (a)

Sam Murray, a project manager, described his firm's approach to us this way: "Our company is determined to bring its experience modification rate down. We have found that safety is a profit maker. We have had jobs which came in ahead of schedule and under budget and yet they cost lots of money for us when the costs of accidents were included. So the company started bonuses for project managers, field superintendents, and projects safety people based on the project safety records. To bring down insurance costs the company has set a targeted cost per man-hour for this year which is adjusted to the insurance costs for the state in which the project is located. Next year they will lower the targeted costs. If a project is completed with accident costs lower than the target, the project manager, field. superintendent, and safety manager each receive a bonus. There is a lot of competition for these bonuses. Twice a year we all come in and our safety records are read out, and checks are handed to those whose project accident costs were lower than the target. It gets your attention.’

Even before the job started, Sam aimed to win that bonus and began the planning that made it happen. Throughout the 18 months of the project he kept track of his progress. He even had the insurance company sendhim a printout of the project's accident costs every 2 weeks during the course of the project.

Case 6 (b):

Th group vice president of Branner, a major heavy construction firm with an enviable safety record, put it this way: 'TIf a project manager won't recognize the importance of safety performance and his responsibility to manage for it, then he is going to cost us a ~ot of money in the ~ong run~ We don't want this type of manager in charge of our we~l-trained draftsmen and expensive equipment~ Itts too big a risk for us to accept!"

Case 6 (b):

The group vice president of Branner, a major heavy construction firm with an enviable safety record, put it this way:

“If a project manager won't recognize the importance of safety performance and his responsibility to manage for it, then he is going to cost us a lot of money in the long run~ We don't want this type of manager in charge of our we~l-trained draftsmen and expensive equipment~ Itts too big a risk for us to accept!"

Reporting on safety performance Case 7 (a)

Tower, a large building contractor with an extremely good accident record, has its accounting department print an "accident cost per work hour" summary for each project at the end of every month.

This is distributed to all project managers and superintendents. This engenders competition among projects to see which will be the safest every month. At the same time, each project manager and superintendent receive a break down for his project which reports "accident costs per work hour supervised" for all general foremen and foremen. Finally, a breakdown of his foremen S results is prepared for each general foreman.

Case 7 (b)

Massive, a highway bridge builder and one of the safest companies in our study, used no formal reporting of accidents, but project managers know that they could expect a visit and some detailed questions from the president if an accident occurred on their project. The president of this firm set zero accident" targets and followed up personally to observe performance.

Rewarding the safe managers Case #8

Ticonderoga, a very safe heavy-highway contractor, has completely integrated accident cost reporting into its monthly cost reporting~"We feel that including accident costs in each project's monthly cost reports gives us a truer picture of the profitability of each project to our company," says its president. "Accident costs are paid with the same green dollars as wages or equipment costs; it just takes a while for the accident costs to show up! Once we started tQ do. thjs, we discovered that some of our 'star' superintendents were actually losing money for the firm."

Training new employees in safe work practice Case # 9

Jackson, one of the safer companies in our study, found that its experience modification rating for workers' compensation insurance dropped by 25 points in 2 years after making only one change in its management practices: the company began requiring thorough safety training for all new hires.

Getting the Most from the Safety Staff Case # 10

One of the authors was employed on a nuclear power plant project on which the safety representative averted a potentially serious jurisdictional dispute. The ironworkers were about to walk off the project in protest of the fact that a carpenter had welded himself a metal handrail for a suspended scaffold on w~ch he was about to work. The 60-year-old safety engineer confronted the 6-foot, 250-pound ironworker steward and asked..in.a jocular voice, "Hey, Joe, you wouldn't let this dumb carpenter build you a wood scaffold if you had to work up at 200 feet, would you? Knock it off and go back to work." The workers roared with laughter and the situation was instantly defused.