About three construction workers died each day in 2017 and thousands more were injured to varying degrees. This hasn't changed much through 2022. Construction is dangerous and there is no getting around that, however we are a long way from being as safe as we could be.
We are not specialists in construction safety. We work closely with the management teams of contractors, helping them develop sustainably growing businesses. These are our observations regarding safety:
- Contractors can only get their safety records so good (EMR +/- 0.9) through compliance activities alone, including complex sets of rules, inspections, and punishments.
- Contractors who have consistently GREAT (EMR < 0.7) records focus much more on training, planning, and building a culture where team members care so much about each other that they will not let each other do anything that might cause an injury.
- This rigorous level of high-involvement planning combined with disciplined daily execution nearly always impacts every other aspect of the business leading to GREAT performance.
- The leaders at these companies define the culture by not tolerating bad behaviors around safety and planning which are linked as well as being larger-than-life caricatures modeling the behaviors they want. Remember the spotlight of leadership.
Learn More:
- The Culture Code
- The Power of Habit
- 5X Profits Through Safety Focus
- The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error' - Sidney Dekker
Normalization of Deviance - The Biggest Safety Risk (Video Playlist)
