Bridge Safety: Part Three
The elements of a strong safety culture
By Angelle Bergeron
Bridge safety standards evolved and improved over time, primarily as reactive measures to accidents and fatalities. Much changed with the introduction of OSHA, which began tracking statistics.
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| The national construction fatality rate declined 47 percent and recordable safety incidents dropped 38
percent from 1998 to 2008. Contractor groups attribute the decline to a federal government safety oversight
approach known as “collaborative safety.” |
Thomas Collins wants what all safety directors, owners, contractors, employees and families want.
“I want every man and woman to go home every evening just as I do,” says Collins, safety director at Coastal Bridge of Baton Rouge, La.
But what does it take to make that happen? And how does a safety person, or owner or chief executive officer of a contracting firm communicate that message honestly and effectively to workers?
When the U.S. Labor Department reported in August that construction fatalities fell 20% from 2007 to 2008, Associated Builders and Contractors credited that drop to Occupational Safety and Health Administration programs and training, as well as employer workplace safety initiatives like ABC’s own Safety Training and Evaluation Process (STEP) program.
The national construction fatality rate declined 47 percent and recordable safety incidents dropped 38 percent from 1998 to 2008. Associated General Contractors of America attributed the decline to a federal government safety oversight approach known as “collaborative safety.”
The approach, which represented a significant shift in federal safety oversight, creates incentives for companies to find and fix safety problems before incidents occur, while maintaining strong penalties for companies that let safety problems lag until someone is hurt, says Chuck Penn, executive director of AGC’s Shreveport, La., chapter.
Penn’s comments were made in conjunction with the launch of a new, federally-supported safety program that commits the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration and local contractors to provide additional training, data analysis and support needed to improve safety for the next three years.
These efforts and the rush to draw attention to them speak volumes about the industry’s enthusiasm for improving safety. The improved numbers reflect a dramatic change in culture from the early 1900s when “it was customary to hurt and kill people on construction jobs,” says Will Hewett, a senior consultant with JMJ Associates, a global consulting firm that specializes in enterprise transformation.
“The maxim was that one person per floor, per story of a building would die, and if you were ahead of that, you were handling your safety pretty well,” Hewett says.
For bridges, the calculated risks were more specific, says Nick Marianos, bridge engineer consultant.
“The rule of thumb in the 1930s was one fatality for every million dollars of construction,” he says. “This was basically the iron workers and anything with high work.”
Those templates for safety standards evolved and improved over time, primarily as reactive measures to accidents and fatalities, Hewett says.
“All the advances on safety were on the backs of people who would die or get hurt.”
Much changed with the introduction of OSHA, which began tracking statistics. “They said, okay, with this incredibly complex challenge of trying to manage safety in industry, let’s start tracking some things – recordables, days away from work,” Hewett says. “Companies started perking up and tracking these things because they knew OSHA was watching and if injuries did happen, they would be fined. As an industry, we started to look through a lens that OSHA had created.”
Naturally, industry is happy to boast percentage decreases in injuries and fatalities. But what happens if you or your loved one is in that percent that didn’t make it?
“No matter how low the numbers, people are still getting hurt,” Hewett says. “Those people have a name, a face and a family. When a worker gets hurt, the impact on family and the community can be devastating.”
It’s obvious by the array of available programs that industry agrees that training is a key element to safety. But is training the primary component to safety?
“Employee longevity and training are the most important parts of maintaining a strong safety culture,” says Danny Hester, chief operating officer, James Construction Group of Baton Rouge, La. “You don’t train them just once. You train them every year, so if a guy is here three years he is trained three times.”
When safety works, it is a great morale booster and feeds into the longevity aspect for employees. When the contractor for the $404 million John James Audubon Bridge, a Mississippi River crossing at St. Francisville, La., reached 1 million man hours without a lost time accident, it was encouraging to workers, says a spokesman for Audubon Bridge Constructors, a joint venture of Flatiron Constructors, Granite Construction and Parsons Transportation Group.
“The workforce is given a sense of security and an assurance that the number one focus on the project is safety,” the spokesman says. “An exceptional safety record certainly attracts workers and helps the project maintain its current work force.”
Standards set by employers and industry are often what it takes to motivate employees, says Tom Nunziata with the Laborers-AGC Education and Training Fund, Pomfret Center, Conn. “As far as workers go, if they don’t need something to get on the job, they won’t take the time to get it,” he says. “Now since more states and municipalities are requiring the training on jobs that receive federal funding, you’ll see more training. If you start making it a requirement for them to be employed, you are more apt to get participation in a program.”
When employees have participated in safety training, they are in a position to influence other workers and overall safety culture, Nunziata says, particularly in identifying under-reported workplace hazards.
“If workers are unaware of the hazards, they don’t know they are being short-changed. Training helps to enable workers to identify hazards, understand ramifications and the requirements for their protection.”
Safety is an “everyday thing,” says Bruce Nicely, senior vice president over the transportation/heavy/highway/bridge division of Bell & Associates of Brentwood, Tenn. “You have to think safety all the time to try and keep people safe.”
Bell & Associates is performing an $87-million contract to build a 7-mi section of Tennessee State Route 840, which will be a 77-mi loop around the south side of Nashville. The project includes 24 bridges over rugged terrain east of the Natchez Trace, Nicely says.
“It’s a high-profile job that goes through Williamson County, with the highest per capita income in the state. Another part goes through a rural area where a lot of music stars have farms.” Additionally, a contractor on a previous portion of the loop had at least three accidents, with fatalities.
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| James Construction Group of Baton Rouge, La., builds the 6-mi La. 1 bridge from Fourchon to Leeville, La.
Danny Hester, James Construction’s chief operating offi cer, says employee longevity and training are the
most important parts of a strong safety culture. |
“These accidents all occurred prior to us starting the particular phase of the project,” Nicely says. “But any accident in construction affects all of us.”
The high-profile nature of bridge projects often lends an added burden of scrutiny, and negative publicity if anything goes wrong, Marianos says. “Compare it with trenching and shoring. How many times do you have a guy in a hole that collapses and you only see that on the local news? But when there’s an accident on a bridge, it’s usually national news,” Marianos says.
When Boh Bros. Construction of New Orleans had two separate accidents, both resulting in fatalities, during construction of the $803 million Interstate 10 Twin Spans, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development ordered a review of the bridge design by SDR Engineering, Tallahassee, Fla.
Although neither OSHA nor DOTD gave any indication that the construction accident was in any way related to the overall integrity of the completed bridge, DOTD wanted the review as an added assurance to the driving public, says Mark Lambert, communications director.
“Everything else focused on workplace safety, but we did not want to overlook the possibility that there is something wrong with the design of the bridge. This is really to ensure ourselves and the public that this is a safe bridge to travel on.”
The demand to rebuild quickly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina may have played some role in bridge accidents in Mississippi and Louisiana.
“The amount of pushing and pace of the project are always factors in safety,” says Norm Zuckerman, an industrial hygienist working with Mt. Sinai Center for Environmental and Occupational Medicine, New York, NY. Time will tell if the current economic downturn will adversely affect safety.
“It has been mentioned to me that with budgets somewhat restricted, money is tight, so people may not do night and weekend work when traffic levels are lower,” Zuckerman says.
One of the big challenges of construction is its dynamic nature.
“Construction is unique in that you are always working yourself out of a project and toward the next job,” Zuckerman says. “Hazards that were there yesterday may not be there tomorrow, or they may be slightly different.” Additionally, some projects involve the same workers over a long period of time, and others have shifting crews with people who are unfamiliar with each other and have different training and ethics. All of these elements make safety training challenging, Zuckerman says.
Although the numbers are better than ever, Hewett asserts that a culture shift in the way industry views safety is the key to moving toward 100% accident/injury-free workplaces.
“The way we have been managing safety as an industry is spending millions of dollars on equipment, systems and training,” Hewett says. “If the people using those things aren’t personally committed to coming to work and being safe, then all that money won’t be effective.”
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