Celebrating Construction Safety Week 2023
Safety Director David Terry
Safety should be an everyday, all year focus in the construction industry. Construction Safety Week is a great time to renew our focus and highlight what’s important. Some of this year’s daily themes, including engagement, risk identification, and learning and improving from crew experiences, really resonate with me. These are all priority areas I’m focused on as JR Merit’s new Safety Director.
I joined the company in February and have actively been digging into our safety policies, procedures, PPE protocols, and opportunities for improvement. Having received AGC’s Safety Pride Award two years running, JR Merit is on the right track with its safety program. However, continuous improvement is a key pillar of our strategic business plan, and there’s no such thing as too much safety. Especially in the challenging and often remote environments in which our teams work, every minute spent toward building buy-in and maintaining the highest commitment to safety is well spent.
In addition, as the company grows, clear expectations and more rigorous standards and procedures are needed to align with our risk profile, protocols, and documentation to ensure a coordinated approach across all JR Merit teams and operations. Like any organizational change, there will be some growing pains as we shift and scale our processes. However, it’s part of the natural evolution of growth. A challenge, but a worthy one.
Key Priorities
Tracking Safety Training: A key focus for me over the past few months has been developing a solution to more efficiently track and document safety training records. With internal online training records and in-person trainings as well as safety certifications, information has been distributed across multiple platforms. My goal has been to utilize a unified platform solution, and I’m happy to report we’re nearing our launch to migrate all our training data to the unified database.
Streamlining PPE: Another recent priority has been streamlining management and accessibility of personal protective equipment. A smaller team can accommodate individuals’ personal preferences with some ease, but as we grow, it will be that much more efficient and effective to standardize certain equipment. This will help to maintain a steady inventory and, for things like respiratory protection, ensure folks are medically cleared, fit tested for the proper respirator, and trained in how to properly use and maintain the right equipment. We’ll accommodate special circumstances, of course, but a more streamlined approach will support ongoing quality and risk mitigation.
Risk Assessment: Creating consistency in risk identification and mitigation has been another key topic. One of our focuses recently has been modifying and improving how we execute Competent Person evaluations for field supervisors responsible for identifying and communicating hazards and eliminating or mitigating the risks they pose. We’re working to create consistency in low risk tolerance and communication about potential hazards. Someone who has been working in these kinds of challenging environments for 20-30 years may have a higher tolerance for certain risks or may work in ways that mitigate the risk without really thinking about it. However, someone newer to the field won’t have that lived experience to draw on—they’re still learning. Our emphasis has been on making sure everyone understands and learns the “right” way to do identify and mitigate risks and driving home the message that there’s always time to do things the right way.
Commitment to Safety Recognition: We’re also reemphasizing the communication aspect of our safety culture to promote the opportunity to learn from different experiences and situations. There’s a tendency to think of near misses or small scrapes as not worth noting. We are creating a culture where we talk openly about everything so that all instances, no matter how small, can be coaching moments and learning opportunities, taking away any fears about repercussions for speaking up. Continuous learning by talking freely about real experiences, and coaching rather than punishing, is key to instilling a genuine culture of safety improvement at the individual, team level, and companywide.
Why it Matters
What I love most about my career in safety and my role as Safety Director is the ability to make an exponential impact on peoples’ lives. If I can share knowledge or provide a coaching moment to one person that prevents one life altering incident, that impact touches many people—it has an impact on that individual, of course, as well as on their fellow crewmates, on their family, and even on generations of their family.
I celebrate the incredible work our crews do. Without their willingness to work in challenging environments, the critical work JR Merit does for our communities wouldn’t get done. My job is to make sure our crews have the training, knowledge, SOPs, and equipment—as well as the camaraderie and communication a quality safety culture creates—in order to always go home even better than the way we came to work, empowered and confident to make safe work decisions. Safety can seem like a lot of processes and paperwork, but it’s always about people work over paperwork. I aim to recognize, communicate, and celebrate safety at JR Merit. I encourage everyone to take a moment this Construction Safety Week to do just that. Whether it’s for yourself, your team, or anyone, recognize, communicate, and celebrate the value that safety every day brings to all.