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From our very first
issue, I’ve maintained that Grading & Excavation
Contractor is not about equipment per se, but rather it’s
about making your business more profitable, which explains
the substantial number of articles you see addressing economics,
administration, opportunity areas, and productivity. As you
well know, these have tentacles that reach into less obvious
areas, such as safety, training, and regulatory compliance—activities
that might seem remote to your core activities but certainly
are fundamental to the success of your business. Along with
such attributes as work ethic and the desire to deliver what
you promise to your clients, I see these as “cultural”
issues—a group of assumptions, understandings, and attitudes
that distinguish you and your company from others. And just
as surely as you are able to move dirt, they form the basis
on which the people for whom you work—and those in your
organization—will judge you.
Starting in our
next issue—the first of 2004—we will take dead aim
on safety with a regular column on the subject, and I would
like to jump-start things with a rehash of some of my own
beliefs.
What Is My Responsibility
for the Safety of My Workers?
It’s a question we all need to ask because it’s
the first step in firmly planting ourselves into the equation.
Safety can be many things with a multitude of faces, but while
at its core it’s an individual mindset, it must be accepted
by all who share a set of risks before it can be effective.
I don’t know
about you, but I somehow managed to stumble all the way through
my teenage years with absolutely no appreciation for the people
I put at risk by some of my bonehead actions, much less for
the number of bullets that somehow missed me in all my ignorance.
In truth, it wasn’t until I arrived at flight school
in Pensacola, FL, that I became acquainted with the subject
of safety—and my possible involvement in it.
“This is the
person responsible for your safety,” the sign stenciled
on my bathroom mirror said. In fact, the slogan was stenciled
on nearly every mirror on the base, often accompanied by such
soul-stirring advisories as “Propellers: Sharpest Blades
Ever Honed” or “Flightline Surgery Performed Without
Anesthetics.” These were the beginning of my immersion
in the concept of safety, a treatment as complete and overwhelming
as one performed by any cult on the planet.
Naval Aviation’s
accident rate for carrier aircraft at the time (1958) was
1.5 destroyed aircraft for every 1,000 hours of flight time.
Even I could do the math on that: for every 667 flight hours
(a number that took less than two years to reach), the odds
were that I would destroy an aircraft and in the bargain lose
my life. By the ’70s, the Navy’s aircraft accident
rate had been reduced by a full order of magnitude to 1.3
per 10,000 hours of flight time, and by now even that rate
has been more than halved again. Of course, today’s aircraft
are more reliable, today’s systems are more capable,
and today’s carriers are better designed and arranged
for safe operations, but those are not so much causes as effects
of a culture change that emerged principally in the ’60s
and grows stronger every day.
Do Statistics
Tell the Safety Story?
Probably not. For another, there’s been a significant
change in the work force in many areas, including size, background,
language, and fundamental skills requirements. Certainly we’ve
come a long way in designing safer and more ergonomically
sound equipment and in reducing the number and insidiousness
of work-site hazards. Without doubt, we have more and better
warning signage, our people are better equipped and clothed,
and we provide better basic safety training than ever before
… but are we winning the battle?
The answer to this
lies less in statistics and the reports you compile to satisfy
others than in the evidence of your own senses. Safety is
a matter of corporate culture, I think, rather than of any
objective rating base, and you—no matter where you sit
in the chain of command—have to ask yourself, “How
does my commitment to safety measure up to my responsibility?”
As most of us recognize,
the construction industry has a less-than-stellar record.
Not only is this is bound to change, however, but the impetus
for change is more likely to result from private initiatives
than from regulatory mandates. Already a number of large companies—GM,
Ford, and Chrysler to name a few pioneers—will not do
business with contractors and subcontractors with efficiency
modification ratings (EMRs) of greater than 1.0. (EMR is a
comparison among all organizations in a particular business.
Less than 1.0 is better than average, greater than 1.0 is
worse.) So what does this mean to you? It means that these
companies have found it’s not worth the increased liability
to deal with contractors on the backside of the safety curve—a
sound business decision that is gaining momentum even as you
read this. The implications are short and sweet: Maintain
a lower-than-1.0 EMR, or expect to find yourself bidding on
fewer and fewer jobs. Sooner or later, state and federal agencies
are going to catch on and join the parade as well, and things
are going to get really tight in a hurry.Once you understand
that one-half of all the people in your field, by definition,
will always exceed the 1.0 cutoff point, you might wonder
how your company will survive—and that’s the best
starting point I can imagine for asking yourself again, “How
does my commitment to safety measure up to my responsibility?”
Send
John an Email
GEC
- November/December 2003
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