What Innovation Teams Can Learn From Your Company’s Safety Culture.

Exploring the history of Safety adoption as a model for Continuous Improvement.

Do you remember the days when a hard hat and other PPE were an annoyance?

Well, maybe I am dating myself here, because it’s been a pretty good while since that was the case.

Nowadays Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, is standard issue on job sites, certainly in the US, and thought most of the world anyway.

But there was a time when the safety experts seemed like outsiders. PPE just got in the way of doing the job, and then came the Job Hazard Assessments, the Pre-Task Plans, the Site Specific Safety Plans.

Seems that you can’t even get on the jobsite without first watching a Safety Orientation video and taking a quiz.

What happened? How did we make this seemingly outside process with extra tasks, and costing time and money, part of our everyday routine?

Well, of course Legislation has a lot to do with it. OSHA and other entities mandate certain standards with the aim to protect human life and limb of those working on and around the jobsite.

There are also financial implications to having a recordable incident on your project. Leaving serious and fatal accidents aside, which are all the impetus one should need to instill a culture of safety, let us focus on the small bumps, bruises, and cuts.

Beyond the loss of productivity, workers comp, and the potential medical expense, there is an EMR (Experience Modification Rate) to maintain that keeps insurance premiums in check. Veer to high on that index and you might not be able to insure your project. Or, you may not be considered for the job due to client requirements for a certain rating.

Safety is an important consideration to construction, and justifiably so, gets the due attention it deserves. Safety departments are an integral part of any construction organization, and a Safety Culture is touted first and foremost on promotional and presentation materials. You certainly would not start a job without your safety team onboard.

There is a lesson in how we approach Safety that can be applied to other departments that are often sidelined.

If you are struggling to have your VDC or Innovation group fully become an integrated part of the team, or your Lean Champions feel like they are pushing a boulder uphill, take a look at your safety department. They really don’t look that different.

A small group of experts that do something specialized, often having to affect multiple projects, which consequently means those experts are not on site full time. It’s a very similar model, and a window into what it takes to really integrate into a project team.

Like with Safety, it is going to take a mandate.

No, it won’t come from the government. Some agencies do, and some countries are getting more aggressive about it, but ultimately, it has to be mandated by the company culture. And that is driven by those at the top.

Lives may not be at stake if a footing is poured the wrong depth, but time and money are… lots of time and money. So much time and money that one of the biggest problems facing construction these days is an image problem. A Public Relations nightmare based on the fact that productivity rates have remained stagnant for decades, that we waste resources, and pollute too much.

Under these conditions, the mandate very well may be coming from your clients soon as well. Think about this: If I told you that I wasted $0.35 of every $1 you paid me for any service, would you be willing to hire me? Not likely, right?

So take a look at your Safety Culture. Observe what makes them an indispensable function of any project, and you may very well find a blueprint for how to make Innovation and Continuous Improvement a key part of your operations.

Now that is very marketable as well…

At Builderbox.io we make tools to help you continuously improve, and our Mobile App makes a Safety Reporter of anyone with a Mobile Phone in their pocket.

Capture unsafe conditions and report them with our Daily Journal module, to be aggregated by your Safety Manager and help stop incidents before they happen.

Streamline inspections with our customizable Auditor Checklists, and get consistent reporting across your project portfolio and make sense of all your metrics to improve your safety record.

Communicate Effectively, Document Everything, Make Data Driven Decisions, and stay Safe with Builderbox.io