TONY MILITELLO: I'm Tony Militello, the director of construction safety with Willis Towers Watson. And today, I'm here with my good friends and colleagues from Choate Construction, who I will allow to introduce themselves.
MATT BREWER: Hi, I'm Matt Brewer, CEO of Choate Construction.
ALLEN MARTIN: Hello, I'm Allen Martin. I'm the safety director for Choate out of our Mount Pleasant office.
ERIN SMITH: Erin Smith, project manager out of our Mount Pleasant office.
MACKENZIE ABELLI: MacKenzie Abelli, senior safety manager out of our Atlanta office.
ABEL CARILLO: Abel Carrillo, field superintendent out of the Charlotte office.
JARED ROBERTSON: Jared Robertson, senior safety manager out of our Charlotte office.
CHAD HART: Chad Hart, corporate safety director out of Charlotte.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. Thank you all. In the broadest terms, how important is safety to your organization?
MATT BREWER: Well, safety is crucial to our organization, not only as a construction company as expected from our clients, more importantly, it's expected from the workers that we employ and the workers that are on our job site every day. Our obligation to send them home to their families the same way they arrived or hopefully more educated about safety is our goal, and it's a monumental undertaking that we take very seriously.
TONY MILITELLO: Can you tell us about the programs you have in place for reducing operational risk?
ERIN SMITH: Yeah, I would be happy to speak about a program that we have rolled out in the last year utilizing a program called Trade Tap. So internally, the risk rating for subcontractors is constantly tracked. And through Trade Tap, project managers and superintendents who are either discussing, contracting with a subcontractor, or have an active contract in place with a subcontractor are notified if their risk rating changes to the degree that we should be aware. And then we work with the subcontractor to understand why and address the concern.
TONY MILITELLO: And so what are those corrective actions look like?
ERIN SMITH: As I mentioned, first of all, talking with the subcontractor, understanding if it's an incident that's happened, multiple incidents, and then asking open ended questions with the subcontractor about why the incidents or behaviors are happening. and then working with them as, as we call them, trade partners to hopefully influence them and roll out program training if needed so that they can become safer, not just on our job sites but everywhere.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. What other areas of construction risk do you focus on?
MACKENZIE ABELLI: Currently, we've been looking at our trending data, and we've noticed that majority of our workers comp claims came from knee injuries. So one thing that we have been focusing on to help reduce that overall within our company is our access in our projects and maintaining safe access into the buildings as well as elevated access and implementing stair towers where we can to eliminate ladders and reduce that risk.
TONY MILITELLO: Water intrusion is another area of construction risk. Are there any initiatives or programs that you have in place to address water intrusion?
ALLEN MARTIN: Absolutely. We rolled out water kits for all of our projects, primarily in our interior work. And we're realizing that there are some improvements that need to be made there. So we're actually looking at revamping those water kits to include not only shotguns for our sprinkler shutoffs, but we're going to have other pipe clamp devices to prevent the leaks from happening when they occur. So once we have those kits available, they'll go to every superintendent.
CHAD HART: I was just going to mention that we have a full time building envelope expert that specializes in looking at the details on the drawings to make sure, number one, is it feasible? Does it work? And then has a bag full of tricks of the trade that he's learned over an extensive career so that we can deliver a better product to our clients.
MATT BREWER: So in addition to the water containment kits, since we have such a good relationship with the majority of our clients, we're able to help them design water valve, shut off valves that are actually accessible. You don't have to get on a ladder to go shut the water off. So when something does happen, the maintenance tech that's on site or the office manager, whoever it is, water valve right there. It's pretty plainly identified. They can get behind an access panel and shut it off.
Also, with our hot work permit program, we rolled out a fleet of thermal imaging cameras. Those are also very, very helpful in identifying leaks or any other kind of water intrusion on a project. So we're able to utilize that and get a lot of bang for the buck.
MACKENZIE ABELLI: Another system that some of our clients have bought into for our projects is using a wind system during construction that can send notification in real time when flow is detected in certain areas of the building so that we can respond quickly when it's after hours on the project or something like that that you would normally not know about until the next day when you come in and your building is flooded. So that's another initiative that we've been taking.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. Thanks, MacKenzie. How do technology and innovation contribute to your safety and risk management at work?
ABEL CARILLO: The first thing that comes to mind is drones. We utilize drones in the job site, one, for progress pictures, and also hard to reach areas. We're able to deploy and see that from a distance. So most of our guys are trained in different processes. One program being contact.
MATT BREWER: It's how we weave building information modeling in with virtual reality, augmented reality. To add to Abel's point, the drones can be used to do soil analysis takeoffs. So we're able to figure out how much-- got a big pile of rock, how much rock is actually there? We can help quantify that, the cubic yard of rock or soil or whatever it is.
So not only are we using it for pictures-- everybody likes a drone video-- but they're actually useful tools on our projects. And we've even used drones to investigate confined spaces as opposed to having to get a person down in that area. Fly a drone down there. Hey, if we lose it, we lose it.
ALLEN MARTIN: I'll share a brief example of what we went through recently when one of our projects. Our BIM manager had actually pulled us aside with a project team and said, we're looking at doing this project. Can you do a walkthrough of the model real time so we can see what areas from a safety and risk that we need to include for budgeting?
And I mean, it wasn't 10 minutes into that that we were identifying where we needed handrails, where we needed shoring or an engineer to look at load capacities on elevated decks. How are we going to get workers up there on those lifts to do them safely or to do the work safely? So we were able to identify hazards through BIM modeling and incorporate that into our budget for pre-con.
MAX NELSON: Great. Thanks, Allen. How important is leadership support to safety programs and a safety mindset at your organization?
ERIN SMITH: Leadership support to our safety programs is probably the most crucial part. Our onsite orientation actually opens up with a message from Matt emphasizing the importance of safety on the project and letting everybody know that it's important for them to go home at the end of the day to their loved ones. And that's why we're doing what we do every day in ensuring their safety onsite. And that comes very clearly from the top down.
TONY MILITELLO: So in terms of safety, where do you think your organization stands out.
CHAD HART: I think the passion, number one. I think we do what we say we're going to do. And I think we keep what's important important, which is people. I think we're driven to continually improve. We're never satisfied with the status quo or just getting by. Always looking for improvement.
TONY MILITELLO: Matt, in terms of safety and overall risk reduction, what lies ahead for your organization?
MATT BREWER: I could start out with cybersecurity. That's a cost that we've seen double or triple in the last few years. And you don't think about it associated with construction companies. But like all organizations, that market in particular seems to have gone a little haywire. So having a wholly owned captive within our organization, we were looking at creative ways to mitigate that risk, which I think a lot of other companies are looking at the same.
TONY MILITELLO: Yeah, and it stands to reason that a lot of the examples that you've talked about are really highly reliant on interconnected devices and technology and interconnected systems and software. And that cybersecurity threat, as you mentioned, is a realistic one that, again, it stands to reason that you would be attentive to preventing those types of attacks and those types of disruptions and interruptions to your work.
MATT BREWER: Certainly. I think also in a macro view, what's going on in the general liability space right now is concerning. Some of the frivolous lawsuits that you're seeing and how that's being managed in certain courts, I think has a lot of people's attention in the construction industry.
TONY MILITELLO: If you had to name the single most important element of a successful safety program, what would that be?
ALLEN MARTIN: I think it's remembering the why. Why we do what we do? It's easy to talk about policies, procedures, regulations. But when you take all of that out of the picture, the bottom line is it's important for everybody to get back to their families. And I think, to me, that's what makes a successful program successful is living off of that why. And we're celebrating our 10 year anniversary with One Life. That's our safety identity.
One of the things that we're doing, we have everybody signed the banner of who they're going to work safe for after a project orientation. But one of the things that we'll be doing next year and we're starting this now with our folks, we're going to get printers set up on job sites with our superintendents and have that be an option so after a safety orientation, they will have badges with their families printed on them when they walk out of safety orientation to be a constant reminder of that why. That is what makes a program successful.
TONY MILITELLO: What would you recommend to anyone concerned with risk and safety in the construction industry?
CHAD HART: Build a network. You don't have to be knowledgeable on every single aspect. But build a network of people you trust, reach out to them, and know where to go for great information and help. But that's the most important part is build that network and don't be afraid to not know something, to go ahead and ask. Most of the people in the safety department or most of the people in safety are so willing to help anybody else out. All we got to do is ask.
TONY MILITELLO: Anything to add, any final comments?
MATT BREWER: We're just grateful to be here. Celebrating a successful year in safety is the most important thing that we can do. And to be here and share best practices around the table like this with other competitors is a wonderful thing. And like Chad said earlier, safety breaks down all barriers within a highly competitive industry. And we look forward to attending events like this and think we're better off for it. So One Life culture is what we're all about. And if we can spread that seed in today's event and tomorrow's event, then we're better off for it.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. Thanks, Matt. And thank you all for taking your time today and all that you do to demonstrate your leadership and commitment to the construction industry.
MAX NELSON: Thank you for listening to another episode of the podcast series dedicated to winners of the 2024 AGC Construction Safety Excellence Awards. We hope you are taking away insights that can be applied to your own programs and processes. For more information on the CSEA, visit www.agc.org/csea. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to like and follow the show.
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