TONY MILITELLO: Great, thanks. So in the broadest terms, how important is safety to your organization?
JESSE MELDRUM: I'd say that safety is one of the top things we look at. It's one of our core values, and it's one of the things that we try and breed into every individual that works for us.
TONY MILITELLO: Can you tell us a little bit about some of the programs that you have in place for reducing operational risk?
JESSE MELDRUM: So we have a homegrown system that we built years ago called Safety Mojo. Part of that is an all-encompassing data, system-driven application that we use that every employee really puts all their information in every single day. But in the back end, it allows us to see all of the leading and lagging indicators, and we can put into the field and help them plan out their days to help reduce all of the different risks and mitigate the hazards that we have.
TONY MILITELLO: What are some of the leading indicators that you use in that system?
JESSE MELDRUM: So a lot of them are based on your inspections and your observations and the findings that they're finding out in the field. So when we're performing all of these observations, they all get categorized into your major hazardous fields, and then it pops up onto our daily planning so that as they're planning all of their work plans for the day, they can really add that into their mitigation processes.
TONY MILITELLO: Are there any other areas of risk that you focus on in construction?
JESSE MELDRUM: I think we focus on a lot with the workers' comp, but we also get into a lot of equipment, a lot of our trucks, a lot of our fleet management. So we really dive into a couple different aspects to try and mitigate everything. It's busy out on the roadway. There's a lot of accidents. There's a lot of things that go on.
TONY MILITELLO: What might be some things that you do to manage your fleet you think are either over and above what industry requires or that you may feel are unique to your company.
JESSE MELDRUM: Really, I think it's the driving behaviors that each one of our drivers really performs every day when they're driving. You get a lot of people out there that are following too close or speeding or whatever it is. So we track all of that based on the trucks and then do some training with the driver on better driving behaviors.
TONY MILITELLO: Oh, that's great. Is coaching an important part of your driver training and education as well?
JESSE MELDRUM: It is. So we have a points-based system that we run every driver through on a weekly basis. And if they exceed that, we start to dive into what their behaviors are. And then, the truck will actually-- if they're speeding or if they're harsh breaking, it will give them prompts through the-- they're all Chevies. So their OnStar system that's in the truck, it will prompt them to either slow down or to not break as hard or give them little prompts to follow a training as they're performing it out on the roadway.
TONY MILITELLO: That's great. Any other kind of person-to-person, peer mentor-type coaching, or is it all through the onboarding system of the vehicle?
JESSE MELDRUM: Yes, we also do an annual drivers training that we run through, a couple of different services we rotate through, but just an overall training, normal driving behaviors as well as towing trailers. So we follow up on both of them.
TONY MILITELLO: That's great. What about technology and innovation? How do those contribute to the safety and risk management work?
JESSE MELDRUM: So Safety Mojo, our platform is really the biggest thing that we've used so far, but we've started to implement a couple of different aspects into it. With the AI movement going on right now, we're really heavily looking into that to try and get it so that it notices trends, leading lagging items, and then prompts our guys as they really go into that day-to-day planning phase, and make sure that they mitigate everything and they catch everything.
TONY MILITELLO: Can you tell me a little bit about how important leadership is to your safety program and the overall safety mindset of your organization?
JESSE MELDRUM: I'd say leadership is one of the biggest drivers for us. But it's not a leadership from the top. It's a leadership throughout. It's every manager driving his individual crew all the way up to their jobsite, all the way up to the company. So as a leadership, as a whole, it's a big picture that everybody has to buy into and really believe in.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. In terms of safety, where do you think your organization stands out?
JESSE MELDRUM: I think the thing that makes us stand out from everybody else is the culture and the buy in that we have from top to bottom. It's a mindset. It's a lifestyle, and it's a core value that we all believe in and we all live by every day.
TONY MILITELLO: And if you had to name the single most important element of a successful safety program, what do you think that would be?
JESSE MELDRUM: It's the people. Everybody involved in it, building their tomorrow, building a place that they want to work and make a lifestyle out of.
TONY MILITELLO: So for those people that are in your organization and that you work with on a daily basis, you go back, and you talk to the crews and the individuals that work on your job sites, what can you tell them lies ahead for them?
JESSE MELDRUM: A lot of work, a lot of safe work. So one of our mottos is safely producing profit, and the best way we can do it is to keep our employees safe and coming back to work, keep them happy.
TONY MILITELLO: Great. What would you recommend to anyone concerned with risk and safety in the construction industry?
JESSE MELDRUM: I'd say that there's always risk, there's always mitigations, but it's always evolving, and it's always a constant, constant flow of data and information and mitigating all of those hazards with all that information. So it's an ever-evolving change, just a process that we all go through every day.
TONY MILITELLO: Well, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time today and all that you do to demonstrate your leadership and commitment to the construction.
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 and follow the show.
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