ROLE OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE

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ROLE OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE

• Ellahi M. Ishteeaque, AIA
• RA, M A ARCH

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SUMMARY OF ACTION STEPSFOR CHIEF EXECUTIVES

• Chief executives of a construction firm do not
  directly supervise construction
• workers on a daily basis. Nevertheless, by the
  image that they project and by their behavior on
  and off the projects, they have a greater impact
  on the firm's safety performance than any other
  managers. Chief executives affect the firm's
  safety performance in three ways
• 1. They create an organizational culture in which
  safety is a high priority.
• 2. They hd line managers directly accountable
  for the safety of their subordinates.
• 3. They provide and focus staff support to help
  line managers meet their safety goals.

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BUILDING A SAFETY CULTUREHigh-performing
organizations with strong cultures are created by
managers who inspires other to share their goals.
The chief executive of a construction firm must
lead as well as manage in the area of
safety.1. Promote the right people - those who
show by their action and their words that they
share your goal of outstanding safety
performance. This rewards the safest managers and
sends a powerful sign to others.2. Communicate
the message that safety is of critical
importance in a direct contacts with employees
at all levels. a) Talk about safety on job
visits this sends the message that safety is
a high priority. b) Take the time to attend
safety functions. c) Write personal letters of
congratulation to managers who achieve
unusually good safety performance.
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Getting Safety from Line ManagersLine Managers
at all levels must be held accountable. for the
safety of those they supervise. This is the key
to running a safe construction firm. In addition,
workers must know how to work safely, supervisors
must know safe methods of supervision, and work
operations must be thoroughly planned in
advance.1. Set up a strong safety
accountability system.a) Choose a measure of
safety performance that makes sense for your
type and scale of operations. We recommend
measures based upon accident costs per work
hour supervised.b) Set ambitious but achievable
goals in terms of the chosen safety measure for
all managers in the organization.
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c) Have reports produced and distributed that
track and compare managers their safety
performance in terms of their safety
performance.d) Reward the safe managers and
let the least safe managers know that they must
improve in this area.
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2. Twenty-five percent of all construction
accidents happen to workers who have been on
the job for 1 month or less! Insist on safety
training for newly hired workers and for newly
appointed foremen. a) All workers new to a
given job site must receive a thorough
orientation to the hazards unique to that job
site and to the work operations currently
going on. b) All newly appointed foremen should
be trained to manage crews for safe
construction and especially to manage new
workers safely. c) Whether or not companies
conduct drug screening programs, foremen
should be trained to spot and deal with
situations involving drug or alcohol abuse.
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3. Require planning checklists or develop some
other mechanism to ensure that all work is
planned in advance.This reduces the number of
crisis situations and means that essential
safety equipment will be available when
needed.4? Consider selecting subcontractors
based, in part, on their safety records and
have your legal counsel provide up-to-date
guidelines for intervening in unsafe subcontract
work operations. A "hands off' policy is no
longer a legal defense in case of an injury to a
subcontractors worker.
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Focusing the Staff on SafetySafety is first
and foremost the responsibility of line managers.
However, staff specialists have important roles
to play in support of the line managers' efforts
to manage safely.1. The accounting or data
processing department must help to establish
and maintain the safety accountability system and
to eliminate accounting biases against
investing in safety. The accounting department
must be instructed toa) Assist in defining the
best measure of safety performance for line
managers at all levels.b) Develop the input
forms, procedures, and systems to produce reports
that track safety performance.c) Produce and
distribute these reports periodically.d) Establis
h charging procedures that make it as easy as
possible for line managers to purchase needed
safety equipment on projects.
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2. Safety specialists can contribute in many
ways to improved safety performance. The chief
executive must provide them with the training,
financial resources, and personal support to
bolster their authority. a) Safety
representatives rely primarily upon their
expert authority in dealing with line
managers in the field. They must be well
trained or they will be in a very weak
position with field managers.
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Leadership and Organizational Culture Case
1A worker on one of Brown Industrial
Constructors best projects described his job as,
"I am building a power plant to light up the
Southwest," whereas one of his peers, on another
of Brown's projects which was way over budget and
2 years late, described his job as "I am
terminating cable connections in areaTB-3-1A."
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Promoting the right people Case 2In HOS, a
medium-sized heavy construction firm which we
studied, hiring the wrong manager had a strong
negative impact on a company that had been
improving its safety record in many of the other
ways cited above. The aging principal of this
firm brought in a young, technically competent
manager to take over the firm's operations so he
could start to reduce his own commitments to the
firm. This younger manager felt that the firm had
been over emphasizing safety at the expense of
costs and schedules, and he said so on many
occasions. Even though the firm had already
implemented, and continued to follow, many of the
safety practicesthat we recommend in this book,
its safety performance took a steep nose dive.
Two years later, the firm's experience
modification rating caught up with it, and it
began to experience severe difficulties in
competitive bidding, especially for underground
work for which workers compensation insurance
premiums average around 30 percent of labor
costs.
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Talking about safety on job visits Case 3The
chief executive of Pike, a large, very safe
marine construction company told us, If I always
asked about costs and schedules when I visited
projects and sent te jobs letters or brochures
telling them to be safe in between visits, they
would correctly infer that the safety letters or
brochures were just window dressing and that what
I really cared about were the things that I
discussed with them in person. So the first thing
that I discuss when I meet with a superintendent
or foreman on a job is his safety record. That
way he knows its my top priority
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Taking time to attend safety functions Case
4The president of RRS, a medium-sized building
contractor, always shows up at the firm's monthly
safety breakfast. He takes the safety quiz that
is administered prior to breakfast and reads out
the ranking of projects in terms of accident
frequency. Obviously this sends a very strong
signal to superintendents and foremen who attend
these meetings, and the results bear it out. This
firm has a remarkably good safety record.. Its
experience modification rating is around 50
percent.
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Using written communications to promote safety
Case 5Personal letters do not have to stop
after a new employee is hired. The president of
RRS noticed that his company's outstanding safety
performance had slipped just a little during the
past year. He sent out a letter with a reply card
to each foreman in the firm, asking them to join
him in signing a pledge to work toward the
company's safety record This pledge letter got
virtually a 100 percent response from the
foremen. A number of the foremen turned it in to
the president at the company's next safety
breakfast.
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Setting safety objective for senior line managers
Case 6 (a)Sam Murray, a project manager,
described his firm's approach to us this way
"Our company is determined to bring its
experience modification rate down. We have found
that safety is a profit maker. We have had jobs
which came in ahead of schedule and under budget
and yet they cost lots of money for us when the
costs of accidents were included. So the company
started bonuses for project managers, field
superintendents, and projects safety people based
on the project safety records. To bring down
insurance costs the company has set a targeted
cost per man-hour for this year which is adjusted
to the insurance costs for the state in which the
project is located. Next year they will lower the
targeted costs. If a project is completed with
accident costs lower than the target, the project
manager, field. superintendent, and safety
manager each receive a bonus. There is a lot of
competition for these bonuses. Twice a year we
all come in and our safety records are read out,
and checks are handed to those whose project
accident costs were lower than the target. It
gets your attention.Even before the job
started, Sam aimed to win that bonus and began
the planning that made it happen. Throughout the
18 months of the project he kept track of his
progress. He even had the insurance company
sendhim a printout of the project's accident
costs every 2 weeks during the course of the
project.
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Case 6 (b)Th group vice president of Branner,
a major heavy construction firm with an enviable
safety record, put it this way 'TIf a project
manager won't recognize the importance of safety
performance and his responsibility to manage for
it, then he is going to cost us a ot of money in
the ong run We don't want this type of manager
in charge of our wel-trained draftsmen and
expensive equipment Itts too big a risk for us
to accept!"
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Case 6 (b)The group vice president of Branner,
a major heavy construction firm with an enviable
safety record, put it this way If a project
manager won't recognize the importance of safety
performance and his responsibility to manage for
it, then he is going to cost us a lot of money in
the long run We don't want this type of manager
in charge of our wel-trained draftsmen and
expensive equipment Itts too big a risk for us
to accept!"
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Reporting on safety performance Case 7
(a)Tower, a large building contractor with an
extremely good accident record, has its
accounting department print an "accident cost per
work hour" summary for each project at the end of
every month. This is distributed to all project
managers and superintendents. This engenders
competition among projects to see which will be
the safest every month. At the same time, each
project manager and superintendent receive a
break down for his project which reports
"accident costs per work hour supervised" for all
general foremen and foremen. Finally, a
breakdown of his foremen S results is prepared
for each general foreman.
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Case 7 (b)Massive, a highway bridge builder and
one of the safest companies in our study, used no
formal reporting of accidents, but project
managers know that they could expect a visit and
some detailed questions from the president if an
accident occurred on their project. The president
of this firm set zero accident" targets and
followed up personally to observe performance.
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Rewarding the safe managers Case 8Ticonderoga,
a very safe heavy-highway contractor, has
completely integrated accident cost reporting
into its monthly cost reporting"We feel that
including accident costs in each project's
monthly cost reports gives us a truer picture of
the profitability of each project to our
company," says its president. "Accident costs are
paid with the same green dollars as wages or
equipment costs it just takes a while for the
accident costs to show up! Once we started tQ do.
thjs, we discovered that some of our 'star'
superintendents were actually losing money for
the firm."
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Training new employees in safe work practice Case
9Jackson, one of the safer companies in our
study, found that its experience modification
rating for workers' compensation insurance
dropped by 25 points in 2 years after making only
one change in its management practices the
company began requiring thorough safety training
for all new hires.
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Getting the Most from the Safety Staff Case
10One of the authors was employed on a nuclear
power plant project on which the safety
representative averted a potentially serious
jurisdictional dispute. The ironworkers were
about to walk off the project in protest of the
fact that a carpenter had welded himself a metal
handrail for a suspended scaffold on wch he was
about to work. The 60-year-old safety engineer
confronted the 6-foot, 250-pound ironworker
steward and asked..in.a jocular voice, "Hey, Joe,
you wouldn't let this dumb carpenter build you a
wood scaffold if you had to work up at 200 feet,
would you? Knock it off and go back to work." The
workers roared with laughter and the situation
was instantly defused.