SAFETY
“We’re no longer content with improving just our own workforce’s safety performance. We’ve increased our focus on Total Project safety.”
—Gary Amsinger, vice president, safety, McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.
It was 1987. And McCarthy’s recordable incident rate was 34. Yes, you read that right. We believed, as did most of the industry, that you couldn’t afford to be safe.
The advent of employee ownership brought a new attitude to McCarthy. “The people getting hurt on our jobs weren’t just coworkers anymore. They were our partners,” explains McCarthy’s Gary Amsinger. “Nothing we do is more important than helping to ensure that our employees and team members return home safely to their loved ones each night. It’s simply the right thing to do.”
That attitude toward safety has become a critical part of McCarthy’s culture. “I think it’s safe to say that our folks are now very focused on safety. It’s a part of everyone’s core values,” continues Amsinger.
The results speak volumes. In 2006, McCarthy’s self-performing workforce totaled 5.6 million manhours of exposure. The company’s OSHA recordable incident rate was 1.54, and its OSHA lost-time case incident rate was 0.21 (the industry averages are 6.3 and 2.4, respectively).
One of the company’s operating divisions recently went 15 months without a recordable. Two divisions have gone 3 years (and still counting) without a lost-time incident. In the last five years, 5 projects have gone their entire construction duration without a recordable incident. And McCarthy recently learned that it is one of three finalists for the national AGC’s annual Construction Safety Excellence Award.
Hoping for and thinking about creating a safe work environment doesn’t make it happen. It takes commitment – both mentally and financially. At McCarthy it revolves around four basic tenets: communication, training, motivation and monitoring. Each and every employee that steps foot on a McCarthy project, including subcontractors understands our safety expectations via a McCarthy safety orientation. Our 31 full-time safety professionals set the tone. And every manager, superintendent and engineer ensures the message gets translated on site. “The skill sets our project teams employ to bring a project in on time and within budget are the same ones used to provide a safe environment for all workers.”
McCarthy’s approach avoids a set of safety “rules.” Instead, our approach centers around safety “guidelines” – thereby providing each manager with the tools needed to plan for safety on their jobsite. Developing partnerships with local/regional organizations is also a part of McCarthy’s approach. Six OSHA partnerships are currently active, covering 80% of the company’s projects.
In the last year, McCarthy’s approach has broadened to include a focus on Total Project safety. “We’ve always tried to influence our subcontractor’s safety practices on our sites, but we never had a way of really measuring their performance,” says Amsinger. McCarthy now tracks ALL safety incidents on every jobsite. Very few other, major construction companies do. In 2006, total hours of exposure amounted to 23.2 million manhours – with a Total recordable rate of 3.02 and a Total lost-time rate of 0.40.
