Construction Risk Management in a Hard Economy: The Treasures
June 2009
A worker was wrestling a wheelbarrow up a
long plank trying to balance 280 lbs. of masons cement while not breaking
the board or his back. When he finally made it to the top and rested, he was
asked why he did not use a two-wheeled wheelbarrow since they are so easy to
handle with heavy loads and he could move much faster. He replied, "Well, I
only have the one plank." There are many lessons here.
By TJ Lyons
Turner
Casualty and Surety
Tough time times are here, and many friends in the construction world
have lost their jobs. But underneath the misfortunes of the many are gifts
for some.
Following are specific areas to invest in your people and company to
glean that extra dollar, keep a worker employed, and gain a client or two.
Though each of the items to explore may seem like a fresh idea, it is not.
You should have considered most of these approaches during our fat economy.
Take them seriously, consider and discuss them with your good people,
execute them, and you will come out of this rough stretch a winner.
Construction Economics
A plumber on the 21st floor of a high-rise in NYC was installing new
copper piping. The area was wide open with only one wall in sight protecting
the elevator shaft. He was alone and climbing a 12-foot ladder to do his
work. First, he went up with a bore-brush and steel-wool and made everything
shiny. He climbed down and up again to apply a liberal dose of solder-flux.
He again went down, grabbed the solder and a torch, climbed up (hands-free)
and soldered the connection. Not yet done, he once again returned to the
floor and back up the ladder with a wet cloth to ensure the connection was
nice and clean. When asked what his work was for the day "Well, I have 79
more connections to solder, and then we test." He was asked, "Wouldn't it be
easier to just tool around in a mobile scaffold and not keep climbing that
ladder?" His reply "Well yes, but we can only use ladders."
So we ran some math. Each connection took 46 minutes while the time
doing the work was just 12 minutes. About 75
percent of the time, this good guy was just climbing up or down a ladder
while trying not to fall. Hence, the hidden value of construction
economics.
Take the time to watch your folks work and figure out how to do it
faster, and, by default, you might do it safer. In this case, the plumber
should work out of a scissor lift, all his equipment is at hand, and money
is to be made.
Construction Economics: Another Example
As seen in the bottom of the first photograph depicted in Figure 1, scaffolding
was erected taking 3.2 hours to assemble. The task to be
completed was to simply caulk a joint from the floor to 16 feet up. The
contractor then asked for the scaffold to be inspected; it failed and was
immediately taken out of service. He then retrieved a scissor lift
(Photograph 2 in Figure 1) from the same building, took
down the unused scaffolding (22 minutes), and completed the work in 41
minutes. When asked why he did not use the lift the first
time, he replied, "Well, I wasn't using the scaffolding right then." As a
sloppy site is an indicator of inefficiency, so is a clumsy approach to the
work.
Time To Strengthen—Change Your Contract
Contractors are malleable during tough times. They will accommodate more,
and if there is an opportunity to save some money, they will jump at the
challenge.
Gather some of your field, safety, purchasing, and estimating
folks and throw them in a room with promises of food. Ask them, "In a
perfect world, what would you like to see in our contracts to make your days
easier?" Then walk away. If you have the right team, you will strengthen
your contracts, your contractors, and may keep people a
bit safer. Now is the time to think about that "wish list" you have carried
in the back of your head centering on thoughts that start with "I gotta put
that in the contract."
Here are a few examples:
Language prohibiting
using conventional table saws that cut off people's fingers (sometimes I
cannot believe what I am writing). One brand (Saw-Stop) senses skin and
simply stops spinning, protecting users. Consider that every 9 minutes there
will be an injury from a table saw, and something like one out of every 27
people using a table saw for work will lose a finger.
Put it in your
contract that only table saws that do not cut off fingers will be used.
Soon, a clever and correct attorney will be asking, "Gosh
Mr. Lyons, it seems like there must be something that could have been done
to save Mike's fingers. Was there a safer saw that could have been used?"
If scaffold is used at any height, it must be surrounded by rails. This
eliminates the problem of having a contractor put his scaffold at 5'11" to
evade the 6-foot fall rule.
No more job-built ladders. These were invented
by the Pueblos over 10,000 years ago and should be confined to museums and
fire trucks. Use stair towers or portable stairs—they are faster, safer, and
more efficient.
Use Saf-T-boots, Garlock, or similar manufactured systems
for perimeter protection. The days of erecting a guardrail with nails and
2x4s are gone. There is a return on investment on manufactured systems.
Considering how much maintenance is needed for fixing our rustic railings,
these purchased devices will pay for themselves, and on the next job, they
are free.
Replace standard stepladders with ones that provide a working
surface. Steps are for stepping and not for working—unless you are a
firefighter.
Look at your ladder use and see if you might do the work
faster from a lift or other elevated work platform. Compare both systems, do
the math, and make a decision. Do not base your decision on emotions but
instead on data. Another option is to have your contractor bid using both
approaches as alternates and let them figure it out.
Replace conventional
lanyards with a simple retractable. In a recent study, 71 percent of workers
tied off to a conventional lanyard for protection would have hit the ground.
To make matters worse, recently a safety director supplied
extenders for his workers to make it easier to
attach their lanyards—it also brought the workers 18" closer to the ground
when they fell.
Eliminate the shoddy crane pads that workers assemble on
your projects. Only allow shop-made or manufactured mats (like Bigfoot) to
be used. Cranes are your biggest risk and when some of the poorest material
is used to hold them up, you are asking for trouble.
Use Downtime for
Planning
In a recent construction project initiated by Shell Oil and
Jacobs Engineering, we used downtime to plan. Trim your losses just through
thinking. Compared to a standard approach, these steps were taken:
- Interview the general contractor (GC) and clearly state your expectations.
"There will be no incidents on this project."
- Ensure the GC and everyone on
his operations' teams feels a zero-incident project is possible. Ask "Do you
feel all accidents are preventable in our world?" If the answer is anything
other than yes, find someone else.
- Interview each of the potential contractors before they are allowed to bid. Do your homework so you
understand their philosophy before they arrive, and then listen for what
their culture says when they speak. The insincere are obvious.
- At the interview, ask pointed questions and search for
binding agreements that are outside of a written contract.
During one session, the steel erector was asked if he was
willing to work out of scissor lifts or booms rather than
tie-off or use ladders. Instead of saying, "Well, we use
ladders," he asked to return his next morning. At the next interview, he said, "We can do it,
and if you can help coordinate some of the site work, we can do it faster."
What was the cost associated with this approach? Nothing.
Ultimately, this
project, well over $24 million in value, was completed with over 400 days
worked, not one injury, and the total the cost of all claims was less than
$200. Take the time while you have it to plan like this.
Train Your People
Dr. W. Edwards Deming noted that you should spend lavishly on
training. (See "Deming's
Point #6 as Applied to the Insurance Industry.") Just look at Toyota.
Carl Metzger, one of the top safety guys in the United States, once said,
"Don't forget to make a good guy gooder." He went on to explain the damage
done when training is only focused on the miscreant and not also on your
stars.
As money trickles in from the federal government, much will likely
go to urban areas for development. One builder in the Northeast trained its
staff on how to work on Brownfield sites in the OSHA 1910.120 Hazardous
Waste Site Operations (Hazwoper). Now, they are fluent in that world, and
can provide guidance to owners.
Firms are taking the time to provide OSHA
Outreach training in construction to their smaller contractors. This
strengthens their subs now so when the work starts again, better results
will follow.
Subcontracted Safety Consultants
If you are in the
habit of hiring safety consultants, take a strong look at that process. Many
consultants are in the field specializing from lasers to lanyards, and if
you do not have that expertise, you must hire them.
However, if you have
sharp people, now is the time to take that superintendent you are just about
to lay off and send him to shadow your top safety people. When they see its
more about relationships than regulations, and understand it is all about
planning instead of policing sites, you will gain a superintendent who can
be your safety guy during a tough time. When things get fat again, he can be
a super but with a new and better understanding of how to keep his site
safe. That's smart staffing.
Whenever you speak with superintendents, the
conversations often comes around to the point where he shrugs his shoulders
and says, "Safety … we never had a safety manager on
project. That was my job." And he is correct. One failure of industry,
including construction, was the creation of the safety coordinator, for two
effects that evolved. First, the operations group could pass off safety
responsibility to the safety coordinator, losing strict accountability for
keeping good people from getting hurt. Second, the weak superintendent now
calls the safety coordinator to take care of concerns that used to be his or
hers.
Here's a great example. A safety performance audit was performed
with the superintendent in tow. A worker was seen violating the 6-foot fall
protection rule and needed to be removed from the project. The super grabbed
his radio, called for the safety guy to come over to remove the worker, and
proved to those surrounding that super that he had lost control of his site.
If there ever was an opportunity to pass back safety responsibility to the
superintendent and his team, it is now because it's economical. Safety
coordinators should be weaned from projects over the next few years to
ensure accountability is applied where it is deserved and where it can be
controlled, no different than quality or schedule. More companies are tying
actual losses on a project to the site's balance sheet, further driving the
focus that is needed for a well-run project.
This is one example where
"smarter staffing" reduces the workforce during a downturn but will increase
the performance of your firm when it rebounds. Simply ensure you have people
with passion for the work and that they understand why safety is an element
of a project, not an assignment.
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