To effectively manage the business, a construction firm must manage the
work-in-place costs effectively, efficiently, and per the contract document
requirements. This means their processes, practices, and procedures have to be
integrated and efficient, and their management innovative, supportive, and
effective.
It also helps to have a workforce that is experienced, empowered, and
engaged. They also have to be able to measure, evaluate, and improve on
production, productivity, quality, and risk, as well as safety, to be
financially successful.
Construction Operations
In reality, many contracting firms treat the management of operations as
unique and separate or poorly integrated with that of risk and safety
management. The people in operations who are responsible for putting the work
in place—superintendents, foremen, and others—are primarily held accountable
for meeting production goals and related objectives. The safety manager is
responsible to ensure that the workforce performs the work without having an
accident and, more importantly, avoids getting injured.
The underlying premises or rationale for this bifurcation are varied. Below
are a few that are commonly encountered.
- The people responsible for putting the work-in-place are too busy
planning, organizing, directing, managing, and controlling operations to be
burdened with watching and managing the workforce for safety issues and
infractions.
- Safety is governed by a set of unique standards promulgated by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and forms the basis of the
organization's safety program, which is overseen by the safety manager.
This aspect of work should be controlled by that manager.
- Safely working falls under the purview and control of individual workers
and, therefore, is their responsibility.
- Safety involves common sense, and construction workers should naturally
be able to perform their work in a safe manner.
Underlying the day-to-day practice of safety management is a generally
accepted set of "best practices" that have evolved over time through
trial and error, anecdotal information, and as unsubstantiated beliefs that
many people in the practice of safety as well as others take for granted. In a
construction company, due to the premises mentioned above, all levels of
management and supervision responsible for production look to the safety
manager to effectively deal with the risk of accidents and control or eliminate
injures from the day-to-day operations.
The safety managers tasked with the management of worksite safety use their
understanding, beliefs, knowledge, and experience to shape and implement safety
policies, practices, and procedures. Disseminating relevant information,
providing training, conducting inspections, identifying unacceptable conditions
and/or behaviors, imparting direction, and giving guidance to the workforce are
all done to ensure overall safe operations.
Segregating the management of safety from operations sets the stage for two
fundamental problems. Since safety and operations are not integrated nor
structurally aligned, invariably risk is introduced into the construction
process, which functionally cannot be effectively addressed or managed because
of this reality. Nor can accidents and injuries be effectively controlled or
eliminated by the use of generally accepted "best practices" that
have evolved over time through trial and error, anecdotal information, and
unproven and unsubstantiated beliefs that become accepted practices in the
management of worksite safety.
Safety "Best" Practices?
I have been involved in design and construction for over 50 years and have
simultaneously been engaged in consulting for almost 30 years to a large number
of firms (e.g., architects, engineers, construction managers, general
contractors, subcontractors, vendors, and suppliers) operating in the design
and construction industry by assisting them in devising systems, practices, and
procedures that improved their business and operational outcomes. I have also
made presentations to company owners and senior management, middle management,
and supervisors, as well as the workforce. I have also spoken at a large number
of international, national, and regional conferences on the subject of
operational excellence as well as risk and safety management. I have also made
many presentations at various safety chapter and associations, as well as
construction firms.
I provide this information to illustrate that this has exposed me to a very
large number of people who were in both construction operations and safety,
many of whom were in decision-making positions. This also exposed me to some of
the myths and wrongheaded beliefs practiced by various organizations, both by
people responsible for operations as well as those responsible for safety.
The safety manager may tell the workforce that by working safely, every
employee will contribute to making the work environment safer for their crew,
or that by working safely, the employees, their families, and the organization
wins. Encouraging workers not to take risks is generally not a very effective
approach to solving the problem. The safety manager would more than likely get
better results if they find out why the worker is performing the task in the
way they are and not by taking the "rah, rah, rah" approach. Or
better yet, the safety manager can work with supervision during planning the
work and the assignment of workers to assist in eliminating risk or reducing
their possible negatives outcomes. This is much more effective than allowing
the risk to be incorporated into the work and then trying to find it and
eliminate it.
The worker's risk-taking may be caused by a force of habit, which would
make a behavioral approach more effective in dealing with that problem. If it
is a knowledge issue, then some form of mentorship, coaching, training, or
modeling may be the solution. The worker should be enabled to perform their
work safely, which means minimizing the risk of injury during the planning of
the work. This then puts the focus on identifying the risks involved in
supervision, which should be assisted by the safety manager in the mitigation
of the risks involved. It is supervision that assigns the task, and they should
make sure that the worker they pick is fully capable and knowledgeable, as well
as has the appropriate information tools and resources to be able to perform
the work effectively and safely.
The construction safety manager may befriend the workers, ask about their
families, and chitchat a bit before bringing up the issues with how they are
doing their work unsafely, avoiding criticism and blame. This "best
buddy" approach of the safety manager ignores the fact that, in industry,
there is an inherent rift between safety and production. The production
supervisor is primarily evaluated on meeting or exceeding the production goal,
which means that he or she expects good performance, may encourage speed, and
may even accept shortcuts or a deviation from safety and/or quality to get the
desired rapid results. In such situations, generally, "production trumps
protection." If the worker perceives that the production goal is important
to the supervisor, and he or she thinks that the suggested work method by the
safety manager will, in fact, slow him or her down, then the choice will in all
likelihood be to perform the work as suggested by the safety practitioner and
revert back to the previous way of doing the work after he or she leaves so as
to be productive and to ensure that he or she continues to stay employed.
Virtually all construction firms have safety programs that spell out the
safe way of performing work. And yet, it is not uncommon to find workers
perform their work in an "unsafe" or less than acceptable manner. I
discussed this phenomenon in an article that was published in August 2014,
"Normalization
of Performance Deviations," in which I cover the "how" and
the "why" of organization's experiencing the devolution of
standards, expectations, practices, etc., from what is required to what ends up
being accepted. Management must be vigilant and focused in order to identify
such progressive incremental erosion of their standards, leading to inferior
performance and practices, as well as outcomes.
Safety and Operations
The practice of safety is rife with myths and wrongheaded beliefs. These
myths and beliefs have become accepted and are utilized to a large extent. As a
result, many improvement strategies that are deployed based on such thinking
tend to have less-than-stellar results, and some even end up being of little
value and a waste of resources, since little or no value is created for the
organization. Much of the solution to achieving safe performance resides in the
operations function of the firm. The safety effort should be used in supporting
the operation's risk management. Safety can also provide confirmation that
the operations are, in fact, successful through an analysis of the resulting
activities of the workforce.
It is important to understand that safety is not a condition. Safety is an
outcome, the result of doing a task or one's job in such a way that the
worker does not get injured or experience a loss. So, in reality, it is
dependent on the risks that are inherent in the work and a function of how the
work is performed. From an operations perspective, a worker can perform their
work in one way and end up productive and meet their production goal, or they
can do it in another way and be less productive. They can perform that same
work in such a way as to achieve the expected level of quality, or they can do
it differently with the work, ending up with poor quality. And, they can
perform the work in one way and avoid getting injured, or they can go about
doing the work in a different way and, as a result, suffer an injury.
This debunks the premise that safety is somehow different from other
operational aspects of construction. Virtually every construction company has a
safety program, but they do not have production, efficiency, performance, or
effectiveness programs. Some do not even have a quality program. Operational
staff plans, organizes, directs, and manages the work in such a way as to
enable the worker to accomplish their work-in-place goals and to ensure the
work is performed so as to meet or exceed the project's targets and
expectations. And yet, safety is managed differently.
Management of operations includes a number of functions that are
interrelated and codependent. This generally includes planning, organizing,
directing, staffing, and controlling, to name a few.
- Planning involves deciding in advance what the most appropriate course of
actions ought to be to achieve predetermined goals and/or objectives.
Planning involves the following.
- Decision-making and problem-solving
- Optimizing utilization of resources that are both human and
nonhuman
- Effectively managing risk
- Avoiding performance barriers by eliminating uncertainty,
inefficiency, and waste
- Anticipating potential problems and having prepared possible
interventions and/or solutions that can be applied quickly and
effectively
- Organizing is the process of integrating financial, human, and physical
resources to develop effective, efficient, and productive relationships to
facilitate the accomplishment of organizational goals. Organizing involves
the following.
- Creating a structure with position descriptions and
interrelationships
- Defining responsibility, authority, accountability, and
delegation
- Identifying, defining, classifying, and grouping activities
- Ensuring that the proper required tools, equipment, and resources are
available before work starts
- Ensuring that assigned work matches up with the worker
capabilities
- Ensuring that the production goals are achievable given the physical
conditions and limitations
- Directing actuates the organizational methods, practices, and procedures
so as to function efficiently and effectively to achieve the organizational
purpose. Direction is a function of management dealing with supervising,
coaching, influencing, mentoring, and counseling subordinates to enable them
to achieve both personal and organizational goals. Directing involves the
following.
- Oversight
- Decision-making and solutions
- Communication
- Motivation
- Support and guidance
- Staffing means manning the organizational structure as well as keeping it
manned. Staffing involves the following.
- Proper recruitment and effective selection
- Placing the right person in the right position or task
- Training and development
- Appraisal and remuneration
- Recognition and rewards
- Controlling ensures performance is in line with organizational
expectations. It involves the determination and measurement of accomplishment
against performance standards. Controlling also determines the rate of
progress toward the achievement of goals and identifying deviations and
correcting them in order to ensure system effectiveness. Controlling involves
the following.
- Creation of performance achievable standards
- Collection and evaluation of performance data
- Correction of any deviations to ensure achievement
- Removal of barriers
Conclusion
Safety is an outcome; it is the byproduct of the activity an employee is
engaged in as they go about performing their assigned tasks. The sources of the
risk of injury reside in the way the task is planned; the processes, means, and
methods are organized; the materials, tools, and equipment are provided; the
amount of time allotted for carrying out the task; the quality of supervision;
and the matching of the task demand to the worker's capabilities.
All of this is under the control of management and supervision. So, it is
they who should perform all this with risk and safety in mind. They have the
ability to identify the risk associated with the various aspects of the task
and the opportunity to eliminate those potential risks or diminish their
adverse effect by modifying or adjusting the various involved factors before
the worker gets involved in the task. They also can exert control by ensuring
that workers do, in fact, perform their work in a safe manner.
So, to more effectively manage the risk of injury, operational management
must involve the safety manager as a consultant to supervision during the
planning, organizing, and staffing of the project prior to commencement of the
work rather than expecting the workforce and the safety manager to find the
inherent risks, work around them, and do this without slowing down
production.