When her too-large safety vest caught on a door handle, Amy Roosa was jerked backward into the door. The contact resulted in a bruise.

For women in construction, that’s an all-too-common occurrence. 

Founder of The Safety Rack, a social media network that reviews PPE for women in the trades, Roosa said it’s typical for women in construction to have to don ill-fitting gear. The result can introduce new hazards, as protection equipment like a bright safety vest morphs into an injury risk.

Amanda Guadarrama, project manager for Nashville, Tennessee-based Hardaway Construction, said she had experienced the exact same type of incident — a vest too big for her catching on something and jerking her back unexpectedly. 

Sometimes the fit is too bad to even wear and work with.

“If, for example, my gloves are too big on me, I am more likely to remove them to complete my job, thus putting myself at risk for injury that the gloves could have prevented,” said Roosa, who works as a risk control specialist senior for Gallagher, a Rolling Meadows, Illinois-based insurance and risk consulting firm.

Jessica Bunting, research practice director for CPWR, or the Center for Construction Research and Training, said an informal survey of 174 tradeswomen found that 77% had been exposed to a hazard unnecessarily because of ill-fitting PPE. The top hazards included falls and inhalation and eye exposure — when eyewear or respiratory gear doesn’t fit well, debris or chemicals can more easily get into eyes and airways.

Paige Martonik, Reston, Virginia-based safety manager for DPR Construction, provided the same example as Roose and Guadarrama: a baggy vest catching on a door. Switching to a more tailored vest that fits her better has made doing her job easier and boosted confidence, Martonik said, adding she’d never go back to a looser fit.

The baggy or loose clothing like Roosa, Guadarrama and Martonik have had to wear can create new, more serious dangers. Beyond catching on a doorknob or hindering mobility, gloves or other loose clothing can get tangled in heavy, rotating machine parts, putting the worker’s body at higher risk.

Even without a specific exposure, poorly fitting fall harnesses, for example, can pinch or ride up, cutting off circulation or creating a choking hazard, Bunting said.

A worker issue, not a women issue

Bunting said there is a correlation between lack of or improper use of PPE and jobsite injuries. 

In response to a separate survey from CPWR about fall incidents across the industry, nearly half of respondents said no protection was in use at the time of a recent fall. In about one in four cases where workers died in falls, they had access to personal fall arrest systems, but did not use them, according to an analysis of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation.

Even wearing poor-fitting PPE can give the impression — outward to others or inward to the worker wearing it — that they are safe and protected when they are not.

“If the PPE is not properly sized, it will not fully protect the worker and will give a false sense of security,” Martonik said.

And it is not just women who need access to the right size and kind of PPE.

“There are many male workers in all different shapes and sizes who don’t fit into PPE created for the average-sized American man,” Bunting said. “Thankfully manufacturers have begun developing more sizes and focus more on women’s workwear.”

In its informal survey, Bunting said, CPWR asked women if they had experienced difficulty obtaining PPE that fits them well at work. Nearly nine in 10 said yes. That said, some respondents indicated they have found and purchased PPE on their own, and thought therefore it wouldn’t be tough for employers to do so on their behalf.

The right fit

The demand for construction labor is high: the industry needs half a million more workers in 2023. Traditionally, it’s been a male-dominated industry, but that has shifted slightly in recent years: 14% of workers in construction are women, the highest it’s ever been. That includes both office and field employees..

But those underrepresented groups need to feel a sense of belonging to stick around.

“There is a psychological component as well to wearing properly fitted PPE,” Roosa said. “Plenty of women, myself included, are aware we already stand out on a jobsite … In addition to this, if employers are only supplying male sizes or unisex sizes, their female workforce may not feel like they are valued or wanted.”

And when wearing ill-fitting gear, it needlessly distracts from the task at hand.

“When women are on a jobsite, they shouldn’t be distracted thinking about the potential safety hazards of something that is supposed to protect them,” Guadarrama said.

Using the oversized glove example, Martonik noted it's not just a new hazard, it’s frustrating to how it impacts the task at hand.

“When team members don’t feel valued and cared for, their opinion of their job can be impacted,” she said. “Having the proper PPE is one of the ways we can demonstrate everyone’s value to the team … I want my teams to know that I respect and appreciate them, they too should be proud of their work.”

Dive Brief:

• The New York City construction industry had 11 fatalities in 2022, the most since 2019, while recorded injuries also rose to 554 last year after plateauing in 2020 and 2021, according to a report released by the New York City Department of Buildings last week.
• Worker falls continued to be the largest cause of injury and death among construction workers in the city, according to the report. Falls injured nearly 200 and killed nine workers in 2022.
• While the number of fatalities was the highest in three years, NYC DOB also noted there was an uptick in construction activity. In the last seven years, the number of overall incidents has actually trended down, it said.

Dive Insight:

Brooklyn led the boroughs in number of fatalities with six, though it also had the highest number of new building permits issued. Manhattan led all boroughs in injuries with 255.

As part of the report, the DOB highlighted the major injuries, but also near misses. For example, on Jan. 14, 2022, a worker in Queens fell from the second floor of a 15-story project. They were wearing a properly tied-off harness, and as a result, didn’t hit the ground. The fall prevention system successfully prevented serious injury or death, according to the NYC DOB.

Changes in the Big Apple

The DOB issued fewer stop work orders in 2022, which the agency said could be attributed to the implementation of initiatives that put more focus on education. The DOB for the first time issued guidance on the specific reasons why a stop work order might be issued, so contractors could be proactive to prevent costly halts to work.

In July, the DOB cut in half the total number of jobsites that one superintendent could oversee at any one time from 10 to five. As a result, the DOB expects superintendents will be onsite more to catch unsafe conditions. The DOB will continue to reduce the number of sites superintendents can oversee to just one by Jan. 1, 2027.

Sponsored content

By Eyrus

Safety Week is right around the corner — it’s time for the construction industry to dig deep and think about how we can keep workers safe. Turns out it’s one of those excellent opportunities when ethics and the bottom line are in sync. Let’s consider a few stats that outline the current state of construction site injuries in the US:

• There were 162,000 reported non-fatal injuries in 2021 – 25% caused by overexertion (BLS and Travelers)
• 82% of construction employers report that safety issues have caused project delays in the past (Dodge Analytics)
• $170 billion is the annual cost of construction injuries (NSC)

Consider it this way: overexertion is 25% of the problem. Workforce monitoring is a way to leverage objective data on exertion, and it comes with plenty of other safety benefits too.

A proactive approach to driving change and creating safer work sites

Let’s look at how the application of digital badges and beacons (IoT) can automate workforce data collection and drive safety improvements. 

1. Leverage data to take preventative measures: Much of the data collected on the workforce is often subjective and open to the interpretation of who is entering the data on a manual check-in sheet, into an Excel spreadsheet or via a field app. Automating the data collection through badges and beacons offers project teams objective, reliable data that can be used to identify potential safety risks. 

Fatigue reports are just one example of this. General Contractors and Trade Partners benefit from automated fatigue reports for workers on their sites. Research data shows that a fatigued workforce is more likely to be involved in accidents on-site. Another example is leveraging workforce data to measure the consistency or turnover of the workforce by trade or for the project overall. If a site or a trade partner has a high degree of turnover, the project can take preventative measures to ensure the workforce is properly orientated to the unique safety risks for the site for which they are currently working. 

2. Keep untrained workers off the site: Many site accidents occur because someone onsite performs an activity they are not qualified to complete, whether that is operating a piece of equipment or working on tasks that require a certain skill set or background. If a worker engages in unsafe behavior, it puts everyone else at risk.  Because of the dynamic nature of construction, projects are often filled with workers from multiple companies where team leaders don’t know the skillsets of the workers and what they are trained and certified to do. 

Working on a project that has a well-documented system to track workers and their designated capabilities will more likely protect all workers from preventable accidents, as project managers can be immediately alerted if someone is completing a task they shouldn't be or trying to use equipment they are not cleared to operate.

3. Designate and restrict potential unsafe areas: Many projects have areas such as high-voltage electrical rooms that can be highly unsafe unless workers have the right credentials and certifications to work in those rooms. Restricting access to those areas or rooms is the first step towards minimizing the safety hazards that those rooms represent. If restricting access is not an option, at a minimum, the site management team needs to be alerted if an unqualified worker enters into one of these areas. A comprehensive, automated workforce monitoring solution covers both bases.  

4. Notify workers quickly in case of an emergency: All preventative measures are great and necessary, but we all know we can’t prevent all safety incidents from happening.  Having a centralized database of all workers on site across all the Trade Partners is critical to any safety program. 

A centralized database allows project managers and safety personnel to quickly notify workers of an event and communicate instructions on how to muster or evacuate the site.   Leveraging the power of IoT and sensor-based identification, project teams can quickly and automatically check people into a mustering zone and identify any workers that are not accounted for and where that last worker was seen. 

Piece contributed by Eyrus - About Eyrus:

Eyrus powers IoT in the construction industry, leveraging NFC readers, badges and Bluetooth beacons to automate worker data collection – giving clear answers regarding who is on your site, who they work for and how long they are there. 

Dive Brief:

• OSHA is ramping up its capacity to inspect infrastructure projects as federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act money flows into the industry, said the agency’s Directorate of Construction Director Scott Ketcham, according to New York City-based law firm Jackson Lewis. 
• The agency is increasingly focused on construction, and last year inspected construction workplaces more than any other industry. As federal funds flood into construction over the next seven years thanks to the IIJA, OSHA is concerned about protecting workers in the infrastructure sector in particular.
• To empower smaller contractors and those new to infrastructure projects to build safely, OSHA also recently released a webpage of resources with best practices, sample safety and health programs and training materials.

Dive Insight:

OSHA plans to focus on roads, bridges, airports, rail, ports and power and water systems in the coming years, Ketcham said at an American Bar Association meeting in March. OSHA will be also be promoting safety helmets and suicide prevention, since the suicide rate in construction is much higher than other industries.

Per Ketcham, the agency realizes that the infusion of federal money into construction will result in bids from smaller companies, which often lack the safety resources that larger and more established firms have. To help address this gap, OSHA developed the webpage to help less-resourced companies that will be working on infrastructure projects.

“This construction infrastructure safety and health webpage is intended to be a resource for contractors and other employers working on improving and building our nation’s infrastructure,” the website reads. “This is especially important for the critical work being undertaken through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” 

The resource focuses on the four most common types of hazards in construction:

• Falls.
• Struck-by object hazards.
• Caught-in or between hazards.
• Electrocution.

It also directs contractors to implement and integrate a written safety and health plan, and to engage workers in implementing it. The webpage also contains links to design safety, suicide prevention and many other resources.

OSHA taking action in construction

Ketcham said that OSHA has been issuing more willful citations for trench violations in particular because, most of the time, protective equipment is on site, just not being used. Last year the agency launched an enhanced enforcement initiative to protect workers from the hazard in response to an “alarming” increase in trench-related fatalities.

In addition, a new OSHA rule that took effect in March authorizes its regional administrators to issue new violation types as “instance-by-instance citations,” meaning the agency can issue multiple citations for specific violations where it would have in the past only issued one. Repeat citations can now be issued for incidents surrounding lockout/tagout, machine guarding, permit-required confined spaces, respiratory protection, falls and trenches.

OSHA may soon get more resources to keep tabs on infrastructure builds. President Joe Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2024 budget would increase the agency’s funding by 17%, to $738.7 million. As part of the increase, OSHA seeks to create 432 new full-time positions, a 21% increase from 2023’s fiscal year plans.

Dive Brief:

• Two workers died Monday after being trapped under rubble in a 30-foot-deep trench at a John F. Kennedy International Airport jobsite in New York City, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Construction work is now on hold while the investigation takes place.
• “At the time of the incident, workers were relocating utility lines in the vicinity of [the] cogeneration plant to support the increased energy needs of the JFK redevelopment project,” according to the Port Authority, which operates the airport. “The temporary safety standdown remains until safety reviews have been conducted.”
• The workers were identified as Francisco Reyes, 41, and Fernando Lagunas Pereira, 28, according to The New York Times. The name of the contractor that employed them has not yet been released, per the Port Authority.

Dive Insight:

Port Authority Police received a report of two workers trapped under construction rubble at 11:08 a.m. on Monday. The Port Authority Emergency Services Unit, fire department and EMS responded to the scene and began the rescue around 11:15 a.m. using an excavator, ropes, pulleys and chains, according to CBS News. The mens’ bodies were pulled out just after 1 p.m., when they were pronounced dead. 

The Port Authority said in a statement that it is conducting a thorough investigation and will be cooperating with all other investigative agencies. 

The ongoing construction at JFK Airport is part of a sprawling $18 billion-plus overhaul that entails the development of two new terminals, expansion of two existing terminals and other infrastructure improvements. AECOM Tishman is building Terminal 1; STV, Turner Construction, Group PMX, McKissack and NYCO are expanding Terminal 4; AECOM Hunt is constructing Terminal 6; and AECOM Holt is expanding Terminal 8.

Construction worker deaths on the rise

Construction worker deaths reached a five-year high in New York City last year, and this incident marks the third workplace fatality to occur at JFK International Airport in the past month alone, according to a joint statement from New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Selvena N. Brooks-Powers. 

In an effort to address this dangerous trend, New York state passed Carlos’ Law in December 2022, which increases the penalty by 50 times (at a minimum) that a judge can levy on an employer as a result of a worker’s death or injury. The law is named for Carlos Moncayo, a 22-year-old undocumented Ecuadorian worker who died in a 2015 trench collapse.

Trench deaths are one of the leading causes of fatalities in the construction industry overall, according to OSHA, and the agency is stepping up enforcement as a result. Last year, 39 workers died from hazards in trench and excavation work, more than double the 15 who perished in all of 2021. Stephen Boyd, deputy regional administrator of OSHA’s Region 6, said at a January conference attended by Construction Dive that he expects this trench death trend to continue this year.

Tutor Perini Corp., one of the largest contractors in the country, was cited 244 times for health and safety violations on its jobsites over the past decade — far more than any commercial or residential builder —  and that doesn’t count two high-profile investigations last year, according to a Construction Dive investigation.

Inspectors from OSHA cited the company between five and 55 times a year from 2012 through 2021, the most recent data available. Initial fines totalled $1.2 million. Key findings were shared with the agency and the company for review.

OSHA was four times more likely to find a violation when inspecting a Tutor Perini jobsite than one of its large rivals, according to an analysis of OSHA data for the 30 largest commercial contractors by revenue. Each OSHA inspection of a Tutor Perini site resulted in about 1.5 violations, on average, compared to the median of 0.33 for its peers.

The Los Angeles-based company’s total included its subsidiaries, such as Black Construction Corp. and Lunda Construction Co., but no joint ventures. Construction Dive treated its peers — competitors with annual revenue above $3 billion — the same.

The company, founded in 1949, is known for its work on large commercial and infrastructure projects such as California’s high-speed rail project and the BART San Francisco Airport Extension. 

As one of the industry titans, Tutor Perini should set an example for safety, experts say.

Even though the company cites its commitment to safety in its 2021 and 2022 annual financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it does not mention OSHA violations or any litigation stemming from them, indicating top management does not view the lawsuits or potential reputational damage as material financial risks. Nor is the company on the radar of OSHA’s federal program to reform serial offenders, a program that tracks companies with multiple repeat violations over time, which has only marked smaller contractors.

Tutor Perini also continues to win big-ticket bids, such as a joint venture on the $4 billion Capital Beltway project in the Washington, D.C., region last September. The project was halted after the lead partner in a private consortium known as Accelerate Maryland Partners, Australian firm Transurban, pulled out of the job. 

CEO Ron Tutor noted on the company’s fiscal year 2022 earnings call last week that the cancellation of major projects such as the Beltway widening had hurt the company’s bottom line. Tutor said the company lost a record $11 billion in potential new work last year after projects were scrapped because they were over the owners’ budget.

Despite these issues, the company noted several smaller wins from last year, including the $260 million Eagle Mountain-Woodfibre gas pipeline project in British Columbia, Canada, and $126 million for military facilities in Puerto Rico. 

Contested fines

OSHA violations are often contested and litigated across the industry. This means that large contractors pay much less than they’re fined, said Kevin Barry, head of the United Service Workers Union’s Construction Division, which represents 30,000 workers. 

“They get an attorney. They go into OSHA, they nickel and dime it down.” 

Tutor Perini told Construction Dive that it appeals many of its OSHA violations, but would not provide an estimate of final fines and violations.

“Depending on the outcome of our appeals, we believe that both the number of violations and the ultimate total amount of fines paid will be substantially less,” the company said in a statement. 

OSHA said in a statement its “goal is to get employers to fix the hazards. Sometimes, we lower the penalty to get protections earlier … so focusing on the fines is not always the best measure. When setting a penalty, OSHA begins with the maximum penalty, then adjusts based on a variety of factors.” 

The agency, however, was unable to provide numbers of contested fines for any of the 30 contractors, nor how many violations were reduced or removed following appeals.

Tutor Perini told Construction Dive that the majority of its violations were classified as “other-than-serious.” However, 86 of its violations, or 35%, were labeled “serious” by OSHA inspectors, according to Construction Dive’s analysis, more than double the next closest company.

Other safety metrics

Tutor Perini declined to be interviewed, but in response to emailed questions said its safety record is top of mind and, using two other safety metrics, says it does well compared to its large competitors. 

“As one of the largest civil works contractors in the United States, we regularly compare our safety performance against industry averages, and our overall safety record is strong,” Tutor Perini Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Jorge Casado wrote in a statement to Construction Dive.

Casado denied that the company operates unsafe jobsites, and said it measures safety using the Total Recordable Incident Rate, a formula that tallies total injuries multiplied by 200,000, divided by total hours worked. The company also tracks the Lost Time Injury Rate, which measures the rate of injuries that result in a lost day’s work.

The company’s TRIR was 1.58, compared to the industry average of 2.7 and its LTIR was 0.4 compared to 0.9, according to the company’s 2021 ESG report.

However, these metrics have come under scrutiny as safety measurements. A report published by the Construction Safety Research Alliance in 2020 claims TRIR is unreliable due to its lack of precision and association with fatalities, and is statistically invalid for comparing businesses.

A study by SafeWork Australia in 2013 found Lost Time Injuries records injuries that can vary in severity.

“Of the various performance data employed across the business, government and not-for profit sectors, it is increasingly clear that the use of LTI rates is particularly problematic and deserves special attention,” the study’s authors wrote.

Current troubles

Tutor Perini’s safety problems continue beyond the time frame of Construction Dive’s analysis.

The California Public Utilities Commission investigated a Tutor Perini jobsite in San Francisco following a fire in June 2022 on a Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) jobsite. The fire suppression system and ventilation fans didn’t activate, according to a report submitted by a fire inspector, and an internal review by Muni found that Tutor Perini shut off the fire suppression system based on the cost of an accidental discharge, NBC Bay Area reported.

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority told Construction Dive that the investigation into the incident was completed, and that the cost of the issues would be covered by the project’s liability insurance.

Casado said in a statement: “Safety is of utmost importance to Tutor Perini on all of our jobsites. We will continue to work collaboratively with SFMTA to ensure that safety is and remains a top priority as we complete our work on the Central Subway.”

More recently, Tutor Perini’s safety problems on the Los Angeles Purple Line rail system drew nationwide attention. The $2.4 billion Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority project was halted last October along a 2.6-mile stretch following safety concerns and incidents dating back almost two years. LA Metro sent repeated warnings to the contractors prior to the shutdown.

LA Metro’s Michael McKenna, senior executive officer of project management, and Kenneth Stewart, the director of contract administration, sent a letter to Tutor Perini and its joint venture partner, Torrington, Connecticut-based O&G Industries. The appendix lists 50 injuries since July 2021, including workers struck by rebar or hit in the face by air hoses and others who fell into embankments or to the ground. Additional safety issues included hazardous and dusty tunnels and a lack of following fall protection requirements. 

Work on the Purple Line resumed Nov. 4, following a site evaluation and written promises from the contractors to revamp their safety efforts.

Tutor Perini submitted an updated safety plan to LA Metro that included a root-cause analysis. The contractor found most incidents — 15 — were caused by a lack of planning and hazard assessments. Lack of training was responsible for 13 incidents, followed by housekeeping and material storage with 10 incidents.

The company’s root-cause analysis “identified many areas of the program that require improvement. Many of the identified root causes were violations of current policies and procedures. The causal factors show that some supervisors' risk tolerance is out of line with company policy. Behaviors that are unacceptable were not addressed, and at times were ignored. Supervision walking by hazards and not addressing or recognizing the hazard has contributed to an unacceptable culture.”

An LA Metro spokesperson told Construction Dive that in addition to imposing the new safety training, Tutor Perini replaced its safety manager.

“Safety is and will always be our first priority,” the agency said in a statement. “The safety of those building our county’s transportation projects must always be protected. We expect each Metro contractor to implement safety policies and to demonstrate its full compliance with all of Metro’s contract safety requirements.” 

When asked about the Purple Line’s safety record, Casado told Construction Dive: “We are firmly committed to providing a safe and healthy work environment for our employees and to working in a manner that ensures the safety of our subcontractors, customers and the general public, as well as the protection of facilities, equipment and the environment.”  

O&G Industries referred all questions to Tutor Perini.

Such a lengthy pause for safety issues on an infrastructure project is “fairly uncommon,” according to Trent Cotney, a lawyer for New Orleans-based law firm Adams and Reese.

“It’s one thing to have an isolated road construction in a stand down for safety retraining, it’s another thing to have a suspension that lasts for weeks due to safety concerns,” he said.

Reports of safety issues

Tutor Perini’s safety record has earned a word-of-mouth reputation in some circles, predating Construction Dive's analysis in some cases.

Some subcontractors refuse to work with the firm, said Carol Sigmond, an attorney for New York City-based law firm Greenspoon Marder, which represents many subcontractors.

Sigmond said some of her former clients told her they didn’t like the company’s “site logistics'' or “site organization,” code words she said for potential safety hazards. Tutor Perini did not comment on any other allegation.

Mark Hughes worked for Tutor Perini on three jobsites over two decades: the Playground Pier restaurant and retail development in Atlantic City, New Jersey; the Mandarin Hotel at the CityCenter in Las Vegas; and most recently the Miami-Dade Courthouse in Florida.

The Las Vegas CityCenter’s $6.4 billion project, completed in 2009, was known by local workers as “City Cemetery” due to the deaths and safety issues, he said.

Following funerals for six workers on the CityCenter jobsite and two others on another Las Vegas jobsite, the Cosmopolitan, the lack of safety became an inflection point. Laborers walked out over the safety issues and inspectors were called in, according to Las Vegas Sun reporting at the time. (These incidents are not included in Construction Dive’s data analysis because they were prior to 2012.)

“CityCenter had a lot of issues with safety and problems there. And when I was there, I thought that they turned it around and were paying attention,” said Hughes, who left the company last March and is now a general superintendent at Kast Construction in Naples, Florida. “I do believe since that time that maybe they've taken their foot off the gas a little bit with safety. And they don't pay attention to it as much as they should have.”

Hughes said industry management needs to show workers that safety is a priority, with no excuses or gray area.

Casado says for the company, that’s the case: “We thoroughly review all safety allegations and concerns, whether they arise out of an OSHA inspection process or are raised by employees on the jobsite, and take appropriate corrective actions whenever necessary.”

Hughes said that the company, being so large, needs to take a look throughout its divisions and put a safety program in place that everyone follows to the letter, no questions asked.

“There's no gray line [with] safety,” he said. “It all has to be done the same. And I do believe that they don't run it that way, the way I think it should be.”

Recently, I was asked for my thoughts on the safety challenges the U.S. engineering and construction industry is facing in 2023. To get a broader view, I put the question to the CEOs of 11 different construction companies. 

While each CEO had their own company-specific challenges, there were two areas of concern that almost all of them shared. If you are facing similar issues at your organization, you are not alone.

Post-pandemic performance issues

After three years where the pandemic dominated strategy and resources allocation, 2023 is a chance to finally get back to business as usual. However, much of the construction industry is still feeling the effects of the changes it made to keep the workforce safe. 

This has prevented many companies from returning to the way they operated pre-pandemic. A large number of the CEOs whose opinions I sought have found themselves addressing performance issues they believed had been resolved years ago. 

Worryingly, some 80% of the executives reported that, for the first time in more than 10 years, their safety performance is moving in the wrong direction.

This is even more remarkable when you note that all these companies recorded their best ever safety performance during the most dangerous periods of the pandemic. The CEOs attribute this to the intense focus on health and strictly enforced protocols to prevent spread of the disease. These made people extra vigilant about everything, including following safety processes and procedures vigorously, resulting in significantly reduced incidents and injuries.

So why the change? 

When the strict COVID-19 protocols were removed, it seems as if many workers threw the old out with the new, dropping attention and compliance to standard safety protocols. 

During the pandemic, the message to supervisors was to keep their distance from workers in order to help slow the spread, A. Ross Myers, CEO of Worcester, Pennsylvania-based transportation contractor Allan Myers, told me. “As a result, supervision and training is way down and incidents are way up,” he said. “What worked in the past is not being done now and this is leaving a big gap.” 

What worked in the past to make safety personal, relevant and important was continual interaction between supervision and the workforce. 

“Relationship is fundamental to the caring and planning it takes to inspire people to operate incident and injury free,” Myers said. “We need to lead our people away from computer screens and back to hanging out with the men and women on the front line. We need management and supervision to get back into the field and interact and retrain the people on the ground.” 

Many of the executives shared similar views. They also noted that because of the hiatus in training, many in their workforce have not received the core and critical programs that enable them to work safely. 

If this gap in training isn’t addressed and resolved in 2023, there may be dire consequences. In response, construction companies are rapidly ramping up their training programs to establish a minimum level of competency and commitment from supervision through to the workforce.

Shrinking talent pool

The second challenge, and perhaps the more significant one, has to do with the shrinking labor force — especially craft labor — and the number of incidents involving people with less than two years’ experience. 

Executives reported difficulty in finding qualified craft willing to work the hours and locations their projects require, which has necessitated recruiting candidates from outside the industry. This has resulted in new employees who have never been on a construction project before. 

These “rookies” lack the situational awareness that is the foundation of most companies’ safety training. Project supervision is stretched to run the projects effectively and bring the workforce up to speed.  

An already difficult situation is made worse by a significant decrease in worker retention. Maintaining a stable workforce is increasingly hard when there are many other, more attractive opportunities for those workers than construction which requires working in tough conditions and in a highly disciplined environment.

Make construction a career choice

There is a growing focus on recruiting young people to the construction industry with many firms launching programs this year to attract them. All the executives that I spoke with made it clear they want to share best practices to accelerate effective recruitment with their peers. 

To succeed, employers in construction need to encourage mastery of the trade, provide a defined path from apprentice to journeyman and help improve the lives of their employees with benefits and long-term career plans. 

Further, it is essential to train supervision on how to effectively lead. This ultimately creates a culture of trust, learning, and a safe workplace which people want to work in. The industry needs consistent investment in training at all levels particularly as construction firms increase nontraditional hires and address the volume of new hires.  

Traditionally, when schedule and budgetary pressure increased, training was often the first to go. The executives I interviewed all asserted their commitment to be disciplined in not letting those pressures lead to short-sighted decisions. 

They pointed to the benefits of simple things like extensive pretraining, follow-up training and example setting. However, the larger effort for most firms lies around culturalization — how to help the new employee (whether experienced or not) get what it really means to work safely and be committed to doing so.

For most construction firms, committing to a positive culture, especially regarding workers’ safety, has long been a high priority. What’s needed now in this fast-changing workforce is the ability to create and sustain a culture that is self-training and self-reinforcing. In doing so, many of the challenges of 2023 can be addressed.