McKenney’s was proud to participate in the One Life Safety Summit, a visual identity under the Choate Construction brand that represents the company’s unwavering commitment to workplace safety. The One Life Identity is designed to positively engage everyone that it encounters and challenge them to make safe decisions for their life, their family, and their legacy.
One Life upholds that Safety should be represented as a VALUE and not just a PRIORITY, because priorities can, and do change. The following are just a few of the compelling and alarming statistics presented during the summit:
- 9.9 Million construction personnel work each day in the United States
- 5,000 construction workers have died over the last 5 years
- 10,000+ have been injured in this same time frame
During the One Life Summit, a great deal of focus was centered on the Incident Pyramid. This pyramid begins at the base with unsafe actions or conditions. These then lead to near misses, first aid, recordable injuries, lost time injuries, and finally, at the top of the pyramid, fatalities.
There exists an undeniable Ripple Effect when an injury occurs – a “snowball effect” stemming from that injury that affects not only the injured individual but all the people around them. The loss of work, loss of pay, delayed effects, multiple surgeries, and long term effects of that injury take a significant toll on the injured, their families and their company. The Ripple Effect of an injury essentially impacts everyone that surrounds them. As a means to address this, One Life identifies Critical Partnership Factors that will help support a strong workplace safety culture. These Partnership Factors include:
- Supervisors, Foreman, and Project Managers must be OSHA 30-Hour trained
- Any high-risk activity must include an activity / job hazard analysis
- Weekly, documented safety inspections are submitted to the General Contractor
- All training documents will also be submitted prior to the commencement of work
As a Choate partner, McKenney’s commits to provide:
- A detailed housekeeping plan
- A site-specific safety plan
- A record of weekly safety inspections
- Any training documentation
- Copies of weekly “toolbox talks”
- Company orientation to lower-tiered subcontractors
In conjunction, subcontractors require the following from their partners:
- A clean site
- Site protection
- Trade and material coordination
- An open environment
- Proper signage
- An overall enforcement of safety rules
- Training and coaching opportunities when available
All 1st Tier subcontractors should not only maintain a representative competent person on the job, but all tradesmen should have the proper, and checked, PPE before beginning any work.
There is nothing more important to McKenney’s than the safety of its employees, and through our partnership with One Life and Choate Construction we are helping to ensure that safety becomes a VALUE, and not just a PRIORITY.
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