It's no accident

A common assumption is that the construction site is inherently dangerous. The truth is that it's only as dangerous as the people who occupy the site allow it to be.

It's easy to cut corners in the interest of saving time. Time is money. But time lost to injury is even more money. At Aecon we view lost time due to injuries not as unfortunate accidents but as completely unacceptable occurrences.

Being safe on the job is part of who we are. We have won countless awards for this commitment, including a recent commendation from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries for a full calendar year (2008) without an injury claim. In fact, Aecon went 1,007 consecutive days between 2006 and 2009 without a lost-time accident.

Dan Friess, our Safety Manager, says there is no magic to it. "It's about good leadership, support from senior management, and great subcontractors," he says. "It is a lot of time on site — a lot of hands-on time. If you spend the time on site and do your site visits and talk with people, you can amp them up and get people excited about it. Once the numbers start climbing and the days start going right, everyone gets excited about it."

This is how you build a culture of safety consciousness: You embrace the rules, disdain short cuts and encourage worker involvement. After all, the most important thing about being on a construction site is being able to leave that site after an honest — and safe — day's work.