The guidelines established by the CURT Construction Owners' Safety Blueprint were recognized as industry best practices at the 39th Annual ECC 2007 Conference, held in Colorado Springs, CO September 26-29, 2007.
The manual, developed by the CURT, helps construction companies institute a safety culture and protect their contract workers.
Several owners were highlighted at the conference for being acknowledged by CURT for achieving exemplary, world class levels of construction safety performance through the incorporation of major elements of CURT's Owners' Safety Blueprint.
The companies were:
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Air Products & Chemicals
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ConocoPhillips
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ExxonMobil
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Merck & Company
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PSEG Fossil LLC
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DuPont
"The construction industry, on average, performs at a total recordable rate of 6.7 per hundred workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics," noted Greg Sizemore, executive director - CURT. "CURT owner companies, such as those we are honoring, have greatly improved over that rate. By incorporating the elements and tactics of the Owner's Safety Blueprint, they have brought their projects to completion at recordable rates 0.06 per hundred workers or better."
Bob Krzywicki, chair of the CURT Safety Committee and workplace safety practice leader of DuPont Safety Resources, helped lead the development of the Owners' Safety Blueprint. "At DuPont, we believe that achieving world-class safety performance requires the experience of engineers, contractors, managers and owners who understand what it means to hold safety as a core value. This is what the CURT Owners Safety Blueprint embodies. It is called a 'blueprint' because it really is the foundation for safety excellence, and the company must build on that foundation."
The safety blueprint calls on owners to:
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Set the expectations each stakeholder will be expected to deliver.
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Establish a safety culture that reinforces the CURT Guiding Principles from project inception to closeout.
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Monitor safety performance and demand achievement of all safety-related objectives in the project life cycle.
All of the award winning companies creatively followed the same blueprint to develop a variety of appropriate safety strategies, which included creating a 100% glove use policy, developing a safety mentoring program, establishing a safety mentoring program and requiring written Job Safety Analysis tools (JSAs) for all tasks.
"Beyond the public recognition of receiving the CURT award, each enjoys the satisfaction of having made a meaningful difference in people's lives," said Sizemore.
