A strong culture of safety is at the foundation of how we protect our Batson-Cook colleagues, our clients, our trade partners and communities in which we work. In line with our first core value, “We care about people, all people” – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because we know that a concerted effort to protect safety, health and the environment has a direct effect on the engagement of our workforce and the quality of work we perform.
Our Safety, Health and Environmental (HSE) department, comprised of experienced and certified professionals, provide the support to our leadership and operation teams required to plan safe work, prevent injuries and incidents, and continuously improve our safety culture.
With a system for safety in place, we eliminate risks before they can do harm on a jobsite.
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Batson-Cook’s HSE management system follows the following guiding principles:
Visible Leadership Commitment
Safety leadership starts at the top. Our President & CEO, Randy Hall, and our Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Appleton, are committed to developing and maintaining a strong safety culture. They have established the expectation that all Batson-Cook employees, as well as the Trade Partners we team with, will perform safe work, and will continuously look for opportunities to improve and apply best practices.
Our executives and project leadership lead our health and safety efforts on each of our projects through their support and demonstrated commitment. They recognize and reinforce employees’ positive behaviors and those individuals that support our safety efforts and expectations.
Pre-planning
Our Preconstruction and Estimating departments make every effort to identify and budget for health and safety resources, as well as identifying proactive systems and technologies. In partnership with our project teams, safety risks are identified, assessed and planned for in advance.
Our employees are trained and empowered to engage in health and safety planning; to identify and speak up about hazards in the workplace; and report and learn from unintended events. Daily job hazard analysis/pre-work safety meetings are held with each crew at the start of the day.
Safe Start
Our Safe Start Program is Batson-Cook’s system for onboarding each Trade Partner prior to starting work on a project. The preparation and various pro-active safety meetings allow us to discuss work methods, assess risk, and agree to controls and procedures. This process continues throughout the project as phases of construction and/or methods of work change.
Continual Improvement
We view all unintended or unplanned events as learning opportunities. Our operations teams and HSE professionals analyze all unwanted events whether they result in injury or not. The information learned from these events allow us to identify root causes as well as opportunities for implementing new technologies, systems or processes. Lessons are shared within the company and with our Trade Partners to continually refine our safety measures.
Batson-Cook believes that the more we talk about safety, the more we cultivate a strong, proactive safety culture where our people embrace ownership for the health and safety of themselves and others.