Associated Builders and Contractors Releases Annual Report, Honors National Safety Award Winners

The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) recently released its annual report which measures the construction industry’s overall safety performance. The Safety Performance Report utilizes data from the organization’s member companies to determine what constitutes world-class safety as well as providing tips to improve company programs.

The report focuses on six core leading indicators that have the most impact including: substance abuse programs, new hire safety orientation, site-specific safety orientation, toolbox talks, near-miss/near-hit analysis and site safety committees.

The Safety Training Evaluation Process, or STEP, is ABC’s safety benchmarking and improvement tool. STEP is designed to help both large and small contractors evaluate every aspect of their corporate safety and health program and identify opportunities for improvement.

This year’s report showed the average STEP Diamond-rated company is 770 percent safer than the BLS average for the entire industry based on total recordable incident rates (TRIR). In addition, companies who use the core leading indicators outlined in the report and show a commitment to safety leadership significantly impact their injury rates.

For example, STEP Diamond companies that conduct new hire orientation sessions of more than 200 minutes on average improve their TRIR and Days Away, Restrictions and Transfers (DART) rates by more than 90 percent.

The entire Safety Performance Report is available on ABC’s web site.

ABC also recently selected member firms that achieved Diamond, Platinum and Gold status in STEP in 2016 to receive National Safety Awards during its annual Excellence in Construction Awards.

 During the selection process, they were judged on self-evaluation scores, lost workday case rates, total recordable incident rates, leading indicator use, process and program innovations and video interviews conducted by members of ABC’s National Environment, Health and Safety Committee.

“Associated Builders and Contractors is proud to honor members who have created world-class safety processes and a safety culture where every employee understands that the wellbeing of those around them is everyone’s responsibility,” said 2017 ABC National Chair Chuck Goodrich, president of Gaylor Electric Inc. in a statement. “These leading merit shop contractors have shown a top-down, uncompromising commitment to safety and share ABC’s goal of achieving zero-incident construction jobsites.”

The complete list of winners is:

For the Safety Performance Reports, ABC collects each company’s lagging indicator data as reported on its annual OSHA Form 300A and its self-assessment of leading indicator practices from its STEP application. Each of the 35 data points collected is sorted using statistically-valid methodology developed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for its annual Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Survey and combined to produce analyses of STEP participant performance against BLS industry data.