A driving factor in achieving this goal is enhancing the organization’s culture, and focusing on the safety values that live in its people. As my colleague Shelley Brown, safety, health and environment (SH&E) manager, recently wrote, “safety, by its very nature, is emotional.” Our “Culture of Caring,” where employees hold themselves accountable for the safety of their colleagues by gently pointing out risks to prevent injuries, shows our people how to conduct themselves as ArchTam employees.

As fundamental as a safety culture is for improving an organization’s safety, health and environment outcomes, we cannot take it for granted once its roots have taken hold. It is essential that an organization continually evolve and enhance its safety culture by focusing on ways to help people better connect to it. For most organizations, this comes down to driving leadership involvement and employee engagement.

We work to gain additional leadership involvement by setting higher targets for senior management observations. This is the kind of behavior we look to inspire in all ArchTam employees. To increase employee engagement, we made it easier for all of our people to report incidents and observations. Through safety management software such as IndustrySafe and LifeGuard, our employee population has access to project-specific tools to report near misses and safety observations. Through March 2016, there have been more than 35,000 observations made by employees.

But what if your workplace is a public space? This is an additional responsibility ArchTam and others in our industry face. We deliver projects all over the world — from Istanbul’s new airport, to the Crossrail 2 project in London, U.K., and the Panama Canal Expansion — and must consider the safety of the end user from the design stage to construction. Every day, ArchTam is also safeguarding the public from exposure to hazards that could disrupt their daily lives and prevent injuries.

As highlighted in our recently released 2015 safety report, we have exceeded our safety performance goal — coming in at 7.5 percent under our targeted corporate recordable incident rate. Similarly, our corporate lost workday case rate has reduced by 11 percent*. This number represents a significant decrease in both the number and severity of serious injuries globally.

All workers have the right to do their jobs in safe workplaces and come home to their loved ones every night. An organization that embraces a safety culture and energizes its people to embody its values through their individual actions is one that is best positioned to help ensure this happens.

Safety Tip: When you’re working on a project, think about how an incident could affect your quality of life and your family members at home. Allow that mindset to determine your attentiveness to the safety of you and your colleagues.

*To account for ArchTam’s integration with legacy URS, this percentage is the average improvement from 2010 to 2015. 2010 to 2014 data reflects legacy ArchTam operations; 2015 data reflects the combined company’s operations.

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I began my career in underground mining in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania, United States. Safety was paramount and essential in order to survive in the harsh work environment, and I owe a lot of what I’ve learned to the coal industry and the miners who helped keep me safe. I learned the value of strong safety systems, compliance with regulations and the benefit of employee involvement in reducing injuries — all before I became a safety professional. I’m very proud of having been a coal miner and, due to my deep respect for safety, I jumped at the opportunity to become a full-time safety professional when I changed my career from mining to the construction industry.

Based on my experience in underground mining, enhancing ArchTam’s culture of caring has been key to my role as the chief safety officer at ArchTam. As the company strives to lead our industry in safety, health and environment performance, our expectation is that all of our employees actively participate in ArchTam’s Safety for Life program and are not only their own personal safety managers, but also look out for their colleagues — as many of my fellow coal miners did for me. Employees are also encouraged to support our efforts by making observations of conditions in the office and field as well as reporting and investigating near misses.

ArchTam has made great progress in reducing the frequency and severity of incidents. We can attribute this improvement to several factors, including support from executive and senior leaders as well as a focus on leading indicators that concentrate on processes for incident prevention.

We also continue to develop our systems, processes and tools to improve our ability to support our global operations with a particular focus on risk assessment and employee training. As a result, we have seen a significant reduction of injuries.

Another factor that has contributed to our success has been the addition of talented safety professionals. With the addition of URS and Hunt Construction, ArchTam now has more safety-trained supervisors than many other companies in the world. In addition, we now have more certified safety professionals than many of our competitors. This combination of trained supervision and licensed safety professionals forms the foundation for ArchTam’s Safety, Health and Environment (SH&E) group to perform at a world-class level.

However, with such a large workforce, a challenge we now face is ensuring that we are providing a safe work environment for all employees. The risk profile of the legacy URS and legacy Hunt projects is far more complex than the majority of ArchTam’s previous projects. Since both legacy URS and Hunt self-perform construction to build their projects, this means that our direct-hire employees have exposure to construction hazards that, if not mitigated properly, could cause serious injury.

In addition, as projects become more technically complex, we are challenged to identify new methods to mitigate risk. For example, some of the new roof designs for sports arenas and buildings in the Middle East present challenges related to constructability. To address this, we are using our skills in design safety to mitigate these risks and to work with our project management staff on constructability practices, which incorporate safety practices to reduce risk to construction personnel.

Despite these inherent challenges, ArchTam’s SH&E team has accomplished a lot over the past year. For example, becoming a member of the Campbell Institute is a high honor for our company as it recognizes our SH&E best practices among top organizations. We’re also very proud that our Chairman and CEO Mike Burke was selected for the U.S. National Safety Council’s “CEOs Who ‘Get It’ ” list for his dedication to building a strong culture of safety at ArchTam. Personally for me, winning an ArchTam CEO Award was extremely gratifying as it acknowledges all of our employees for their dedication to our Safety for Life program.

A personal safety achievement that I am proud of is being named chairman of the Safety Management Visiting Committee by my alma mater, West Virginia University. As chairman, my aim is to increase enrollment in the university’s Safety Management Program — especially given the worldwide shortage of safety professionals.

By advertising to undergraduate students early on about what a rewarding career safety can be along with the unlimited opportunities it provides, I believe we can continue to grow the pipeline of safety professionals to fill this global void. I’m also looking forward to helping plan the first Safety Symposium in the university’s history featuring leading experts from across the United States. Held in October, the symposium will be attended by employees across various industries in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Please join me in celebrating ArchTam’s third-annual Safety Week by checking out the ArchTam Impact blog posts from our global safety professionals as well as the winner of ArchTam’s safety video competition below.

ArchTam Chief Safety Officer Andy Peters has more than 35 years of experience in safety management, loss prevention and human resources, and is responsible for ArchTam’s global SH&E programs. He played college football for Bobby Bowden, a famous American football coach, and in 1973, he was named the Most Valuable Player in the West Virginia University old-timers game versus the University of Pittsburgh.

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