Safety Insight: Mental Operational Readiness
Mental clarity is a core safety discipline in demanding environments where stress, fatigue, distraction and emotional overload can quickly erode judgment.
Safety
Safety Insight: Biological Risks & Urban Pathogens
Biological hazards, including contaminated water, debris, damaged infrastructure and damp confined spaces can expose workers to many harmful pathogens. These are often considered the “Silent” threat to a jobsite.
Safety Insight: Environmental & Chemical Hazards
This highlights the hidden risks that can remain in dust, debris, air, water and damaged utility systems and emphasizes the need to recognize hazardous potential exposures.
Safety Insight: Booby Trap & IED Recognition
This highlights the importance of broad safety awareness in environments where hazards may be present but not immediately visible.
Safety Insight: Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Awareness
This highlights the importance of vigilant awareness in environments where past conflict, military activities or disaster conditions may leave hidden hazards behind.
Safety Insight: Structurally Compromised or High-Risk Zones
The core lesson is to follow the “Stop-Look-Listen” protocol. Assume the site can fail again.
Beyond SDRI: Turning a Predictive Index into Governance, Foresight and Action
The SDRI framework offers a powerful, forward-looking lens into safety degradation risk across the U.S. construction sector. By integrating weighted leading indicators with operational exposure, SDRI enables early detection of risk escalation — often weeks or months before lagging metrics like TRC or DART begin to shift.
Safety Degradation Risk Index (SDRI): The Link between Safety and Profitability
This Executive Insight complements more traditional considerations in the construct of SDRI. It addresses the structure and safety profile of NAICS 23, maps the association between net margins and various safety incidence rates (Total Recordable Case (TRC) rates; Days Away Restricted Time (DART), and fatalities), and presents subsector-specific insights.
Safety Degradation Risk Index (SDRI)
This Executive Insight is complemented by the Executive Insight “Safety Degradation Risk Index (SDRI): The Link between Safety and Profitability”.
Safety Insight: Construction Failures are Avoidable
A review of select, recurring construction failures has shown an identifiable need to address the translation of lessons observed into best practices. In this Executive Insight we look at five common construction failure types.
Safety Insight: Weather-Related Failures
Weather-related failures are especially common during transitional phases—when structures are partially complete, temporarily supported, or suspended mid-hoist.
Safety Insight: Unsafe Sequencing and Missing Temporary Bracing
Unsafe sequencing failures typically occur when temporary bracing is omitted, improvised, or misjudged. The assumption is that the remaining structure will hold. But without a sealed plan and verified load path, that assumption can be fatal.
Safety Insight: Temporary Works Failures
This oversight is dangerous. Temporary works are transitional by nature, but their failure is anything but temporary.
Safety Insight: Material Degradation
In construction, materials are expected to perform under load, resist environmental exposure, and maintain integrity over time. But when degradation sets in—through corrosion, fatigue, or undocumented reuse—those expectations collapse.
Safety Insight: Design Related Failures
Construction failures are often blamed on field execution. But in many cases, the root cause lies upstream—in the design itself.
Risk Tolerance in Safety
This article by Jesus de la Garza and Craig Martin explores why risk tolerance persists in construction, showing how people unconsciously adjust their behavior and often take greater risks when they perceive increased safety. It also highlights cultural and behavioral factors that can undermine safety measures and offers practical strategies for leaders to reduce unnecessary and unmanaged risk.
Ethics in Safety: How Much to Spend? – Prequel to the Safety Culture Series
Management often faces clear right-versus-wrong decisions, such as replacing a worn, unsafe tool. In these situations, ethical leaders recognize the responsibility and choose the right action.
Safety Culture Series – Audits and Surveys Improve Your Safety System Management
In today’s world, if you are not keeping score, you are probably not playing to win.
Safety Through Design
We have examined some of the factors that drive a changed risk environment for large engineering and construction programs and some of the new tools and risk assessment approaches that must be added to our standard risk management techniques. Concomitant with this changed awareness.
Safety by Design Suggestions
This Executive Insight builds on the NAC Executive Insight entitled “Safety through Design,” which provides a top-level view on the importance of hazard elimination at a project’s design stage and lays out a number of guiding precepts. It can be found on the NAC website.
Safety Leadership―Invest in Business Sustainability: Here’s Your Roadmap to Zero Incidents
Effective asset management and operations are the life blood of any business. The old adage of “Grow or die” applies universally, so all work must be executed to deliver business success or the business will not be competitive and eventually will cease to exist.
How to Create a Zero-Injury Culture
A safety program that yields a zero-injury result is composed of three distinct parts: content, process, and a culture. This Executive Insight integrates these three elements.
NAC Safety Position Papers from 2005 – 2020
This document is a compendium of safety position papers from 2005 to 2020 addressed to American CEO’s and others. The intent of these papers was to enlist and inform the users and leaders of the American Construction Industry to embrace zero injury techniques and improvement in safety culture to improve their safety performance. Keywords: safety performance, zero injuries, safety culture
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