Mining Data for Safety

By Debra Wood

Pouring through historical data is helping Moss & Associates, a 4-year-old construction manager based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., improve job safety.

“If we can better understand how and where losses happen, and at what time in the project they happen, we will be in a better position to have people there to influence behaviors when things are at the highest exposure level,” says Scott Trethewey, senior vice president of Moss.

Moss began evaluating different safety measures about two years ago in hopes of better understanding its performance. Trethewey says he found standard metrics used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics retrospective and highly subjective. For example, incident rates may not include as many minor events as a workers’ compensation claim. And lost-cost data varies from state to state, based on varying limits.

“All of the measures are used to evaluate a four-story, tilt-wall office building against a $100 million, multistory hospital against a 50-story condo tower,” Trethewey says. “There’s no delineation of the type of activities that happen on a job and whether the activities were more or less hazardous.”

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Therefore, Moss decided to create its own baselines and benchmarks. It began with the construction budget, dividing jobs by trade. It then estimated the staff hours, average frequency of claims and cost per workers’ compensation claim by cost code.

“Now I can go to the superintendents and my loss-prevention guys and say this information tells me 65% of the accidents will occur in these three trades, and they will contribute 75% of the dollars,” Trethewey says. “I can map out in the schedule when those activities are expected to happen, so I can move my [loss-prevention] people more effectively.”

Interestingly, Moss found that electrical, mechanical and HVAC trades experienced more frequent accidents and more costly events than concrete, masonry and steel subcontractors. After talking with superintendents, Trethewey determined that the company was providing less oversight on the more professional trades and prepared to correct that.

Moss develops a safety profile specific to each job. The company is now creating a safety compensation incentive plan tailored to individual projects.

“We have noticed a change in the awareness of the issues, but it’s still early,” Trethewey says. “It would appear it is making a difference.”