When Robert Schindler started his career in construction 18 years ago, he remembers the safety and operation teams working on opposite sides of the construction site. The safety team didn’t talk to superintendents, or project managers. Everyone did their jobs independently.

Now, as the Vice President of Safety at Arch-Con, Robert has seen the benefits of integrating safety across departments and working groups. He believes the best results come from having safety closely intertwined with daily operations.

“It’s a part of our DNA,” Robert says of the commercial construction company, which has an award-winning safety program. 

This mindset has helped play an important role in the success — and profitability — of the company. 

“Safety directly affects your bottom line. Safety directly affects how you can bid on certain projects. But most importantly, safety is your biggest tool when you’re selling something,” Robert says.

Sure, a good safety score will increase project opportunities, but it goes beyond that. To Robert, safety is equated with efficiency. To reap the benefits of safety measures, the approach has to be proactive. A good safety program should create smooth workflow processes and prevent issues before they become a problem, which saves time and money.

But, proactivity is only possible when the whole team is on board with safety protocol — and when it’s made simple. Don’t be fooled, though; simplicity does not mean cutting corners. 

Featured Guest

👉 Name: Robert Schindler

👉 What he does: Robert is the Vice President of Safety at commercial design and development company Arch-Con where he leads the company’s award winning, nationally recognized safety program. He has more than 18 years of experience in the construction industry.

👉 Company: Arch-Con

👉 Key quote: “A good company has a positive safety program. A great company is pushing the boundaries of how to make it better.”

👉 Where to find him: LinkedIn

Safe Takes

⚠️ Safety and operations work hand-in-hand. A job is never successful and never profitable when an injury takes place. When safety and operations personnel work together, they are both benefiting.

⚠️ Safety is efficiency. The question to ask yourself is “how can safety become more efficient?” The days of safety slowing down projects and creating unnecessary work are over. When done right, safety boosts productivity and quality.

⚠️ Safety should be simple, not easy. When safety makes sense, people will understand why regulations are put in place and they will follow them. However, just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean that important steps should be overlooked.

Resources

⛑️ Arch-Con's safety page— Arch-Con has an award-winning, nationally recognized safety program and an EMR safety rating of 0.70. 

⛑️ OSHA — Keep up to date on all the latest safety regulations and trainings from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). 

⛑️ American Society of Safety Professionals — Network with other professionals in the field and stay up to date on the latest industry news through the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP).

Top quotes from the episode:

“I look at safety as being as efficient as possible, and I focus more on, how can we be more efficient? And when you're efficient, the byproduct of that is safety, quality, and production all rolled into one.”

“If I'm doing my job properly, then operations will benefit from what I'm putting in. And if they adapt it and they use it, they will be more efficient, which then allows them to be more productive.”

“Safety’s hard. And when you try to make it easy, that’s when mistakes happen. There's a huge difference between making it easy and making it simple. Making it simple is putting things in place that people understand. … If you make it easy ... where there are things that they don't have to do, that's when people get hurt and that's when bad things happen.”

“A lot of people want to say, Hey, we have a safety culture … That’s one of the things that really, really frustrates me when it comes to safety and construction … that means it’s something different than your actual culture. Safety’s integrated into our culture. It’s part of who we are. Safety is not something separate.”

“If you put the time and effort in, on the front side of everything, it pays off in dividends on the back.”