America's Safest Companies: BMWC Constructors Inc.

While written policies and procedures and their implementation and employee engagement are vital to the success of a safety culture, management participation is key as well; something that BMWC Constructors Inc. understands.

"BMWC measures management participation and reports [the level of participation] to the entire company," says Clay West, EH&S director. "Each project manager, project superintendent, project engineer and project safety professional is required to perform one group audit a week and one task hazard analysis coaching session per week."

All audits and coaching sessions are tracked and are one of the leading indicators used by the company to gauge engagement in safety. When participation drops under 90 percent, then the executive leadership team at the request of the CEO takes a closer look at those projects to determine why management is not engaged in the field activities.

"Having a CEO who is so involved in the safety of the employees speaks volumes," West admits. "It is noticeable that he is striving to build a culture of caring for each other, not simply on the business side, but also because our employees are the greatest asset that BMWC has."

One word that was repeated throughout BMWC’s application is "innovation." West said the company strongly encourages employees to think about innovative ways to safely and efficiently perform their job tasks. In fact, the company has created an Innovation Catalog – available on the intranet – that documents new ideas that have been successful on a particular project or for a particular task. Every item in the catalog has improved safety, quality, efficiency or cost.

"Although the catalog contains innovations that can improve all areas of the company (construction-related, information systems, quality, safety, accounting), over half of the entries directly affect safety in a positive way. To date, there are 76 items in the BMWC Innovation Catalog," says West.

BMWC Constructors Inc.

Indianapolis, Ind.
872 employees/22 EHS professionals
Heavy industrial construction