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What's one of the primary obstacles facing industrial job sites today? A shortage of skilled labor, of course. What's a direct threat that can halt productivity on an active job site? Safety incidents, by far.
Performance Contracting, Inc. (PCI) believes these two challenges are intimately related, and addresses the issues by combining its award-winning culture of safety with a proprietary labor pool that shares PCI's top core value: trained workers ultimately produce the highest level of performance, and they do it SAFELY.
Access to a proprietary workforce that embraces safety allows PCI to make commitments that others can't. For instance, PCI can ensure that new helpers have OSHA-10 and an 8-hour scaffold intro class credentials – before entering the jobsite.
PCI has partnered with the Central South Carpenters, which enrolls every helper into its apprenticeship school and has also developed a program specifically tailored to meet PCI's needs. Each apprentice is completing 40 hours of classroom work and is receiving hands-on training every quarter for three years. Additionally, carpenters and lead men on the job – which represent roughly 50% of the jobsite – are receiving 40 hours of various journeymen upgrade training to meet PCI's and the industry's needs.
"The market is traditionally putting out a much lesser-skilled workforce, which yields one type of product. Our method provides a much more skilled workforce that reduces employee turnover, creates a safer jobsite, improves productivity, and supports successful project execution," said Terry Darling, Regional Director of the Central South Carpenters.
PCI's trained, certified, and safety-tested workforce creates an ultra-safe work environment that enables increased productivity and improved project management. This dual approach fuels PCI's consistent earning of a best-in-class rating for specialty contractors. It also separates the 60-year-old company from its competitors because of the incredible ROI realized by PCI customers.
"Safety is more than a noun or verb. It's a mindset. Safety is an action," said PCI Regional Manager Tim Lampard. "Safety is our lifestyle. It is how we do things, one heartbeat in unison achieving the same goal. No one gets hurt."
Developing and maintaining such a high safety standard involves safety guidelines and programs working in unison through a Safety Department staffed with experts in safety policies, procedures, substance abuse prevention, and workers' compensation claims management. This includes:
- Comprehensive accident prevention plan manual
- Corporate safety audit
- Formal substance abuse prevention
- Formal monthly safety training
- Quarterly safety issues & techniques testing
- Aggressive return-to-work program
- Accountability for safety performance on local, regional and national levels
- OSHA 30 training required for all project engineers
Every 90 days, PCI conducts week-long Safety Focus events at job sites to focus on a particular safety topic and issues specific to individual job sites. Every week, foremen and field leaders conduct toolbox talks to present job-specific safety messages and address issues that may be coming up on the project. Every day, jobsite employees collaborate on job-specific safety analysis.
The PCI "Target Zero Incidents" safety program is a critical component of every project. The program trains workers to be fully dedicated and accountable to the safety and integrity of the project and the property.
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"We think the key to setting the groundwork for safe practices every day is creating an honest, open, and frequent dialogue among team members," Lampard said. "A trained workforce is an empowered workforce."
It's a powerful one-two punch that PCI, alone, is able to offer, and for its customers, it's making a measurable difference on job sites.
PCI Regional Safety Manager Cleto Nuño said that it's clear that the results speak for themselves. "The proof that it works is our EMR rating of .49, which greatly exceeds national standards. We believe our EMR rating is in no small part because we have a deep pool of qualified, trained employees who understand how to contribute to the overall safety culture of PCI and translate that into a successful project.
For more information call 281-817-9625 or visit their website.
