Safety Sensation

By John Altdorfer
Photographs by Gregory Campbell/Getty Corporate Assignment

The number is huge. Almost too big to comprehend. What we’re talking about is the total hours worked by Bechtel employees at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina, without losing time because of an injury. Since June 1998, when the last lost-time accident occurred, construction workers at the 320-hectare location have logged more than 16.4 million safe job hours.

To put that remarkable accomplishment into perspective, consider this. If one employee worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without a break or vacation, he’d need 687,500 days to equal the SRS mark (and just imagine the overtime!). A more realistic comparison: the average (non-Bechtel) construction site would be likely to suffer 123 lost-time injuries during the same amount of time, according to Bechtel’s Bobby Oliver, SRS Environmental Safety & Health manager.

Whatever the yardstick, the SRS record is extraordinary for a work site that features challenges ranging from large-scale construction projects to radioactive waste removal.

Safety doesn’t just happen— especially over a stretch of seven years. From the moment workers walk through the SRS gates, they enter a culture of safety that’s constantly reinforced. They learn early on that if it looks like trouble and smells like trouble, it probably is trouble.

“Our ‘zero accidents’ philosophy is ingrained in everyone who works for us,” says Larry Simmons, president of Bechtel Savannah River, Inc. “Everyone on the job understands the ABCs of safety. There is a commitment to safety here that no one takes for granted.”

The Bechtel safety approach starts before a worker ever tackles a task. All new hires undergo substance abuse screening to ensure that drugs or alcohol won’t impair an employee’s ability to perform. Without a clean test, there’s no work. Then, employees receive general safety training that addresses overall job-site hazards. After that, each employee receives a pair of safety glasses and a hard hat and reports to an assigned foreman. But don’t think that’s the end of the process.

At the start of every work week, foremen and craft workers focus on specific safety issues at a discussion session known as a toolbox safety meeting. During the meeting, supervisors address particular concerns, honing in on potential hazards and safe solutions for dealing with them. In addition, everyone reconvenes at the start of each shift for a safety task analysis and risk reduction talk to cover any new safety concerns that may have arisen since the toolbox meeting.

“Everyone understands that safety is more than a management expectation,” says Oliver. “We have a performance-based program that gives employees ownership and the ability to stop a job if they see a potential hazard. They understand and appreciate that we don’t expect them to put themselves at risk. Safe completion of the work is a core value that cannot be compromised.”

Every Bechtel job presents special challenges. The London Underground reconstruction requires workers to carry out tasks in dark, confined spaces. In Trinidad, crews laid natural gas pipelines in extreme tropical heat. And construction employees at the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, expanded the facility’s aging terminal while jets took off and landed within meters of them.

At SRS, some 30 to 40 projects are ongoing at any one time. “We don’t just work on one site with the same set of safety concerns day after day,” says Bechtel’s Michael Graham, area manager of soil and groundwater projects. “One day a worker could be in a fabrication shop. The next day he or she could be in a swamp that drains from a waste burial site. The variety of challenges increases the chances for higher risks. That’s why we make that extra-special commitment to keeping everyone up to speed every day on safety issues.”

An especially big challenge is the new Tritium Extraction Facility. A multiyear project that began in 2000, it will entail more than 16,000 cubic meters of concrete, 248,000 meters of electrical cable, nearly 21,000 meters of piping and tubing, and 540 tonnes of steel. When completed, the $506 million facility will produce enough material to replenish decaying tritium supplies in the current U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

In the meantime, it produces plenty of opportunities for workers to practice their safety lessons. “We have a significant number of challenges at any given time,” says Oliver. “The obvious ones are in construction with exposure to falls, shocks, and contact with tools and heavy equipment. But there are some that most people wouldn’t think about such as radiation, radioactive contamination, and hazardous legacy chemical waste.”

Workers also face natural environmental challenges including summer heat soaring above 38 degrees Celsius, alligators, snakes, ticks, and bees. Whatever the hazard, from the exotic to the mundane, Bechtel handles every potential threat with an emphasis on worker safety.

While management provides consistent safety leadership, the safety culture enjoys tremendous buy-in from a construction workforce that can vary from 500 to 2,000 people, depending on the level of projects in progress. In addition, a squad of safety professionals inspects project locations throughout the SRS grounds to ensure worker safety and to identify potential dangers. Although these extra precautions require additional investments of time and money, the safety dividends are worth the cost.

“We’re concerned about our people, as well as for the environment and the general public,” says Oliver. “The bottom line is making sure everyone on the job goes home in the same condition in which they came to work. And we’ve been able to do that for over 2,600 days in a row.” 

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