NATIONAL SAFETY STAND-DOWN

Great. It is 2 PM, and we will get started. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar, How to Maximize Inspections to Protect Your People and Equipment. I am Aaron Gong, program coordinator at, AGC of America. And before we get started, I just have a few housekeeping items. So during the presentation, anytime you have a question for the presenter, on your right hand toolbar, there is a, question box. So feel free to use that to submit any question that you have, as we go, with the, presentation. However, we will we will get to those questions, in the last fifteen minutes of the presentation. And if you if there's any technical difficulties, feel free to submit a question and, using the chat box for any technical issues that you might have encountered here. And, everyone who is registered for today's webinar, we will send out an email. Soon after the webinar ends was the recording and the PDF of the PowerPoint presentation. And now I'd like to introduce today's speakers. We have, Jen. We have, Philip and Corey. And with that, Jen, I'll hand it to you. Okay. I'm unmuted now. Thank you, Erin. So I'm Jen Simmons. I'm, product manager for, HSS Safety, which is, you know, a safety software out there for heavy civil construction. And, I just wanna introduce, Corey. I'll start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your company? Yes. So my name's Corey. I'm director of earthwork for Lendamood. We are a, demolition and earthwork contractor. We're top ten demolition company in the country. We're one of the largest earthwork contractors in Texas. We specialize in large demolition projects. Last year, we imploded three, three towers simultaneously, thirteen, fourteen, and eighteen stories. And we moved about one hundred thousand yards of dirt on that site as well. We currently have under contract three large demolition projects in Texas. So we have the ET Southwest project, which I just talked about. We're demolishing the old Parkland Hospital where JFK died, and we're, currently doing the, Frank Erwin Center down in Austin. Along with that, we do demolition work across the country. We demolish two miles of bridge in downtown Birmingham in forty five days. And then we we specialize in large basement excavations. So, rarely, we're doing basements that are sixty to ninety feet deep, in downtown environments, and we do a lot of aviation work as well. So everything that we we do is, has a very high risk factor to it and a lot of a lot of equipment and a lot of personnel involved. I myself have been in the business, most of my life. My father owned a construction company, so I've been doing it since I was twelve, thirteen years old. And, I've been professionally in it for about twenty years and worked for many, well known companies in Texas and happy to be with one of them now. Yeah. How cool. That's a that's quite an intro. Alright. Philip, your turn. Take it away. Philip Faulkner. I'm the safety director for Ed Belt Construction. We're a heavy highway civil contractor in Dallas, Texas. Sixty first year in business, primarily doing concrete paving, bridges, walls, earthwork on a much smaller scale than Cory, and a lot of underground and sewers. So, primary contractor for, TxDOT. We do municipality work and some private work. So a lot of what we do exposes us to the traveling public, and a lot of it puts us in, you know, same, you know, a lot of life threatening conditions with fall protection, trench safety, confined space entry, and such. I've been with the company twenty one years. I'm getting close to my thirtieth year in construction. So I've been all around, pretty much every position. I was an operations manager, project manager, estimator. I still help with fleet management. So, I've touched a little bit of everything that got me to the safety journey here. So but that's it. Yeah. And, Phil, didn't your company recently win something? Our company recently just, picked up our fifth construction safety excellent award first place in San Diego. We have won first place in that in our category five out of the last seven years, and we've been a finalist eight out of the last ten years. So, it's a pretty pretty big deal for, a civil contractor to repeat that many times. So, some we're pretty proud that our people's culture have really, is getting recognized like that. So, definitely a big deal for our folks. Yeah. No. That that is great. And, honestly, I'm so glad that both of you could join us today. For any of you listening, just as we're going through this webinar, we're gonna talk a lot about inspections and process and challenges and, how to shepherd change management and things like that. So just wanna make sure you all know, hey. We've got a good spread of, different types of work, as well as just, different sizes. So feel free to ask questions throughout. And, Corey, Phil, I'm gonna go ahead and ask you a question. Can you see my screen that shows the webinar objectives? Yes. Yes. Okay. Perfect. So I'm gonna just fly through this, guys. Just some of the things we're gonna cover today is, you know, understand how inspections inspections can help the field work more effectively, explore ways to streamline. No? No. I see the first page of the PowerPoint. What about you, Philip? Maximize inspections. I still see a title page. Oh my goodness. Well, let me reshare. Oh, wait. There we go. How's that? Over there we are. Okay. Okay. Thanks for bearing with me, guys. So the things we're gonna do is, figure out how to work more effectively in the field, just streamline inspection process. Just talking about how do you get it from start all the way to shop to close. I'll talk about some best practices, how to go from zero to one hundred, with people who are maybe a little tech illiterate, or just, you know, different range of comfortability, with different processes and tools. And then discover ways to help just motivate, your teams. We're gonna cover a lot, and hopefully get it done within forty five minutes, fifteen minutes for q and a. So I think I've actually already asked, the first question, which is tell us about yourself and your company, which I think we covered. Let's go to our second one. I'll pick on you first, Philip. What has your company's safety journey been like? Has it always been award winning, stellar, or was it a bit of a a work in process progress? It it has not always been stellar. You know, when I started here, I wouldn't say our safety program was bad. I would say it was very average. We were we were still focused on production. We were still focused on just trying to get the job done. Safety was kind of an afterthought when I got here. So I guess first couple years, you know, I we had some some pretty big incidents and some pretty, pretty wild close calls and near misses. And so about twenty ten, our our owner and our president really made a decision of, like, this this we've gotta change course here dramatically. So, I would say our journey, we're probably fourteen years into it, and it was a huge cultural shift. It was a, was a paradigm shift for us, not only how we looked at the work we did, looked at the work we built, looked at who we employed, looked at, you know, little inward reflection on what were we doing this for and and what was the primary focus? You know, were we trying to make money here or were we, you know, at the cost of all other things or were we really concerned about getting our our people home safe and protecting the traveling public? So it would it's been a journey. And, you know, even when we started getting recognized for our safety program back in twenty fifteen, it's been a journey since then. And, I mean, we're we're a much different company today than we were even ten years ago when we started getting recognized. So and and we'll be a different company five years from now, hopefully, as we continue to grow, continue to grow our people's culture and, you know, really embrace what our folks are doing here to to create the culture that is award winning and and keeping us all home safe and getting everybody home every shift. Yeah. And just to to make sure, I've understood it, it sounds like at a certain point in time, someone someone in leadership said, hey. This this is a big challenge. We really need to shift. Yeah. Someone in leadership says it, but it's a, you know, and it and it was, you know, younger leadership that was taking over from older leadership, which, you know, nothing to to bash the older leadership, but this was just it was a much different industry in the seventies, eighties. And and and as we got into the nineties and even into the early two thousands, there was a lot of paradigm shift of, you know, what was going on. But you also you know, management realizes things have to be different, but you hear from your people too. You know, your people really start to you know, when they have concerns about what's going on or concerns about how they're building things and you start if you're listening to that feedback, which you really should be, it didn't take a whole lot of management thought to realize you're doing something wrong and you need to, you know, steer the boat in a different direction. No. That that makes total sense. Same question to you, Corey, of what's your company safety journey been like? So similar to what Philip was saying, Linwood's been in business for, going on fifty years. Next year will be fifty years. And and and like Philip, it's a multigenerational company. And and with that, for many of those years, so many years, it was a small family owned business. Still family owned. It's just not as small anymore. And so what you what you find is just twenty years ago, the the people in our company that are in senior management now, these were the guys that were running jobs and doing the work and were in the machines. And and the experience level of those guys was that of it was much higher. You had ownership that was actually still working, being on the ground on the projects. And so while they did think about safety, they also there was it was different. It was a confidence level that they were there wasn't necessarily a program. It was what did they feel was safe. It was it was feelings, and everything was based off of let's get it done, but they felt like they knew where the line was. And in twenty fifteen, there was a concerted effort for us of we have to put in a program. And that is a slow journey. It's not a fast journey by any means. I would say, really, it's really grown in the last seven years. And and with our business, with demolition, we can't just hire people to build a program because it's a unique one, in a in and of itself. And especially even with our excavations, our deep excavations, that's also unique and difficult. So it's been a concerted effort of everybody working as a team and and and always building your program. Your program's never done. And then getting that mindset into everybody that the fast way is not the best way. It's the safe way is the fast way. Yeah. So it it I I see you nodding, Philip. It seems like a little bit of a similar journey is in terms of, hey. Leadership was bought in, and then it was. We're focused on continuous, improvement over over years. Is that right? Yes. More to what he says there. I mean, you you really start realizing after a while, you can always build stuff or demolish stuff in Corey's case, you can always do the job you're contracted to do. But how you do it, and and and profit's not always just gonna be about, did I you know, does a cost sheet show I spent more or spent less than what I brought in? But, you know, the culture you bring forward, how your people treat themselves, how they treat their crew members, how they treat equipment, you know, all the background stuff. When you start realizing that's where, you know, money gets made and lost, where cultures get built or fail, and really keeping a multi generational company moving forward to the next generation and successful, that's where it starts. It it's not a line item and a cost sheet necessarily. It's it's what type of people and how are you training them to do what you are contracted to do. Yeah. And something you said go ahead, Corey. A hundred percent. And there's a difference between a twenty person company and and a four hundred person company or even larger. In in that instance, you no longer unfortunately, you don't know every single person, so you don't know every single person's capabilities. And and so what you have to do is you have to build systems where that you know that you can move all of that information downward to where certain rules are set in place where you no longer have that one on one site, and you have to set set standards and set practices so that you know that your people are safe whether you're there or not. Boy, Corey. Easier said than done. I've I'm have to follow-up on that just because you brought it up. How what are some strategies? How how are some ways that people can say this is the standard and and you push it down or you try and get it out to the field? For us, and I think, Philip, you'll probably have something similar. Most companies do. It's safety committee and talking, and you bring in it's not just the safety committee's job, but it's in every every meeting we have, we talk safety. And so every time you hear something, you talk about it, and you work on how to improve on that. For us, our big our big push right now is work plans, and and getting everything on paper and getting getting checklists, inspections in place to to go along with those work plans for people to follow the right steps. Because, you know, in in our work, you have certain specialists, and you gotta get that knowledge from those guys to the field because you can't be in a hundred places at once. And so a lot of it is is it's time consuming, and it's more work on the front end. But the more work you put on the front end, the better the outcome is later on. Yeah. Same. And and for a lot of what we've done is we've built our culture up and try to get to, you know, try to get this thing built where you could spread it out. We we're a little bit smaller now. We were almost at at Linda Mood size at one point, but I I get that challenge. Bringing in, the people building the work and getting their input, is key because that will get them if they feel they've got a stake in it, they'll take ownership in it. Now, certainly, management has to craft their their vision into what fits, obviously, a number of requirements, whether it's insurance, OSHA, contractual requirements, or just how the company wants to do business. But getting their input and and giving them that feeling of ownership that they helped create the, you know, help create the rules they're living by, has gone a long way for us in trying to ensure that when we do push that back down of here's here's gonna be the constraints and the rules and the culture and the processes we're gonna follow, it's not alien to them. And it's not like these guys don't know what they're talking about because a lot of it is it came from us, and it's just been kind of shaped and directed to where it needed to go. So, that process goes both ways for sure. Oh, that that makes total sense. So you guys, I'm I'm gonna hold myself back because I have so many follow-up questions on that. But we'll get I know we have a lot of them within here. And, actually, I kind of already asked this a little bit to you, Corey. But I guess I'll I'll push this, to you, Philip, of are there any recommended initiatives, strategies, or just things that people could learn from of, hey. These are things you could try out to try and, you know, get some of these processes, some of this culture out to the field. You know, definitely, I think that having having employee input upfront helps, how your training is done. You know, just just getting people to check a box on a JHA on Monday mornings or reading a toolbox talk and go and everybody sign this, or it coming solely from a foreman and never anybody above that coming to reinforce it. And when I say reinforce it, I mean, not like from a from a, you know, negative enforcement standpoint, but from a positive engagement standpoint. If, you know, if you don't have top leadership out there, at least some of the time talking about this, talking about why it's important to the company, why it's important to the employees, having that high level engagement out there with the field. Pushing down a book with a bunch of rules is you may have checked a box for yourself somewhere. You have no engagement. You have no ownership, and you have no adoption. You have you you know, you're gonna not gonna see those guys doing what you expect them to do. So, you know, I would always say that, you know, if if middle upper management isn't as engaged, especially if you're trying to turn your culture around, you know, Our leadership is still engaged, obviously, but, you know, they're they're able to get out there and see what needs to be seen because everything's moving in the right path. That's where we've got it. If you're trying to turn your culture around, that high level engagement is essential, and it's got to be almost daily out there. So, really getting the top to come down and not push it, but explain it and and really understand this is why we're doing it, and and make it in home for those guys. You know, really, what are these guys driven by? And a lot of them and their their work for their families, they got they gotta go home. They wanna go home in the same shape they showed up. So talking to crews about, you know, it's not just by getting you home, it's about getting your coworkers home, your your family your home. And whatever it takes to kinda drive that nail in that this is a big deal, gotta come from management. And And then the peers will do it after that. Really agree. And then that being really powerful. Go ahead, Corey. And then and then one strong thing In fact, this came up in our operations meeting last week. Jay Jay Glendemann was always is always big on you know, I most companies, I think, have, like, a safety crew of the month or a quarter or whatever. They have something like that or safest crew, but, you know, he's all him and his mother have always been big on. They like to just randomly give gifts when they see something good. Production good, safety good, see something good. And and so one thing that we try and do as as managers is we try and run around with gift cards and hand them out, see something happen, hand it out, and think it's a positive reinforcement is much better than a negative reinforcement. And people take take that better if you're wanting to get a culture change. Yeah. No. I I think all of these things, they make perfect sense. You wanna get people out in the field. You want other people pushing and making sure everyone knows, like, we are as a company invested and care about this and not just out there pushing things or pushing negative things and try eating people. It's positive reinforcement. So makes total sense. Let's jump into a little bit about, well, I'm sorry, about inspections processes. So an ineffective inspections process, can pose big risks. These are the different groups, of challenges and issues that I've I've heard from people of, hey. If your inspections process, is focused on certain things or maybe just not up to spec, you are seeing issues in one of these four buckets. Is there any general buckets I've missed with before we go any deeper, of big risks you could have? Not, yeah, not what I see there. I just the only thing I think I can miss you know, mention is you definitely you know, I understand compliance and documentation is a big deal. I would encourage everybody on here that while that may be a requirement, that should not be at the top of your list while you're trying to make an effective inspection process. I mean, keeping your people safe, number one, Keeping your equipment because, you know, when you're spending millions, tens of millions of dollars on equipment, that becomes your company's lifeblood. Keeping that fleet rolling and keeping the productivity going. All that, you know, is well above checking a box for somebody. Because if you handle the first three right, that last one will take care of itself. Yeah. I think that makes sense. I I took I totally agree. And with the title of your card being ineffective inspection process, I think most ineffective inspection process that everybody has, inspection processes for compliance and documentation that's required to do our job. And I think for most companies, you start doing inspections for that. And if that's all you're doing it for, that's when you have bad inspections and bad processes, and then you find that your documentation and your compliance is even worse if that's what your focus is for. It's gotta be focused on the other three on the other three things. And then if you focus on the other three things, the fourth one just works. Yeah. And that almost, circles back to, what y'all were saying earlier of, hey. You can have stuff out in the field. You can check a box. You can push things down, but you need people involved in this. I think this is gonna lead into another question I have. Perfect. Types of inspections. What are the types of inspections? And I'm definitely gonna ask who is involved. Is this just a, hey. This is foreman and operators, or are there other people who are involved either in, recording inspections, reviewing follow ups, or or any of that? First, so we probably put ours in the, I would call, four different categories. Obviously, we have equipment inspections primarily done by operators, occasionally done by foreman depending upon the amount of equipment on the job. We try to always want the inspection done by whoever's running it that day, obviously. And so but that gets pushed up to fleet management. So you've got a shop foreman. You've got mechanics. You've got a fleet manager depending upon the severity of what's found. And we try to make sure that gets around to the operations manager. That way, if something's red tagged or we have to make an operational decision about, does this piece need to go down? We need to move another piece. Do we need to make an operational change for today? You know, that's that's probably a lot more people on that chain than a lot of companies have, but, I mean, finding something broke is the first part. What I do now to deal with it is the big second part. We do job site safety walks, which I think is pretty common for a lot of companies done by superintendents. We do have follow-up by managers and, different types of managers, not just project managers, but craft managers, audit controls guys, ownership. So I think those are pretty standard for us. We do a special type of inspection trying to make sure we avoid, franchise utility hits and impacts. And and and, basically, we do, like, an inspection walk that is specific to identifying and understanding what underground appurtenances and utilities are before we stick a bucket in the ground. That's a big one for us, not only to and, you know, keep keep the job moving and keep costs down, but those, risk of lifelines like gas, fuel, electricity, making sure we really understand what's going on there. And it it went from a what do you see to a full inspection process every time these guys move areas on a project. And, our last one, which was kind of, when we implemented a a safety system in place, one of the things that was kind of not safety oriented, but we found was we have a lot of environmental compliance inspections that, keep things moving and keep things, make sure we're doing our due diligence there to keep up with that part of our work. So whether it's with our concrete batch plants or just general environmental compliance, we have those type of inspections as well. So that's kind of our big four. Yeah. Big wide coverage. Is it about the same for you, Corey? Yes. So we do, all the operators. So, one of the unique things I think about our company is with our use of HCSS, we I think we actually use pretty much every program y'all have, which includes my field. So what's nice is our our all of our operators do do daily equipment inspections on their equipment, which automatically gets routed up, and and they're able to do that on their phone, which makes it convenient. And what we found is we always did equipment inspections, or they were supposed to. And those got thrown in the cab of the of the equipment and never seen again. And Yeah. And now we have we have much better recognition of that. But what we found is even with this new system, what we're learning, and this is a thing of of growth, is you think operators know how to inspect equipment, but they might not actually know how to inspect equipment. So what we require is a weekly form and equipment inspection as well. And his role is to double check it and make sure that it has been inspected. And and then then from that, that's supposed to be a tool for him to train and teach guys on. And then we also require that our area superintendents do the same thing, to also help foremen because guess what? Some foremen may not know exactly because we have a lot of different types of equipment and and and specialized types of equipment. So that's one. Though though that's our equipment inspection process. We have, a weekly foreman job site inspection that they have to do for safety. Superintendents have to do it monthly, and then we have our safety managers do a separate, more extensive, safety audit. And those get done, for sure biweekly. Some jobs get weekly. Some jobs are biweekly, but for sure, biweekly. And and then on top of that, we are constantly developing. The inspections tool and and and HCS SAT is extremely flexible and it's nice. So we have dig permits just like you, Philip, that we're utilizing. And and so we do that on the dirt side. But on the demo side, we have MEP sign offs where the before we go into any area, we not only are our guys checking and making sure the MPs are off, but we're getting our clients sign off on it. We're getting the MEP contractor who was supposed to make the make safe done. And and that is all done through an inspection form and signed and documented and sent out to all the permanent people because, even with all those steps being taken, we still find live live lines. And so, imagine if we didn't do that process. It's so it's it's, you know, you're going into buildings that are fifty, sixty, seventy years old. There's maintenance teams have added stuff over the years. Nobody knows it's there. So we try and set up every everything, but then it's all documented. It all makes it to the guys. And and the nice thing with the equipment, though, is it automatically goes to any anything that's failed, it goes straight to our maintenance team where they follow-up on it. And similar process as you as you is it goes to multiple people, and everybody's informed, and it's nice. It was funny. I thought you were gonna say that, you know, when everybody's doing inspections, they just end up in the cab. We have that and made a big push years ago before we went digital, and then they all wound up here in a file cabinet. And then it became that they all died at the cabinet. So, yeah, the the if if you're not doing something that's a digital process, I don't care how good your people are. The thing you need to remember is while safety is important production, these guys are builders. And you've got to try to make sure the processes you put in place that you want them to do to be successful. You need to make it as easy as possible for them to be successful with it within bounds. And so anything you can do that makes it where, hey, I can just do this and hit a button or I have some way where it just doesn't become more paper to chase is always gonna do better. Because otherwise, I would challenge almost any company that's still doing their safety inspections still exclusively on paper. Show me consistently they're getting to the right people across our organization on a consistent basis. They're going to die somewhere. A cab, a pickup, a file cabinet in the shop somewhere, but are they really getting to the person who's making change processes and decisions? I'd almost guarantee you that's not happening. Especially if and then if it's going to email, just email if it's not in the program. Window box. Window box. Email. Email's a lot I get I get five hundred, six hundred emails a day. Yep. People need to know my cell phone number. So, you know, emails emails are new paper almost. So a lot of people say, oh, yeah. We're just gonna email it out. And that's first thing first place things to get lost too. No. And, you guys are really saying things that, I I have heard from so many different teams of varying size and and workforce. It is, completely true. It's paper, email. It's just always not enough sometimes. And if you're listening to this and you're like, well, we're still on paper, or, hey, you know, we're we're using something and it's, Google Forms or something like that. Google Forms is definitely an improvement, on paper, but something that helps you, make sure that the field can easily know, hey. This is what you're supposed to do. Definitely look for, a tool, that can help with that, and look for some way to expedite the process of saying, here's an issue. This needs to go to, the shop. This needs to go to, this specialist. This needs to go to someone else. So look for some way to manage the the follow ups, the challenges and issues that are seen in the field. Because if you have issues that are identified and it just sits around, that that's just risk on your job site. So completely echo what you guys are saying. It's, definitely a challenge, especially if you don't a tool that's supporting that process. So it sounds like we understand our types of inspections. Tell me a little bit about who is holding inspections. I it sounds like it's operators, it's foreman, sometimes supervisors. Is that about it? Yeah. It's a it's a spread depending upon what it is, but you kinda want, for us, the the lowest level you know, you want that inspection to really start with who's doing it, who's most affected by it, who's leading it the most. I mean, I can certainly sit here and tell you that a president can go out and do a job site walk all the time, and he's gonna catch certain things, but he's also got x amount of projects, he's not gonna be able to see every nuance. And sometimes something can look right if you're looking at the jobs as a whole and not this project where I have to do this thing. So having that initial inspection down at the ground level guy who's in charge of doing this thing on this job is a good start. Now, obviously, having redundancy inspections of the chain is great, but, yeah, who who is discovering it is the one who's gonna be responsible for doing it. So Yeah. Similar for you, Corey? Oh, it's exactly the same. Yeah. Well, it sounds like, you know, if you're at a certain level, similar. Yeah. I mean so I'll I'll tell you this from a safety culture thing. One thing that we've implemented with the discovering of issues and and and making its way up. So, you know, lowest level for a lot of people is operators, but, you know, for us, we not only do we have operators, but we also have laborers. And so you take a project that we were now doing tear down on, so something about really operators out there. But before, the first stage of that was was gut out. We had over a hundred laborers on that job site, working simultaneously. And and so they did their JHAs, each group, you know, each small team. And that gets reviewed by the by the superintendent and the foremans, you know, from the lead man. But we we give each individual employee a task. So it may not be a digital inspection, but what we do is we task them with, you're responsible for making sure your crew's wearing safety glasses. You're responsible for making sure your guys have gloves. You're responsible for this. And then so we get that feedback and that constant communication. So while it may not be an exact inspection, what we're doing is we're installing in each individual employee from the ground up, hang on to their job just a little bit a little bit of safety. So then as they move up within the company, as they grow in their career of of construction, they've they've been instilled with a, a basis of safety is always a primary part of your job. Oh, that's what's interesting, it's, you know, when we were talking earlier, you guys were talking about it's so important to get leadership involved, But it sounds like you're also reaching down to, hey. We're just going to, you know, our entry level positions and saying, hey. This is your task. This is how we need you to contribute. Is that about right? The entry level, but like like our excavation permit where we're the inspection we're doing to avoid utilities, you know, we get our pipe layer involved and we usually get any guys that are in the trench involved. Those guys I mean, while it's important to have your operator involved, he's looking at it from up here. Show me the guy who's looking at it from down here. Let's get his opinion too because he's gonna get a different perspective on things. So, I think depending upon the task at hand, it can be anybody. It could be anybody top to bottom that could be involved and helping generate inspection and feedback. Yeah. Yeah. So while we say, you know, everything starts you know, most things start at the top with the new company. Construction's a unique business, and and one of my favorite sayings, I actually got this at the HCSS, at the UGM meeting this year, and it it's been something that we're instilling here is either work in the field or you support someone who does. So this is our culture. Yes. We're management. Yes. We're we're making decisions, but everything that we do is for the field guys. So, yes, we need the field to do it. So everything that we're coming up with, it's not to help us. It is to help them. And so you've gotta present it that way. So everything we do is to support the guys who actually make the money and and and and produce the product. I don't do anything. I sit in meetings. I I try and sell things and and and and fix things, but I I don't actually build or do anything. It's it's everybody else. Hundred percent. Yeah. I completely feel the same way. And, you know, I'm glad that, you got that from our our, users group meeting this year. Just following up on that, going to number three, following up on issues. So once you have, an inspection, you've identified issues that you guys both use HSS safety, so I kind of know a little bit about your process just but for anyone else, anyone who, you know, they're still on paper, they're on a different solution, and they're just trying to understand what are other people's processes. What what happens? You, do an inspection. There's follow ups. How are you figuring out who fixes them, and how to communicate with people? I mean, I think for us, the most important two things I've learned about having successful follow ups, I mean, you you're gonna have a chain. You know? Like, if it's if it's a equipment inspection and you find something, you may wanna get it to the operations manager so he can make his change, and you will get it to the fleet manager. I think it's one of the key two things is making sure you have more people in that follow-up circle. Well, it certainly may be assigned to this person. That person's got other things to do too. So making sure you've got enough people that, hey. If the fleet manager is not getting to it, maybe a shop foreman, maybe a senior mechanic, maybe whatever is in there. So that's a pretty key part of it. Setting timelines. The big deal for us is man, and you do. And I'm sure Corey can attest to this. You'll have one day and have x amount of negative inspections, right, or things with issues. Okay? And then two days later, you're gonna have five x that. Well, on that day, you may just have more than your resources can get to, So there's gonna be some triage. There's gonna be some we have to pick and choose what gets done here as long as it's not red tag or critical. If there's other things we have to work on, you have to sort it out. But you still have to set a timeline because those small things will wind up getting lost in the wash, and those are the ones you'll look up and they never got followed up on. So you've gotta have some pretty strict timelines, whatever type inspection it is of this is when I expect it to get resolved. So, multiple eyes and having a set timeline are key two parts. Yeah. That's Yeah. And to add on and it is similar, Philip, to what you guys do, but what we found for us is, specifically on the equipment side. So this isn't well, and, technically, on the safety, but but, specifically, on the equipment side, we have a, a coordinator. And, honestly, one of her main jobs is as as flags come in from from equipment inspections or or maintenance requests come in from the field, She is reviewing every single one, and she's been trained to be able to diagnose certain things, you know, to a minimum of, okay. This is a this is a truck. This goes to our truck foreman our truck fleet, maintenance foreman. This is yellow iron. This goes to our our our iron fleet foreman. This is critical. I need to make sure somebody knows about this. This is an engine component. The the machine's down or the window's broken. Okay. It's not as critical. It needs to get fixed, but it's not as critical. And then what's nice, though, is the inspections, they keep coming, and it keeps doing notifications in our maintenance system. But when we have one person who's reviewing that, she's able to declutter, which helps us a little bit. And so having a person responsible to go through it because for us, I mean, it's yeah. We're talking, two hundred, well, over two hundred inspections every day just on equipment that's gotta be reviewed. And, I don't know about y'all, but I don't think anybody's equipment fleet is perfect. So, you know, out of there's always something small that's gonna happen on every job, and so that's a constant deal. And then what then what we've implemented is now we've made it to where our all the the superintendents and the foreman get notified of of the inspection. So they're notified at the same time so they know about it. And then and then, yes, there's a chain of people who has depending on the severity, it gets it gets dealt with. And then same with our safety. It automatically goes to to the to the project to the area foreman that's over the project, and then and then it's safety manager. And safety manager's making sure, hounding, making sure something's fixed, and then it's followed up on. And then all these things are discussed in our in our operations meeting. Oh, Corey, I hope you know you just signed up for a future session with me because I definitely wanna learn more about that person who their entire role is, triaging and assigning things out, because, definitely, it has been something I've heard from many people of just the the average days from something being opened to being closed is something that as an industry, we want to try and shrink because that just represents less risk, on the job site. It's better communication, and just fixes things faster. And having someone who's there just so once something comes in, they immediately know who to route it to. It sounds really smart, and I I just wanna learn more. Before I go on onto number four, repeat and improve, Philip, is there is there anything you wanna add to that? Did I cut you off? No. That's spot on. Okay. Perfect. So, guys, let's just talk a little bit about it sounds like we've we've learned what inspections, we tend to do with the processes, who's involved, how important it is to to get it followed up, closed down. Oh, I heard feedback. What what kind of data are you looking at to know if you you're doing a good job or who is doing a good job or not a great job? And how do you just do that continuous improvement that we were talking about earlier that's really the backbone, of y'all safety program? I mean, you know, every software, I don't care if it's a safety software and operation software, any of it, generates data, tons of it. And it generates especially when you're moving on to new software, it generates more data than you can handle or comprehend. So what? But, you know, you can do this where okay. I had an inspectional piece of equipment. This was broke. It went to the right person. We got it fixed. We carry on. Right? That little cycle completed itself. Good deal. But you wanna over time, you gather this immense amount of data of, well, why is that piece always breaking? Why are things on this job always breaking in this way? Why is it always under this foreman? Why is it always under this crew? Why is it always under this operator? You start seeing trends that allow you to make process decisions, whether it's people related, job site related. You know, there's a million of things. We could have a whole webinar on that alone, but there's trends to be found. Once you start gathering inspections and quantity and start seeing, well, they all seem to trail this way for whatever reason, That's what we're trying to do is take our inspections that while they close their loop on their own, whether it's a job site inspection, an equipment inspection, any of the four I talked about, they close their little loop. Something was wrong. We fixed it. Good deal. Right? But all those gather up to an immense amount of data of why is this happening so often, and is it something we can prevent to keep a life cycle on equipment better, make a job safer, make it more compliant, whatever it is. That's what we're trying to do is just aggregate data and see if we can get ahead of something or see if we can cut something off the path so we're not just, you know, beating our head against the wall, fixing the same thing over and over and over again just in perpetuity. So that's what we're trying to do with our data. Similar for you, Corey? Yes. So we're looking for outliers, obviously, and and what's nice with the program is it's really easy to look for outliers. But I think the improved part for us is is we're able to get pretty good feedback rather quickly on who's actually doing it and who's not. And so that's been a really nice feature for us is our equipment coordinator is take is looking, and she can see if the equipment was ran, but no inspection was done, and she can report that. There was no way to check that before. Same thing with JHAs. We can see time cards turned in without JHAs. We've used heavy job for years, and we've done digital JHAs, but that relied on somebody reading the the diary or the daily report and making sure the JHA was there. Now with HCSS Safety, we're able to run reports and see, oh, time cards were turned in, but no JHA was done with that time card. And so the system allows you to improve quicker and less and it's less time consuming. And then, yes, I think long term data is what's great is that now all your systems are connected. And so long term data is is very helpful and really there. And then you're able to see who who was on it just like both listening. Yeah. Now that that makes total sense. And, also, just a a pro tip since y'all are HCSS, safety users, there are now, time stamps in the background that you can see in your web system so you can easily understand, do we have a high amount of pencil whipping? Or really people making good quality inspections. But I know that we're we're actually rather close to q and a time. We had a few other things. So let's just we'll spend a few minutes on this, and then we'll get to to q and a. So, quickly, for equipment, has a strong inspections process shown any measurable improvement, in your fleet maintenance, or has it made your life easier for mechanics in any way? Yes. I mean, it yeah. Go ahead for it. Beautiful. Sorry. No. I mean so everything before for us was maintenance request by foreman. And so it a lot of things don't make it to a foreman's level until something actually breaks. And so now what we're able to see is as we have time to do things, certain things get fixed sooner to prevent actual breakage. And so that's that's been one of the biggest benefits is is every inspection immediately makes its way into the maintenance system. And so that's that's been the biggest thing for us. Yeah. And just to clarify for myself, it's, hey. We we have an operator or foreman or whoever's doing the inspection notating something that's like, hey. This might be an issue soon. Or, hey. I'm hearing this certain thing, and it's getting over to the mechanics before it's an actual breakage. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. So, I mean, it's less downtime major downtime on equipment. Yeah. No. Thanks for clarifying. Philip? Yeah. Same same thing. And we're really it's helping us not only keep uptime on our equipment better, but it's able to, like, you know, are we seeing trends in the mechanics? Are we seeing trends in who's doing our preventative maintenance, our fuelers, our greasers? Are we seeing trends to where, you know, maybe there's things not getting handled or getting handled enough, but not getting handled satisfactorily where there are more problems down the road? So it's very similar to what he said, but you you can't not look at trends in people's performance as well with this data. And so I think while it certainly made us have better uptime on equipment just because it's running better and it prevents major repairs because, you know, maybe we can catch something in, a leak or a an oil service or something before we drop a transmission or an engine. But, also, how do we get to that point? And there is something to be gleaned from people management in this for sure. Yeah. No. That that is a great overview. And, I know we are, right near time. Aaron, maybe we'll get to come back to this. Aaron, is it q and a time? Yes. We do have some questions coming in, and, we'll, take turns with the speakers. So first question, what was the rollout process like for digital inspections? And, I guess, how do you, get people who are less tech savvy, to get on board? So we we've been pretty fortunate that we had climbed a lot of our technology hurdle prior, prior to rolling out a safety solution. We had had a number of other solutions for other things. So I think the support structure here in our office and in our management was there, But we were taking it to a new group, inspect doing inspections at the operator level, mechanics, a number of these things. I mean, getting rollout is one thing. I I would say for us, the implementation of safety wasn't all that different from an implementation of our other processes. It's how do you support it. And and for us, a big thing is having field support. You gotta train. You have to understand that the first time you train them, they're gonna in our experience, they're gonna retain about thirty percent. And then once they go out to the field, you're gonna have to continually have somebody to support them in the field. You know? They can't just keep bringing them back into an office or, or someplace where you're training. You gotta have somebody who's gonna go to the job and have them stand by the piece of equipment or look in the trench or whatever it may be and go, I can't figure out how to make this thing do the thing you told me with this. And somebody's gotta support them from the field end. And that's that's the investment. Setting up a one day training is not an investment. Having ongoing field support for these guys, that's an investment. And I personally think if you're not committed to that part, you're setting yourself up to fail hard. So I I hundred percent agree. And and and so the biggest thing for us and I'll tell you, our our implementation of HeavyJob eight years ago was the worst implementation I think any company has ever done of HeavyJob Because we eight years ago, we were still on QuickBooks. We were we were, paper time cards that nobody had ever heard of a cost code. You know, it it was a different world. And so we implemented a heavy job, and what we allowed was was people wanted to do it their way and and try and find workarounds, and we allowed workarounds. You can't allow workarounds, and and here's the biggest thing is you can't say we'll get there eventually. Once you make a decision to go digital, you're going digital, and you have to just do it. And you have to require it. And you can't make exceptions for some people, and you can't try. What you do is you give them more support, more training, as Philip said. What I will say that we have done so for every operator can do an equipment inspection. It is very easy. If they were doing a paper equipment inspection, they can do this equipment inspection. That that there is no excuse there. From a heavy job standpoint, we have given some leeway on, certain foremen who are really good foremen, but they are really bad at the paperwork. They have a guy who's really good at paperwork on their team. But you know what that is? Now that's a guy that's learning how to be a fool. And so so there is gonna be some give and take you have to do. I mean, there's every company is gonna have some an older generation that maybe doesn't work and, that that isn't the best at it. So you find ways to support them, but they still have to do it One way or the other. And then the other thing for us was superintendents. Superintendents means you be your experts and your and your people that are pushing that forward. So you've gotta get their buy in because they're gonna be the ones in the field supporting all your people. Yeah. And I I just have to say on that real I'm a follow-up real quick. That support he's talking about and that part where it has to be mandatory, that has to come from the top, like the top, top, top. You know, guys like Corey or myself, while we're still in higher upper management, there's always gonna be a little bit of level of, well, how do I not do what that guy tells me because I may be adjacent or whatever? Have a president or an area manager or an owner or something, just gather everybody up one time and go, this is how this is gonna be done from here on. That's it. We're not talking about it. That's what I expect. That's what we did when we went to a paper or a digital plan solution, when we did digital time cards, and we didn't have to do it so much when we went to digital JHAs inspections, but the president was like, these are the expectations. We're done talking about it. There will be no exceptions like Corey said. And each subsequent implementation I had, it became less of a issue finding the outlier as it was generally like, nope. Chief said this way it's gonna be. This This way it's gonna be. Move forward. So And and, unfortunately, sometimes you gotta let people go. That that attrition rate is lower than I ever expected it to be. It happens. But for everybody on here, I I found it was lower way lower than I ever expected. Now the ones that did, they may they they chose their fate. They could have easily did it, but they chose to make a stand. And you don't ever wanna make an example of anybody, but, okay, if that's what you're gonna choose to do. Sometimes you do have to let people go, but I guarantee you that attrition rate's tiny compared to what you think it is. It it is very small. Yeah. And Well, I I just wanna say time he gives me a break, it ruins everything else. Of course. I just wanted to comment earlier. I think it is such a good idea. I know sometimes people are reticent to say, hey. You know, you're not great at paperwork. This person's gonna help you with it, but it really almost is a a training. You're setting this person up to take a leadership position, be a foreman in the future. So I think it's a wonderful way to to set everyone up for success. No. In fact, one of our first guys that was doing that, he's actually getting his first job to run on his own, next week. So it it's it is good. Wow. Congratulations, Dan. Yes. Great. Yeah. Thanks for the insights. Jen, were you going to say something? Oh, I was gonna say, Aaron, are there more questions? Yes. We probably have time for another question. For new hires, how do you get them to, get on board with the safety culture? Our process is kind of you know, we will do a and it and it's kind of a we'll do an onboard when our onboarding process we do a little bit of a preliminary questionnaire of because some of them come from construction, some of them come from different types of constructions, some of them never done construction. What do you know about safety? What do you think about things? To at least get their general attitude and, you know, perspective on safety. That'll help kinda guide us where we mentor them and watch them in their first ninety days. I wouldn't say we have a buddy system, but we definitely lean heavily on once I've trained them and and done an onboarding and given our expectations and take them to a job site, site. Here's that job site expectations, and you have that moment where you kinda just release them to the job. The crew, man, really, really talking to the crew about this guy is an integral part of your team now, and he's the one that's gonna not only set up your success, but you're gonna set up his. Getting that getting that crew ownership of you you're the you're gonna see him ten, twelve, twelve plus hours a day more than I will. So it I I put a lot of that on them and to get their feedback, and and they'll help guide him. And I'll get feedback from those guys if he's not growing at the pace I would expect. So that's how we do it. Yeah. We we have a same as you, we have an onboarding process. But a big part of our onboarding process, there's there's the safety aspect of it. But but for us, a big part is the digital aspect of it because I I think y'all don't use Myfield, right, Philip, for time? We're we're in the process of going through starting to using it, but it's not widespread like y'all. It's a great tool, but we're not there yet. Great tool. So we have a clock in, clock out feature that every employee has. So literally, they can't even start they're introduced to the inspections. The the same program that does the clock in, clock out is what they do their equipment inspections on, different things. So the it started from the beginning, and then their foreman their foreman need that information. So their foreman is the guy that is constantly train continuing the training on it, be because everything is linked. Great. Is there anything you would like to add, Jen? Well, actually, I was gonna, ask, do we have any other questions? If not, I have a one last closing question. Yeah. Sure. We can go over that. Just to you both, why is safety important to you or your company? I feel like it's it's something that it's in the backbone of everything, but we're never really pulling that out and saying it out loud. So do you have something some answer to that? Yep. Sorry about that. For for me and for for for our company personally, it's really about getting these guys home safe every day. And while that may sound small, you know, I've been on job sites before. I've seen the horrendous aftereffects of a fatality, a tragic injury, hurting a member of the traveling public. For us, it's really about trying to get these guys home safe every day. I will tell you, I I remember I was sitting on a different webinar, a different group one time, and the guy got asked the same question, and he completely went into insurance metrics. Never even mentioned that there's an employee with a family on your job doing dangerous stuff that you bear some responsibility to make sure his work experience gets him home. We start from the people end. If you start from the people end and you're successful getting your people home and growing them and building a culture with them, all the money and the profit and the insurance and the risk management, all that stuff will work itself out if you've built the right culture with your people. You gotta see them as people. You can't see them as statistics. So I think that's why ours is a very people centric safety program. I I totally agree with you, Philip. Unfortunately, we are we're in a our industry is much safer than what it was when I started. It's much, much safer than what it was when our parents were in it. I mean, I I love hearing stories of the good old days and the stuff that they would do. It is fun to talk about, and it's fun to hear. And it makes me I I remember when I was young hearing those or young early in the business hearing the stories of the good old days. Now I actually have some, quote, unquote, good old days, which makes me feel old. But, even today, unfortunately, I think most people that have been in this business long enough have either experienced somebody getting injured seriously. Most of us have maybe it hasn't been a company we worked for, but it's been a company we know and people we knew, someone died. And and these, as like we said, they they they they everything they do makes our supports our lives and supports our families. So I think it's just a a requirement that we we do everything we can to keep them safe. Yeah. Great answer, guys. It's, it's so important, I think, to always center of, like, why are we doing these things? Why do we focus on things? Like, right now, inspections. And it really is, I think, to to make our companies, safe, to make the people who work there safe. So thank you for answering. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Corey and Philip, for your time and presentation, And thanks everyone for coming to, the webinar. Once again, we'll send out the handout and the recording, in a few days. And I hope everyone have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.