By transforming its safety program with the proper tools, RAWSO Constructors created more engaged teams, reduced risk, and achieved award-winning results.
The Issue
Faced with the challenge of transforming their safety program, RAWSO identified the need to transform from a compliance-based checklist into a true culture of ownership and accountability. With growing crews and more subcontractors onsite, they needed real-time data access, streamlined reporting, and proactive safety protocol to prevent incidents and maintain high standards on every project.
The Solution
Implementing HCSS Safety to manage safety documentation, monitor incidents and near-misses, and analyze trends quickly and efficiently, RAWSO created a system to drastically improve their safety culture. The team emphasized daily safety observations, toolbox talks, and leadership training, as well as real-time reporting, simplified IT access, and integrated weekly engagement tracking.
The Outcome
Thanks to their commitment to safety, RAWSO saw a drop in their EMR from 0.97 to 0.64, earning them the 2023 Safety Award from Ryan Companies. The company continues to shine as a remarkable example for the industry as they foster a stronger safety culture through continuous improvement, leadership development, and making the most of technology.
“We preach culture over compliance. You can still be in compliance and have people getting hurt, but we look to go above and beyond compliance and make sure people go home at the end of every single day.”
– Colton Richardson, Safety Director, RAWSO Constructors
RAWSO’s Safety Journey
Based just south of Nashville, Tennessee, RAWSO Constructors is a heavy civil contracting firm that specializes in moving dirt and installing underground utilities. For Colton Richardson, Director of Safety, the past few years have marked a period of significant operational growth, creating and maintaining one of the safest construction environments in the nation.
But this isn’t how the company started.
Richardson has been with RAWSO for over eight years, spending his first few as an Estimator who had experience with the signature HCSS product, HeavyBid. After transitioning to his role in safety, RAWSO began benefiting from HCSS Safety as well.
“I jumped on [HCSS] Safety pretty much as soon as I made the switch from estimating to safety,” Richardson says. “That’s helped me out a lot, just managing our trade partners, ourselves, and getting everything our general contractors require from us.”
The shift from estimating to safety went beyond merely serving as a career change for Richardson. The new career path quickly became a mission. In fact, he calls it, “The absolute best move I ever made. I like being out and helping people, making sure everybody’s safe, and building that culture as well. Being stuck at a computer screen, it’s kind of tough to do that.”
Recognized with a Major Safety Award
In 2024, RAWSO was recognized with a major safety award from Ryan Companies, given to contractors that consistently strive for safer work environments. They look for a positive attitude towards safety program enforcement, compliance with regulations, up-to-date safety programs, creative solutions to safety, total project safety participation, and minimum lost time injuries.
Acknowledging what an honor this award is, RAWSO is more than happy to discuss how this incredibly meaningful achievement came to be. For their company, safety transcends policy to the point where it’s embedded in everything the company does.
“I think one of the biggest differences is that we preach our core values, and a lot of people say safety is a core value,” Richardson comments. “In our opinion, safety is not one of our core values. It’s part of all three of our core values.”
Those three values are: 1) Do what’s right. 2) Pursue excellence. 3) Take extreme ownership.
He quickly elaborates more on what each of those mean.
“Doing what’s right? You’re going to go home at the end of every single day. Pursuing excellence? Get better today than you were yesterday, tomorrow better than today. And as far as taking extreme ownership? Yes, that says that I’m going to take extreme ownership of myself, but it also says that you should take extreme ownership for the guys around you.”
Culture Over Compliance
Despite rigid OSHA requirements, RAWSO makes it their goal to exceed them. Colton put it simply: “We preach culture over compliance. You can still be in compliance and have people getting hurt, but we look to go above and beyond compliance and make sure people go home at the end of every single day. There’s room for improvement even if you think you’ve gotten there. Every day there’s something we can get better on.”
He also reinforces how HCSS construction software has played a key role in this journey.
“I can get an incident report in a matter of seconds,” he says, “If I need to get in on the problem, I can get to work on that problem. HCSS Safety also allows me to track root causes and allows me to track trends.”
Another major advantage is being proactive rather than reactive. While many contractors wait until the end of the current week to compile and submit the previous week’s meeting minutes—resulting in a consistent two-week lag—RAWSO is typically a full week ahead, providing documentation promptly and staying ahead of project requirements.
Achieving a Lower EMR
In recent years, RAWSO has placed a strong emphasis on leadership development in addition to safety training. The company established a dedicated coaching department that focuses on supporting field leadership through regular training sessions. These efforts aim to strengthen skills and improve communication, resulting in a more effective jobsite.
RAWSO’s approach is working, and their concrete numbers prove that.
“Our EMR is down from what it was,” Richardson shares. “Our EMR a couple of years ago was a .97, and last year was .64. So that was our best year when we got the award.”
Rather than chasing metrics, the team prioritized the right behaviors. With the help of HCSS Safety, RAWSO began consistently tracking daily and weekly safety engagements, such as toolbox talks, job hazard analyses (JHAs), observations, near misses, and inspections, alongside incident reports and injury data. Maintaining these high levels of engagement led to a noticeable decrease in major accidents.
Tech Adoption in the Field
RAWSO’s investment in technology also meant making their field a definite priority. “We recently upgraded everybody’s iPads,” says Cody McCaskill, Director of IT and Communications. “We’ve tried to do our best on the IT side to streamline as much as possible.”
This also meant introducing single sign-on (SSO) across platforms. With a single login for everyone, they squashed a common problem in the field of passwords being forgotten. “It makes it a lot easier, so we get fewer issues not getting logged in.”
After overcoming a few of these hurdles, the user experience is now strong. “They catch on to the app pretty easily for HCSS,” he adds about their field workers.
RAWSO has also had consistently positive experiences with HCSS support, noting the 24/7 responsiveness and ability to address questions quickly. As a result, the team now encourages field staff to contact HCSS support directly, reducing bottlenecks by eliminating the need to go through a central point of contact for routine issues.
Can HCSS Help Transform Your Safety Culture?
Although RAWSO’s transformation didn’t happen overnight, their safety accolades, lower EMR, and growth as a worker-centric company are the result of intentional leadership, a willingness to implement technology, and a refusal to ever settle for “good enough.”
If you would like to start a conversation about getting started with HCSS Safety, a software expert is ready to help.
