Estimating with safety in mind: The real costs of safety in the field

Good afternoon. I was, very excited. You know, Ray and I had the opportunity to meet with several estimators and, safety professionals last year at UGM and discussed this topic. And so was really excited to have the opportunity to be here again today and talk about it. I know for me personally, I'm Hope McTheney, and I've worked in the construction industry for nearly thirty years and have been a safety professional in the industry the entire time. In addition, the you know, serving in other areas in the in the business, which really helped give me a well rounded understanding of just how things worked. And I will say in my tenure as a safety professional, there's really been some probably frustrating moments or maybe more challenging moments in my career with just being able to navigate from the estimate itself, performing the work on the operations side in the field, and working to navigate in my role in supporting operations on the safety side of things. And certainly, Ray, have found myself in situations where, you know, operations is upset with me because we're stopping work. And, obviously, that costs money and and probably some frustration on my part of it too because that's not not the goal. You know, the goal is to work efficiently and and work safely and, of course, to make money and provide for our families. Right? So I'm happy to be here again just to to have this discussion with with Ray, especially. Ray, I really enjoy having discussing this topic with you in particular because of your experience in the industry, if you could share that with the rest of us as well. I'd be happy to do. Thanks, Hope. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ray Zanan, and my company is Zancon LLC. I am a consulting contractor trainer for HCSS specializing in heavy bid. Just a little quick background, I've been associated with the civil construction industry for close to forty years now, a little over thirty five years actually in the industry as either an estimator, chief estimator, project manager, senior project manager, things like that, and a very brief stint as the safety officer for a small start up because there no one else was available to do it. So I was really glad to have the opportunity last year to do this class with Hope at the unit group meeting because safety has always been just kind of a real key component for me. I've been in the business long enough that I've seen a few things, and I've had I've had some things happen at companies that that I worked for in the past. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail. But when once once an adverse safety occurrence occurs in a company, it just reverberates a company. Really could send shock waves, you know, if it's a particularly bad one. And I've seen some of those. And so it really brought home the importance of making sure doing everything I could to make sure that everybody went home safely at the end of the day. And all the companies I've worked with, I've always tried to make sure that that was a key component of corporate philosophy and what we were trying to accomplish and that sort of thing. So it has always meant a lot to me. And so I've learned a bit years. And so as an estimator, I've seen a lot of changes in the industry. There was a time way back when, many decades ago, when safety was just sort of this afterthought that we that we all had in terms of, you know, you know, the job and that sort of thing. It's like, yes. You know, we wanted to be safe, but, hey. The main things were to, like, get the job and build the job. And that's different now. Whether we agree with it or not, the simple fact is you have to be more cognizant of it because almost no matter who you're working for nowadays, you have to pay attention to safety. It used to be that the public works things were the most key ones. But now even if you're in the private commercial world, it is a huge thing. And the the major contractors that I used to work for, it became a a bigger and bigger better thing to them, which made it a bigger thing to me, which was fine. It's the way it should be. It should be something that is a a key component of of everything we do because of the fact that we let's face it. We're in a fairly dangerous business. We're working with very large pieces of equipment, and we're working with small tools. And the combination of those can bring up situations that make it very easy for somebody to get hurt. So as again, as I said, I'm very happy to be part of this and, you know, here to support hope best way I can. Maybe offer some examples of some things that might be related to how how to incorporate safety into your and so on and so forth. Right. Yeah. I love what you're saying, Ray, about, you know, just how estimating has changed. And really, the the trending in the industry is it's it's forcing us to plan. And planning, is is is becoming a very structured part of what we do, and it absolutely starts with, the estimate. Right? The bid that we're putting together is the first phase of planning and planning to do our work safely. True. Things definitely have changed. There's no doubt about it. And today when we talk, you know, my hope is that both of us can help almost kind of you know, there are some of us in the industry that communication that we fostered within the business across all departments in our culture, we're getting better at it. But but most certainly, all of us still struggle with communication within the organization across departments. And it really is the most critical part of planning our work safely and in a way that we can be efficient and we can really do the work within the structure of the bid and make money. So today, you know, we're gonna talk about understanding the cost of compliance and its impact, you know, on a competitive bid if we're not addressing it. You know, there's a lot to be said about compliance in the industry. So we'll have a lot of conversation around that. And then also, we wanna learn where safety can impact the estimate, including insight into contract documents, project conditions, and subcontractor selections. I think a lot of our safety professionals may not wholly understand that side of the business. Find out how to leverage your data to track safety costs. We're gonna talk about HeavyBid and the safety software that HTSS offers. And then we're gonna learn best practices for estimators to collaborate with safety professionals, operations. You know, we'll discuss conducting site surveys and reviewing contracts and you know, so we can ensure some accurate bids. Ray, we need to know our audience a little bit better. Right? Because there's so much that we could talk about from different perspectives today. So to our audience, we're gonna ask you some poll questions. You might feel like you're in school for just a few moments here. But if you could help us out in just letting us know who's in the room. And, again, as Ray said, please use those question and answers as well. But the first poll question is, what department do you work in in your business? Are you in estimating? And and some of us are in estimating and operations. We actually wear both those hats. Right? And then maybe you're in operations, but specifically just the project management side, or maybe operations and just specifically, safety. And may or maybe another. But if you could let us know what your role is in your organization, it certainly would help Ray and I to make sure that we can kinda guide this conversation, to our audience. And as you all know, as participants, in order to, keep things less confusing, everyone is muted unless you're a host. But down at the bottom of the screen, if you were move your cursor towards the bottom of your screen, you'll see a a menu pop up. And so you have a couple of options there. You could post a question if you wanted a q and a, and I've got that open. I'm kinda keeping an eye on it. But there's also a chat. And if you wanted to, you could you could, you know, put something in chat if you wanted to do something like that. So it looks like we've got some interesting poll results here. It looks like the vast majority, thirty seven percent say that they are estimating another twenty five percent on top of that. So over sixty percent of the group is in estimating or estimating in operations. I'm guessing that estimating in operations for my career, I was an estimatorproject manager. I'm sort of guessing that's probably the case with a lot of the people in this group. But by and large, we're primarily people are estimating focus with a with a a few people from operations attending also. Yeah. And for some of our organizations, you know, operations, and this is definitely the language of HTSS and really the language in the business as far as safety. Safety really is a part of operations. Right? But I do know there are a lot of organizations where we're still kind of in this place of a silo of operations, and then there's safety over here. We're still the pain in the butt over here. That's great. Great answers. Yeah. So I guess we could go ahead and share those results. Michelle, is that should I share those results, or do you plan to share those results? Perfect. Awesome. So a pretty good mix, though. But, yeah, Ray, you're right. We absolutely have quite a few estimators in here. That's great. Alright. Let's move to our next poll question. Alright. Do you have people in your company that focus exclusively on safety? So this could be, yes, we have a safety department, or we have a safety manager depending on the size of our organization, Or no, the project management team, or maybe our field supervision and operations are experts on the means and methods. They have the full responsibility of safety in our organization. Or just simply, no. We don't have any dedicated exclusive safety staff. We might be using an outside consultant. We can give you an option for other on here. But if you if you wanna throw something in chat, if you wanna communicate something, I've got that up. And if somebody throws something on there, I'll I can I can share that if need be? So it looks like the vast majority of the it's great. You know, has has an actual safety department at their company. Certainly, that's good to see. At this day and age, I mean, as I said, I do training for HCSS and I work with companies that are hundreds of employees down to just a handful of employees. And pretty much everybody has something in terms of a safety department or at least a designated safety officer. I hope that's the case for the vast majority. Yeah. I see some great comments coming in too. Yeah. Just of the various ways that we handle this responsibility. Yeah. So it looks like, yep, the majority, eighty nine percent have a dedicated safety department. That's great. Yeah. Alright. Let's go to our next poll question. Alright. Is the operations and safety team involved in your estimating process? This was one of my favorite questions. So curious because in my experience, you know, I started in my early twenties, and it was actually many years before I really started to understand the whole estimating process and what what took place and also the resources that were available to us to really understand the expectation of the project. And you talked about this earlier, Ray, how things have changed so much. Right? So the specifications and what's included inside of those and specifications is so different than what it used to be. Yep. Yeah. As I said, back in the day, it was just kind of an afterthought, and I think that also but, nowadays, you even even smaller general contractors that I might have, done business with, had information in the in the documents that I received for bidding purposes related to, safety that I that if you're not aware of, that's some of the like any spec that you're not aware of, it could be it could turn around and bite you, but those especially that you wanna be aware of. So looks like we got pretty much everyone has voted here. So Yeah. Yeah. Down about a third or so are, you know, saying, yes, they are involved. You know, about twenty about twenty some percent say no, not not involved at all. And then it it depends on the project and Yeah. A little bit of not sure. So I think this is a great opportunity. I think I wouldn't have expected to see here. You know? Yeah. Same here. I but I'm excited that I think we have some great opportunities, during this session to kinda talk about that, what what we might be missing out or what the benefit might be, or the situations, or projects that we might want to involve, safety more. So that's that was a great question. Yeah. Great. Okay. Next question. And I believe our last one. How frequently do you account for safety costs in your estimates? Always. What's included in every estimate often, but only for high risk projects. Sometimes it depends on the project type. Rarely, safety costs are typically handled later or never. Safety costs are not included in estimates. So it's pretty good too. Yeah. Yeah. So we do have a well, about fifty percent is is always, but sometimes it's pretty high too. It looks like Oh. Once voted. You can tell you can tell this group has a lot of heavy bid users because because they've all figured out a long time ago that it's real darned easy to include some safety cost in the estimate. And if we do, then why not set a budget for it so that we have something to compare it to, apparently? So, yeah, you're right. That's great. Right. Yeah. So I think, no, this isn't being shared, so think everybody can see that. Alright. Cool. Alright. Oh my gosh. I lied to you guys. There's one more question. How does your team track and adjust the safety budget throughout the project life cycle? We regularly update the safety budget as new safety needs arise. We track safety costs, but adjustments are rare unless a significant issue arises. We don't track safety costs after the estimate phase. Where safety costs are handled by a separate team, not the estimate team, where safety costs are treated as a fixed budget regardless of changes in the field. Is that poll I'm not getting a pop up on that poll question for some reason. I've got it. We are man. Yeah. We are all over the place, Pretty equal across the board on all of those. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, for whatever reason, it's not coming up on my screen. So we have, like let me share these results. Oh, there. Can you see the results, Ray? No. I can. Yeah. Yeah. So take a look at that. That's interesting. Yeah. So it looks like we all have our own way, right, of doing things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna be honest with you, Hope. I I don't think those results necessarily surprise me. Really? Yeah. No. Yeah. I find that I find it interesting. Really probably depends on the size of projects and the the type of work that we do too. Right? Is it? Yeah. Good deal. Well, thank you guys for taking the time to let Ray and I get to know you a little bit better as we dive into a little bit deeper discussion here now. So safety impact on bidding. So we all know that safety plays a critical role in the bidding process just for all those reasons that Ray talked about at the beginning of the webinar. But when it comes specifically to cost of compliance and best practices, I thought we should take a couple minutes and just talk about that. Because what I found in my experience is, you know, the not so fun part of the job when safety professionals were going out onto the project and we ourselves may be interrupting our schedule or our process, our means and methods because we're pointing out somewhere where we're falling short from a compliance standpoint. Or, you know, it could even be the owner of the project or a client as well and just how critical, or how the cost of compliance can really impact, our bid. And not just compliance anymore from the regulatory standpoint, but just like you were talking about, Ray, I mean, best practices in the industry is changing at a faster pace. Right? So the industry is not even really waiting for regulatory compliance to catch up. There's a lot of best practices. This is being driven even by the way that we're bidding jobs now. Right? So it's best bid. It's not just low bid. Right? And so there definitely could be some some significant impacts just from a compliance standpoint. Also, the reputation and competitiveness, when it comes to betting, there's so much more, importance, laid into the reputation now. And it is because it's not just low back anymore. Our reputation, I think you'll agree, Ray, just is so much more important when we're trying to obtain work in the industry, especially private. And I'll say public too now. Right? So even government projects aren't just a little bit anymore. Would you agree? No. Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's very true. I saw I saw that change probably starting close to fifteen years ago. It started with some of the larger GCs, and it has tripled down to even medium sized and maybe even some more GCs where they have a requirement that if your company does not have a certain EMR, then they simply will not be quote from you on the private side. That's been in place for a long time from the public work side, state DOTs and so forth, but never saw that on the private side twenty, thirty years ago. But that has changed now, and that's being pushed down on the people that insure their jobs, their insurance companies, saying, No, you're not going to hire a subcontractor that does not have a good safety track record. And so just one more in addition to the fact that it's just the right thing to do because you don't want any of your people to get hurt, but it affects your business now. Right. Yeah. You know that safety track record, you know, every owner has a different definition or a different, I guess, bit of information that they're looking at to consider what your safety track record is. Right? And it can be pretty extensive to your OSHA citations, the compliance that we just talked about. If you have anything, you know, that is of recent five, you know, I don't know if everyone's aware, but on the OSHA website, we can go back and look ten years ago, you know, what your history is as far as citations. But it's definitely from a competitive standpoint, it matters, you know, what our what our safety reputation is. And then the next one, reduced an incident cost. Obviously, we all know that incidents affect the bid because it affects our overall cost in the business. Right? You know, from an insurance standpoint and and bonding. But also, you know, every time that we're having incidents in the field, we have additional downtime in the field. So, obviously, that drives our cost up the more incidents that we have in the field. And then also on the risk management side, you know, a high risk contractor can really be a detriment to a client, you know, from a liability standpoint, from delays in them getting their projects done, in the time frame that they'd like to get them done, and really can cause a lot of financial issues. Really just demonstrates the commitment. Right? And then lastly, the increased efficiency. And safety really can have a positive impact if we're planning on the safety side starting from during the bid. It can really make us efficient in the field. And I say that again because just as a safety professional, when I was starting out and really fifteen years into my experience as a safety professional, it's no fun holding up what needs to get done in the field. Obviously, it's our job for the sake of the the safety of our individuals. It's our responsibility. It's our legal requirements to provide, you know, a safe workplace. But if we can plan safety starting in the beginning during the estimate process, we can certainly help not having to stop work. We can lower those risks of incidents in the field so that we can increase our efficiency in the field as well. And then also just project specific, you know, requirements. That's an important part of understanding. It plays a critical role in bidding more so than it ever has, as we've talked about before. I do remember the first time that I saw specifications for a contract. I'd never seen it before, and this was years into my experience. And really understanding and and grasping the knowledge of what that regulatory compliance was or those specification requirements in that contract document played a significant role in the bidding process, and really enhanced the ability to bring the project home in the way that it was done. But I don't know if you have anything to add to any of those points, that we just talked about, but there's a lot there. Yeah. It is. It it is a lot. And and actually, what I would what I was thinking, especially when you were, you know, incidents and and the cost of it and so on and so forth. I mean, obviously, the human cost is the most important thing, But you also have to take into consideration that there is a financial cost to the company if there is an incident. It is going to hamper production, if not stop production completely. And I think about over the years, the incidences that that I would I'm familiar with with the companies that I work for. Number one, as we know, it's a dangerous business and accidents, you know, will happen. So you try to mitigate as much risk as you can. But I think about so many of the incidents or situations where the person was doing something that they that they should not have been doing, and and they they should have known that they shouldn't have been doing it. And if they didn't know, then that represents a failure on the part of from the foreman level all the way up through the superintendent all the way up to the top of the company, if that wasn't communicated properly of, hey, what's the right way to do this? How do we not do the wrong way? Then that's that's on us. Right. So certainly, I mean, is a long list of positive impact. Right? So these these are all the reasons why we want to consider how can we incorporate safety into our bidding process just to avoid all those things that you're talking about. Right. Yeah. So one of the ways is screening for safety. Right? So it's kind of that prequalification phase. And honestly, we all do it to some degree. A lot of us have a much formal process of prequalifying our subcontractors. But trust me, your estimator does that to some degree when they're estimating because, one, they have previous experience with some of our contractors that we use. But also, they're wanting to make sure that they have the qualified staff to do the work. Right? And and also the reputation. So and I think there's some, like, really easy ways to do this, and there's probably some ways that we're all familiar with. So I I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with ISN, maybe even PEC, but we can very quickly look up those OSHA citations. They might be looking at our EMR, maybe wanting to preview our programs, even asking questions about our drug testing programs. And these are all the same things that we can do to prequalify contractors that work for us as well. But we should be prepared to answer these questions when being prequalified for a project. Even looking at our our safety staff, right, in our lead operations in the field, our our superintendents and our foreman and our Creeley, just really what their qualifications are. They really amp that up, Ray, as far as what they're expecting now in the field and the experience and the continuing education that they wanna see on the safety side. Would you agree? No. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's only gonna continue to to increase to be more important moving forward. Absolutely. And then where safety can impact an estimate, talking about those contract documents, You know, obviously, our estimators are meticulously going through these contracts. That's what their job is. Right? They're looking at specifications. They're looking at drawings. And they're looking at safety regulations too. Right? But their primary job is the means and methods, and what do we need to do to meet those contractual requirements for the work? And looking at perhaps contract language and then just just the overall specifications. And I wanted to talk about this a little bit because a lot of young safety professionals don't really understand the process of estimating or really just the hard work that goes into it, that they really are planning the work for the estimate. So the first phase of planning is a big phase. It's a big phase, Ray. There's a lot being done behind the scenes that I don't think some of our safety managers really realize. And I remember you said to me when we talked a few weeks ago about you really have to trust your estimator. Right. That's the estimator's responsibility is to know the job better than anybody else pretty much at any given moment, even even through the course of building the job. You you you get it first, you get and the longest. That that that's that's just part of the job. Yes. Absolutely. I don't think I really, in my young younger years, really understood the amount of effort that went into this. And so, therefore, I didn't really even consider, you know, when we were in the field and operations, you know, we were in the middle of doing some kind of activity or phase on the construction schedule, and we were coming up against these obstacles, just how valuable that estimator was and certainly worth having a conversation with. There's nothing that's more frustrating, I think, than sometimes when we as safety professionals go out into the field and point out the problem. Right? But we don't stick around to see how it's resolved or support operations in a way that they can work with the bid and the plan, and then how we can make resolution with an obstacle that we've come up against in the field so that we can continue to get the work done most efficiently and safely. Alright. So where safety can impact an estimate, project conditions and dynamics. We talked about this last time too, which, you know, Ray, you were talking about just the benefits of that that site survey prior to the project doing the visit. And I have found how that has been so beneficial, not just for the estimating team, but if safety and operations are involved in those visits, of just understanding overhead utilities. Right? Access to the project logistically can be really tough. And then also security, depending on the areas where we are or what we're constructing, can be a really big challenging issue for us. And then also owners and prime safety requirements on-site. How many times have we been bit by that? Right? Not having a full understanding of what they're expecting from us in the field. I can remember being on a project. And, know, typically, most of us, we do a safety toolbox once a week. And, of course, the trend is we're doing JHA, JSA meetings every morning now, right, to plan out that work. But I can remember walking on a job, and it was not just your JHA meeting, but there was a safety topic that needed to be discussed every day. But, also, there was a drill once a week, maybe an emergency evacuation. We had no idea that the orientation was two days long. And none of these things had been considered in the estimate. Ever had anything like that happen to you, Ray? Yeah. Well, the hard yeah. I learned that lesson a while back when, again, as I said, I've been doing this for a long time, so I sort of saw this evolve. As is the case with many estimators, learned by my mistakes a lot of times. And so, yeah, I got bit hard with that when I was an estimator and project manager. And I go out there to start the job and find out it was one of those cases like you just like, Oh, and so all your people have completed the two day safety orientation that's in your specifications. I'm like, No fun, right? No, not at all. So that's when you start finding those things. It's like, Oh, I guess we do have to have they're going to have this general contractor is going to require at a specific time once a week. So, Hey, we better plan on that in addition to our normal toolbox. You know, maybe they they have their own safety meeting every single week, and they have a pre a preconstruction orientation and that sort of thing. You know, in the safety world, the networking is all over the place, right? Because it's universal. So never hesitate to even reach out to safety professionals that have worked you know, have your team reach out to them that have worked with these organizations or owners prior to really get an understanding of what their expectations are in the field. Yep. Then, of course, company policy changes during the project and maybe staffing issues. This is a big one. So when you have to have that mandatory safety professional on your project who suddenly is no longer available, it is not that easy to just go hire someone immediately and put them into that position and then be, fruitful and really beneficial to the crew in the field. And so it can be really expensive to have to call in a consultant to come in and work on the project when it's mandatory. So this is certainly something to consider. You know, what is your who is your stand in? Who is your alternate, I should say, if you're having these kinds of requirements where you have to have a twenty four or a safety person on-site at all times, which is becoming Can jump in here real quick? Yeah. Sorry about that. So I apologize. I got distracted. And so a question came in a little bit ago that I think might be a good time to go ahead and bring this up since we're still on this topic. The question is, are you seeing occurrences of GCs accepting reduced levels of personnel qualifications based on the inability to hire qualified people industry. From my point of view, when I was sitting in, I have been out of the industry because I've had my own consulting firm for two years. I was an employee of HCSS for five years. But when I was in the industry, I never saw any evidence of that. If anything, it was the opposite. Was like, you know, they don't care. Yeah. No, it's it's like, you know, your job is to find the find the right people. So to help you, that you I don't know if you have anything that you want to add to that. Yeah. No, I've seen it shift a little bit, Ray, because only, you know, as a consultant as well that runs my own business, I definitely have seen an uptick in consideration of hiring mentors for staff that are being put into positions that maybe aren't that don't quite meet the requirements and being able to negotiate with the owner of bringing someone up alongside of that individual to mentor them into that position. So I've seen a slight change in that. I really think it just depends on the owner. Right? How hard they are on what's expected, for that. But I have seen a little bit. Now from a company standpoint, man, I have seen a lot of, individuals coming into positions that have high responsibility that do not have the experience because we are just trying to find someone to take on that responsibility in our own business. I see that a lot. As far as owners accepting individuals with less experience, I see it a little bit more now with contingencies. But it's still you know, you're right. There's there's not a lot there's not enough people for sure for us to spill the spot. The thing is is there's specific credentials that they're looking for. And I would be cautious because you can get those credentials without the experience, sometimes. And we still have a a responsibility to come up alongside that person. It's a lot of responsibility. But, yeah, I see it changing a little bit a little bit. Okay. Alright. Let's go on to just for the sake of time. We talked about subcontractors a little bit already. And really just from an estimating standpoint, sometimes we'll make conditions, Ray. Like, we'll approve a subcontractor, take their bed, and understanding that they're gonna need some support from a safety perspective to meet the requirements for this project. Whether it's helping them to take a look at their AHAs or their JHAs to make sure that they've covered all the regulatory requirements and that they're meeting them. But, also, sometimes we let them borrow our equipment. Right? So maybe our aerial work platforms. And there's a there's a liability for that. And I think it's important that estimators do understand we still have this obligation of training, making sure that this operator is trained, maybe not necessarily doing the training ourselves, but making sure that they're trained, that they're operating in a safe manner. And it really could cause a few obstacles for us, out in the field. And then also just it might be beneficial on the estimating side, really, you know, to ask the questions about competency. I know we're looking at qualifications for means and methods. But on the compliance side, there's competency too as far as really understanding regulations and who has to be on-site during certain activities that were are being performed on the project. So verifying those things and certainly workers' compensation, that's a big thing. I don't know if you've been bit in the butt, but, certainly have experienced that in ourselves and having contractors on-site where their, insurance certificates have expired. Not good. Alright. It it could get you thrown off of a project very quickly. Real fast. It could get you in a quite a bit of bit of trouble from a liability standpoint too. Yeah. Definitely. So let's talk about tracking this cost a little bit, Ray. Now you are the expert at heavy bed. I'm certainly not. I know enough just to be dangerous. I certainly do because I do train on the HSS safety side too. So I I definitely have some ways that we can talk about training or tracking costs or at least understanding what's going on in the field from a safety perspective from a time standpoint. The man hours that we're sucking up with safety and how that's impacting the job. But from the standpoint on heavy bid rate, can you what can you give us as far as tracking cost, safety cost through heavy bid, the historical data? You know, just formally in the general safety equipment by man hour. How often do you see that happening? And what what would just be the best approach? Oh, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share my screen for a bit. Sure. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and grab I hope I got the right one. Let's see. Alright. Are you seeing my my heavy bit screen? I can. Okay. Alright. So I've got a typical just a a very standard estimate here. You just got various items. And you'll notice down here, I've my my indirects. I just highlight them a little bit just to make them a little bit easier to see. Because one of the things that I tried to do was to quantify as many true jobs as I could on the job side equation, if at all possible, so that we could try to track them. So I might have some things in here that could be semi safety related, like stockpile protection, safety spend, facility locating, that sort of thing. Had a company I was with, we put site cameras up. But you could have a whole section of safety requirements. And maybe in here, you might capture the time for your safety manager and say, okay. You know, we we track him on a on a you know, he's he's in my labor setup on monthly basis. I would say, Hey, if this guy is running ten jobs on this one that's going to last a certain amount of time, I'm going to need him for one point six months total. So that's just one way of handling that. Safety inspections. There's a question that I'm going to get to that popped up that I'm going get to here in just a second. If you know that you have safety inspections that you have to proceed, you can include costs for that in here. In this case, it happened to be that I needed a subcontractor to handle that, such as Hope Matheny to come in and handle my inspections so that she could prove to the entity that I was working for that we were doing our safety inspections. Medical exams and drug testing, that's something that you simply say, Hey, if we're going to have X number of people on the job, and my specs say that for every hundred people I have on the job, I have to perform a certain number of, you know, random drug tests and on and so forth. Well, I can simply include that in there and just find out from the local lab how much they charge for that. Easier thing to capture. And then if you're using a good tool for tracking costs on your projects, such as heavy job, then you can keep track of that sort of thing and find out that, hey. Are we including enough in our estimates for what we need? Safety gear. I mean, if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, you can say, hey, we think we're going need this many hard hats and this many boots and goggles and safety vests. And if it you know, if if if you think you can do that accurately, fine. And if you do, then again, you could use your heavy job to find out, Hey, over time, are we hitting our numbers on this sort of thing? Many of you may be familiar with what's called an indirect star function, where you use a factor inside Heavybit. I don't have time to go explain it now, but hopefully, you guys haven't been through the information you got on this thing, feel free to contact me. But you could just use a factor like how many labor hours do I have or labor dollars do I have? And you can get with your the the CFO or what say, hey. Let's track some jobs here and see how much we spend on safety. You know? And you can say, hey. So that for every labor dollar we spend, we know we we need to add, you know, two cents or ten cents on the dollar, whatever, to cover our needs for that. Same thing with, like, PPEs. You could set up a a a star indirect function based on the number of hours, man hours in a job and say, hey. You know, for every man hour of the job, we historically have decided we need that five cents per labor hour to do that. Alright? And a question I wanna answer real quick, someone asked a question about estimators, you know, being able to attach notes and so forth at the activity level, which is a great idea if you have a particular activity in your estimate that needs to be addressed from a safety perspective or framework. That's exactly what this note function is for in heavy bid. So that this is where you communicate with your field personnel what you have discovered. And so that note pops up for them when they're looking at it in heavy job. Or if you simply print out the cost report, you can give that to them. But the last part of the question is, when will ACSS allow estimators to attach JHAs to an activity so that the estimator filled out can transfer to the field like other information? Well, that's going to occur in twenty eighteen. All right? So if you go to setup and you go to your activity code book, you will notice if you're on any newer than about twenty eighteen, here you have it right here. You can attach JHAs. You can attach meeting requirements. You can attach an action form like that. And, again, if you're using HeavyJob, that will show up. That will go over to HeavyJob and the field foreman when he's working on that activity. That's gonna be that's gonna show that, hey. You have a you have something here that you need to pay attention to. Okay? Yeah. I think so. Also, Ray and if it's okay with you, I'll take the screen back while we're talking. Yes, please. But I wanted to say that if you go to the road maps and safety, you can see that they're working on JHA, and that's something they're taking a look at right now is being able to connect the two. Right? JHAs with with the estimate. So with the I will I will say with the activity itself. Yeah. Yeah. And could another question just came up. I hope it all kind of on the same thing. It because you because I know you talked to a lot of people at HCSS about this. The question is, will ACSS be improving their PM system, the heavy job side, to allow tracking of subcontractor items such as insurance certificates, expiration dates, certificates, and other items that have been mentioned? And I I I was under the impression you've already I could be wrong. Do you do you know, Hope, one way or the other? Oh, I'm not sure. You know? That's I love that, though. But I just that I cannot answer. But So you can ask whoever asked that question or if all of you wanna ask that question, community dot h c s s dot com. That is if you're not familiar with it, if you have credentials with HCSS, you can go there, and you could go to the operations side of it and post, you know, post that comment that, hey. That needs to be included in in heavy jobs if it's not there already. Absolutely. And they do read those, so I encourage you to do that. Now I just wanted to quickly go over best practices. We're running short on time. So if you have questions, please drop those in so we can address them right now. But I just wanted to talk about best practices and and just for the safety professionals and estimating. It is such a benefit if we can come together and review those contract documents together. Really, our estimating team, I don't generally find that they do a lot of continuing education on the regulatory side. But I do see a trend in my clients now where estimating is starting to play or at least participate in some of the training to really get an understanding of what's expected in the field from the operation standpoint in order to provide a safe workplace for employees during the activities that we're performing. And I think it's a good idea. I do think that as safety professionals, we need to support estimating and operations because we are the ones that are the experts in that field. It is our responsibility to keep up to date with all those regulations and understandings, whether it's local, national, or even just networking in the in the industry and knowing our our clients. And then just those comprehensive site surveys that we talked site surveys that we talked about are invaluable. Engaging with project stakeholders. So make sure everyone's at the table that needs to be at the table to have the conversations about the work that we're bidding. And then considering contingencies and unexpected expenses as a team, and then document assumptions and risk factors when we're putting that bid together. And then also when we're closing out a project that can be just invaluable to discuss together as a team. And then probably the most pivotal is ensuring a good handoff. Are estimators ensuring a good handoff to operations and that is inclusive of safety so that we can stop, you know, going out into the field and and stopping work for a huddle that wouldn't be necessary if we plan prior to getting out in the field. So having said all that and bringing this this to an end, I do wanna ask, you know, our contact information is here up on the screen for you, and you are welcome to reach out to us at any time if you have any further questions. But if there are any questions that Ray and I can answer for you, We have about seven minutes here at the end that we wanted to give to you exclusively. Are there any questions? So if you're not if you don't know, then you can go down to down to the very bottom. Again, if you go down the screen, keep watching, the yeah. There's a a q and a down there, and that will allow you to type in questions. We'll be done. Yeah. If there's just anything that you wanna share too. Yeah. So a a something came up in chat where the question is, hello. Was there a slide for the last item you just shared? I can't see it on my screen. So are you talking about the contact info in that was that is that what you're referring to that you? There's this one too. Ray, can you see my screen? Yeah. I'm I'm seeing your screen. That one says best practices for estimators. Ray. Yes. Are you able to stop sharing? I think that might be the problem. Is that the problem? Okay. Yeah. Oh, I thought I thought you took it from me. So okay. I'll I'll share it. Hold on. It's nothing. Yeah. We don't see help screen. This does not seem to be indicate I've still got a green border, so apparently, I am sharing whether I meant to or not. So how do trying to figure out how I unshare this thing. Oh, we have a raised hand. Yep. I'm chatty. Where is Come on. So, Ray, at the top of your screen, it should say stop share. Not at the bottom, but at the top. Oh, at the top? Yes. That's the bottom. And I'm gonna stop share real quick, and maybe it'll show it on yours. And then I'll reshare. Okay. Still not seeing. Okay. Okay. So my green border is gone, so I do not believe I am still sharing. Okay. Alright. I'm replacing you. I figured out how to do it. There. So here was the best practices for estimators, and I think that might be what they were asking for. And John said if they can see my screen. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. They can see. Awesome. Good deal. Yeah. So this was really honestly, this year, these these best practices that we've listed really can make a big difference from we talked about communication in the beginning. That is what is most critical and yet the hardest and most challenging thing we have as contractors. So oh, Brian has a question. Yeah. So, Brian, I would say do me a favor and go to health dot e x c s dot com. Look up indirect star, meaning the the asterisk kinda thing, functions. Alright? And there's a great there. There are great videos on it in academy. Acss dot com. So start with that because it would take longer than we have right now to really walk through how to set that up. It's not hard, but it does take a few minutes. Take a look at that. And if you still have questions on it, then obviously call call support. Okay. So questions. Yeah. It's good. That Alright. No open questions. Well, Ray, we're at two fifty six. Alright. We give everybody four minutes of their day back. That's right. Well, thank you guys for attending and hanging in there with us the entire time. And we had we have a great crew here today. So it was a pleasure spending this time with you. And, again, here's our contact information. Feel free to reach out at any time. Yep. Thanks, everyone. Alrighty.