Perini wants safety culture but it’s not a ‘reaction’

By Alexandra Berzon

Friday, Aug. 15, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The challenge is a tough one: change the “culture of safety” midway through a round-the-clock construction project that employs thousands of workers.

That’s the task before safety expert Steve Bowers, a consultant to Perini Building Co., the general contractor at CityCenter and Cosmopolitan. Those two projects have recorded eight worker fatalities in less than two years. Workers shut down $9.2 billion CityCenter for a day in June by walking off the job to protest what they said were unsafe conditions.

Bowers, a former construction safety manager for computer chip maker Intel, spoke to the Sun this week in what amounted to the first detailed response Perini has given to questions about safety on its Strip construction sites. Joining in the conversation was Doug Mure, Perini’s vice president of human resources.

“The first thing I do is put on workshops for senior management, giving them an understanding of what an injury-free environment is about, the leadership it takes to create that, and the management skills to sustain it,” Bowers said.

Perini’s recent Las Vegas projects have been far from injury-free. In all, nine workers have died at Perini projects (including the now-completed Trump tower) since December 2006 — five of them before Bowers came onboard.

In 2007, the company’s employees suffered 147 injuries at CityCenter, according to a government form the company is required to complete. The form was provided to the Sun by a worker. That total could be misleading, however. It does not include injuries suffered by workers hired by Perini subcontractors. Also, a report released recently by the House Labor Committee shows that nationally those forms tend to severely undercount injuries.

Bowers explained that creating “an injury-free culture” does not ensure that no injuries will occur. The objective is to create “a culture that will say and do everything possible for injuries not to happen,” he said.

Perini has not complied with requests from the Sun for an injury count.

Bowers worked in construction safety at Intel from 1995 to 2006. That’s when the chip maker was investing billions every year in manufacturing plants as it expanded rapidly to keep up with demands of the tech boom.

To try to hold down accidents on the job, Intel put in place and tested construction safety methods and philosophies that have become influential in the industry. Those include steps to cut down on ergonomic injuries and an initiative to incorporate construction safety into project design.

Behind it all was a theory that projects can be injury-free if safety is important to everyone in a company, especially senior leadership.

“The basic concept is you cannot separate safety from the way the project is designed, organized and managed,” said Tony Barsotti, who was the director of safety for Hoffman Construction, general contractor for Intel construction projects. Barsotti now works on safety for Temp Control Mechanical Corp., another Intel contractor.

“It’s not just about policies and procedures and an approach to how to identify hazards and manage them, but it was about rethinking how to view decisions and the consequences for others,” Barsotti said. “That worked tremendously. It had a ripple through the rest of the industry.”

In Oregon, Intel spent billions putting up structures at a fast pace — without fatalities, Barsotti said. However, the company has recently suffered several fatalities at projects in other countries, he said.

Safety experts familiar with the “zero injury” philosophy of construction have told the Sun that the number and circumstances surrounding the fatalities at CityCenter suggest management is not placing enough emphasis on safety.

Mure and Bowers strongly dispute that.

“We have looked at every possible way this is happening and have implemented programs where possible,” Bowers said. “If an individual decides to make a decision that goes against the rules and the programs implemented, then that becomes a personnel issue.”

Mure emphasized that Perini did not hire Bowers’ company out of concern that there were safety problems in Las Vegas. “We brought in Steve’s firm last October just to help us to look at continuous improvement model for our safety program,” Mure said. “It wasn’t a reaction to anything, but just that with the scope of work we have out in this region, we felt we needed some professional resources to help us to look at the processes and come up with a means and methods for us to continuously improve our safety efforts.”

The company has 40 safety professionals overseeing safety at CityCenter, and it requires subcontractors to hire their own safety professionals.

Bowers said he conducted a full analysis of every fatality and brought in a researcher from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to aid in the review.

“There was nothing else we could possibly do to prevent the situation from happening again,” Bowers said. “I’m here to tell you that this project is safe enough that I would have my own children work on it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be engaged in it.”

Bowers said Perini recently made changes in response to some accidents. For example, after worker Dustin Tarter died in May at CityCenter after being crushed by a crane, Bowers said the company is barring workers from oiling any crane that is in use.

Bowers said all foremen will be given the same safety leadership training that senior managers and superintendents have received.

Since he began working for Perini, “injury rates at CityCenter have dropped dramatically,” Bowers said. He and Mure declined to provide injury data to the Sun.

Safety experts familiar with Intel’s construction safety practices were encouraged to hear of Bowers’ involvement at CityCenter. But they did note a big difference between that project and Intel’s.

“One of the reasons the Intel projects work the way they do is because the owner, Intel, is very very hands on,” said Steven Hecker, an occupational health lecturer at the University of Washington who has extensively studied Intel’s construction safety practices. “So if Perini as the contractor is looking for improvement, that’s one piece. But the Intel model is one where the owner is all over everything.”

Yvette Monet, spokeswoman for CityCenter owner MGM Mirage, said safety at CityCenter is entirely under the purview of Perini, the general contractor.

Bowers said it makes no difference whether a safety initiative is driven by the owner or the general contractor.

“The changes we’re seeing on this large a project don’t come easy,” Bowers said. “This project is the size of a city. But we’ve been diligent in taking time in the field, getting the word out that safety is the preeminent goal, and that we want to send everyone home without injuries. Change is happening. The culture is getting better.”

Some new research should be able to evaluate that. As part of a union settlement agreement after the worker walkout, researchers from the national building trades unions are conducting a survey of CityCenter workers that asks them about safety attitudes on the project. Researchers expect to share results with Perini in the next few weeks.