AGC HANDS OUT TWO NEW AWARDS HONORING INDIVIDUAL CONSTRUCTION PROFESSIONALS
BY NICK FORTUNA
For more than three decades now, AGC has recognized member companies that exemplify a true commitment to safety through the Construction Safety Excellence Awards. This year, however, individual accolades were on the line, as AGC expanded its awards program to honor safety and health professionals and front-line supervisors and field personnel.
Sponsored by Milwaukee Tool, the two new awards recognize individual employees who have helped member companies achieve an exceptionally high degree of safety excellence. The awards were presented at the annual AGC Construction Safety & Health Conference in Glendale, Arizona, in January.
Eric Simmons, corporate safety director for San Diego-based Helix Electric, a member of multiple AGC chapters, won the first annual Construction Safety Professional of the Year award. To be eligible, nominees had to be a corporate, regional or project safety and health professional at an AGC member company.
Meanwhile, Matt Hendrie, a project superintendent for Phoenix-based J. Banicki Construction Inc., an Arizona Chapter-AGC member, won the inaugural Construction Safety Champion of the Year award. Nominees included foremen, superintendents and project managers from AGC member companies who supervise work and are responsible for implementing safety policies among their direct reports and skilled-trade partners.
Kevin Cannon, AGC’s senior director of safety and health services, says expanding the awards program reinforces safety as “the No. 1 priority for the construction industry.” Safety and health professionals “play a critical role” in establishing a culture of safety at their companies, he adds, and jobsite supervisors are “where the rubber really meets the road,” implementing those safety programs in the field.
“We felt that it was important to recognize those individuals for helping to maintain a safer industry,” Cannon says. “This gives us an opportunity to recognize more of our safety leaders, and it allows AGC staff to learn about the great things that individuals within our member companies are doing to put safety at the forefront.”
Nominations for next year’s individual safety awards will open Oct. 1, with an application link posted on the AGC’s website, and the deadline for submission will be Nov. 4. The awards will be handed out at the AGC Construction Safety & Health Conference in New Orleans next January.
CONSTRUCTION SAFETY PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR
The numbers prove that Eric Simmons and Helix Electric are committed to safe jobsites. Despite employees working 3.51 million hours last year, the company recorded only one incident resulting in days away from work and a total of four incidents requiring a job transfer or restriction.
Simmons, 46, got his start in construction as a teenager working for his uncle’s company, Simmons Electric, in his native Las Vegas. He’s spent 18 years with Helix Electric, beginning as an electrical superintendent before becoming a senior project manager. During his time in operations, he gradually was tasked with more and more safety-related responsibilities, sparking his interest in the subject and leading him to go back to school.
Simmons now has a bachelor’s degree in occupational safety and health and a master’s degree in that field and environmental management from Columbia Southern University. He also has an MBA in human resource management from Capella University and is about a year away from a doctoral degree in education, with a focus on performance improvement leadership, from that same institution.
Since becoming corporate safety director in 2017, Simmons has overhauled Helix Electric’s safety policies. That includes creating a dropped-object prevention policy, a drone policy, updating the company’s written health and safety program, establishing a COVID-19 policy, updating its jobsite inspection processes, revamping its orientation processes for new hires and new-to-site workers, translating training materials and forms into Spanish, hiring bilingual staff and enrolling safety managers in language training.
Major initiatives include policy changes to prevent hand injuries. The company up- graded its glove requirements, provided training about selecting the right tools for the job and created awareness about hand placement, contributing to a 40% reduction in first-aid and recordable hand injuries, according to Simmons.
Simmons said his experience in operations allows him to tailor Helix Electric’s safety program to the needs of workers, keeping in mind the ways in which they actually perform their work.
“We really pride ourselves on keeping our teams safe,” he says. “One of the things that helps me to be successful is that understanding and the perspective that I bring. I’ve been out there on the job turning tools, trying to get the work done, so I understand the pressures and the constraints that our tradespeople are under. I understand the environment that they work in.”
Simmons says Helix Electric recently launched a pilot project using QR codes for near-miss reporting. The QR codes allow workers to submit near-misses through a portal using their smartphones, simplifying and expediting the process. The information is then texted to the safety team and imported into a database to track events and trends more efficiently.
The QR code is displayed on a hard plastic card given to each employee, and it includes the definition of a near-miss and instructions for how to submit an incident. The other side of the card displays the company’s dedicated safety hotline number and safety email address so employees can submit suggestions, questions and concerns directly to the safety team.