To be successful in the construction industry is no different than being successful in any feat, it requires consistency. Success demands day in and day out preparation, proper tools and effective training, equipment, and conditions. When it comes to safety, this recipe for success is the same.
From our company leaders to our field leaders and all of our employees in between, we believe the key to being safe is being proactive and consistently engaging our people with safety in everything we do. At Egan Company, safety is everyone’s job. It’s everyone’s job to make sure our safety policies and procedures are being consistently executed. It’s everyone’s job to help us achieve our goal of ZERO injuries and to come home to our family and friends at the end of the work day.
Through much hard work and a refined focus, Egan achieved its Total Recordable Incident Rate goal of < 2.0 for 2018. Our incident rate for the year was 1.87 (down from 2.42 in 2017) which is substantially below the average rate for specialty trade contractors in Minnesota (4.70). This was accomplished with over 1.8 million hours worked.
“Moving the safety needle in 2018 was a great achievement for us as a company,” said Reid Romer, Egan Company Safety Director. “Our safety incident rate is a direct reflection of the time and energy we’ve invested collectively to minimize risk and protect our people. This progress comes from specific safety initiatives we committed to improving over the past few years and we are now seeing rewarding results.”
An example of one of the changes made in 2017 was within the new employee on-boarding process. This process was specifically addressed after recognizing a pattern that new employees were consistently getting injured within their first six months on the job. Egan acknowledged this, invested in changing it, and elevated it on its priority list. As a result, new employee injuries have significantly decreased.
Though we are proud of this progress in 2018, Egan has no plans of slowing down its drive to be the best-in-class when it comes to safety. Utilizing employee and peer group feedback and experiences from last year, the bar is set even higher for 2019.
“Our goal is to continue to engage with our employees and do everything we can to keep this injury reduction track trending in 2019,” said Romer. “We’ll continue to fill the information and training pipelines, as well as remain diligent with planning in both the pre-mobilization and throughout our jobs. This, along with a team approach, will continue to give us an opportunity to lead the way for safety on our projects this year and in the future.”
High-rise buildings are the distinguishing trademark of cities around the world. And, being the 16th largest metropolitan area in the country, Minneapolis and St. Paul are no different.
The project was officially awarded to Egan by Bigos Management in late March. From the start, Egan’s team knew the new cooling towers would need to be “flown” up to the top of the building. To do the “flying”, Egan began coordinating and pre-planning with a local crane company, Vic’s Crane and Heavy Haul.
Although there was two feet of snow on the ground when the project started, Minnesota’s infamously, unpredictable spring weather found itself over 85 degrees just a few weeks later. With the previous cooling towers entirely off the building, the countdown was on to get the first new cooling tower operational in order to start cooling all of the buildings within the city block.