The research of the Construction Industry Institute was accomplished in a 25 year time frame (1989 to 2013) where six different safety task forces of industry experts, from the management and safety professions, joined together to seek the reasons some contractors were working a million hours and more without an OSHA Recordable injury. Over 122 construction projects were evaluated with hundreds of sub-contractors involved. Over 50% of these projects were experiencing zero lost time injuries, while 10 of the projects were in fact experiencing zero recordable injuries. The question to answer became:

 

“How can some contractor and owner teams achieve a zero injury outcome, while most cannot?”

 

A task force built their research process on the success of the earlier research. When all was complete there were nine categories of leadership that were found essential in creating a zero injury outcome. These nine are:

• Demonstrated management commitment

• Staffing for safety

• Planning: pre-project and pre-task

• Education: orientation and specialized training

• Worker involvement

• Evaluation and reward/recognition

• Subcontractor management

• Accident/incident investigations

• Drug and alcohol testing

 

The success of the above applied safety strategies is heavily dependent on the quality of application. There are many sub-categories that must be carefully included and the only way to know that is to read the research reports. Too many users are not obtaining and reading the research documents. This leads to the issue being discussed here.