“Show me, don’t tell me”

Safety is the ultimate “show me, don’t tell me” discipline in heavy civil construction. It is the foundation of company culture, our license to operate in complex environments with (appropriately) demanding owners, and the key to sleeping well at night.

Faulconer Construction was just recognized by the Associated General Contractors of America for the second leading construction safety and health program in 2022 among major heavy civil contractors nationwide. We finished runner-up to a company literally ten times our size.

Traveling with the presentation team to Las Vegas earlier this month to help present an overview of our program alongside Mindy Colden, Sharon Burleson, PHR, SHRM-CP, Matthew Martin, and Adam White, CHST was a fantastic way to leap into the deep end just three weeks into the job – but also a comfortable one. Ten years ago as a consultant to Faulconer, I actually helped bring “Target Zero,” our safety program, to life.

As we stated in front of the five-member judging panel, safety underpins our core values and we are relentless in our training and communications in the field. We empower everyone on the job site to stop work, we train for specific environments (military, energy, mining, interstate, railroad, etc.), and we take real life and mental health into consideration every single day.

Looking ahead, a commitment to safety yields a distinct competitive advantage to our company. It fuels long-term relationships and makes a statement to potential team members that we’ll never prioritize production over the wellbeing of our people.

Speaking of our people, we only received this recognition because of buy-in across the enterprise. For that, I’m incredibly grateful.