Residential builders keep safety a priority

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 Worksite  News Service

 Greg Zilinski believes in building a rapport with Alberta homebuilders. It's his job.
 
Zilinski is part of an awareness and education strategy introduced earlier this year by the Alberta Construction Safety Association to inform homebuilders and the sub-trades about their responsibilities, and about the changing construction safety regulations being adapted throughout the province.
 
Zilinski is one of two safety advisors conducting "ride along programs" in Alberta, meeting with project supervisors, pointing out hazards and possible safety infractions by construction crews. The site visits, strictly a voluntary measure, are welcomed and encouraged by the participating companies. 
  
Edmonton's Zilinski's turf, and he relishes the acceptance.
   "It's taken off beyond our wildest dreams," he told Worksite NEWS during a recent "ride along" at West Edmonton development site. "Most of these guys are so surprised when we fill them in on the safety aspect. I see a lot of jaws dropping."
  
Zilinski, a 17-year veteran of construction industry, was hired this year by the ACSA to spearhead the pilot project, which now takes him on the road across northern Alberta. His Calgary counterpart, Marlowe Krause, coordinates “ride alongs” in southern Alberta.
 
Zilinski says it's imperative that residential construction crews be brought up to speed on safety matters. The program's primary focus is on the smaller operators, but the major area homebuilders are on board with the project. There has never been such a large scale effort to promote safety awareness for the construction sector, Zilinski says. “There can be as many as 20 sub-trades involved in one job, with 20 different concepts of safety. That's a lot of people and a lot of questions,” he says.
 
Darryl Gagnon, site supervisor for Reid-Built Homes Ltd., believes the time is right to re-introduce safety education to the residential construction trades. “Most of these guys are still working under the old regulations, written in 1983. Here we are 20 years later. We need to be educated. It's essential,” he says.

The new safety initative got it's kick start in May 2002, when the president of the Alberta Home Builders' Association (AHBA) wrote to association members, "As busy as the industry is in Alberta, we can ill afford to lose any workers to any kind of lost time injury."
 
A joint safety committee was formulated by the AHBA and ACSA.
   “The AHBA has asked us to be more visible," says ACSA Executive Director Gary Wagar, "so we are planning to drive around in green vans with yellow markings."
  
The idea is not to emphasize policing or fining so much as education and training about safe ways of working, he says.
 
This approach, says AHBA executive director Grant Ainsley, is more likely to get buy-in from builders and tradespeople.
 
This new program is "a definite change in direction for our members," Ainsley says. "The residential construction industry has had a lot of challenges over the years when it comes to safety programs." For example, most companies are quite small - they typically construct fewer than ten homes a year. 
  
Ainsley says companies that want to bid on jobs in commercial and industrial projects are required to have a certificate from SECORP (the Alberta government's Small Employer Certificate of Recognition Program). "But that never happens in residential construction," he says. "The customers almost never ask about your safety record.   For this reason, along with others, there hasn't been the need, the pressure and the drive to do better in this respect."
 
Wagar agrees that residential construction safety is an area that needs attention. He quotes the figures showing a higher-than-average lost-time claim rate in the whole construction sector and an even higher rate when looking only at companies that are small.
  Provincial health and safety inspector, Alain Langlais, confirms the assessments provided by Ainsley and Wagar.
  
At the same time, however, he is guardedly optimistic about Langlais believes that an increase over the past three years in the number of government inspections done at residential construction sites is starting to show some results. "There is movement," he says. "More operators have the appropriate safety equipment. Now we just have to get to the next stage, which is ensuring that they use that equipment regularly."
  
Momentum for change, as Langlais points out, has begun to pick up throughout Alberta.
  Indeed, it was the determination of several associations to improve safety levels in residential construction that propelled the formation of the joint AHBA/ACSA Safety Advisory Committee and its new safety program. In late 2001 the Calgary Region Home Builders' Association had set up a safety committee and discussed hiring a safety inspector or advisor to work with their builders' direct employees and trades to create a safer work environment. Not long after, the Greater Edmonton Home Builders' Association also started looking at safety initiatives.
 
"Then we thought," says AHBA's Ainsley, "why not have this activity throughout the province?" Since a portion of the Workers' Compensation Board - Alberta (WCB) fee paid by AHBA members goes to the ACSA, it made sense to work directly with the ACSA. That led to the inception of the joint safety committee and ACSA's commitment to hiring the safety   
 
In the fall of 2002, the joint safety committee, which includes representatives of the provincial government's Workplace Health and Safety office and the WCB, hired the advisors, one for northern Alberta and one for the southern part of the province, including Red Deer.
 
Perhaps the time for greater attention to safety in residential construction has come.
  Key program organizer Burke Perry knows a greater emphasis on safety will save time, delays, paperwork, stress, money and preserve workers' health and happiness. He's proud of the new initiative and the backing it's received from the industry. "We're doing it because it is the right thing to do," he says, "and it has big, big, support from the builders.”WSN