Innovative Data Mining Approach: Moss & Associates' Construction Safety Program Gains National Recognition
Fort Lauderdale, FL - With an innovative approach that includes high-tech data mining to identify and manage construction jobsite risk, Moss & Associates this month earned two top national safety awards – providing a model for improvement in the state with the nation's third highest statistics for on-the-job fatalities.
This month Liberty Mutual Insurance Group presented Gold Awards to the Fort Lauderdale-based construction services company for an outstanding project safety record on two Miami-area projects: The Colonnade Phase I residential development in the new suburban "Downtown Kendall" community, and for The Lexi, a 19-story luxury waterfront condominium in North Bay Village.
Liberty Mutual has awarded only eight Gold Awards to construction contractors nationwide in 2007 – including a total of four to Moss, the only Florida-based construction firm to earn the insurer's highest award this year.
"The significant success of Moss' safety efforts stems, in large part, from in-depth data analysis and benchmarking tools that set apart Moss' proactive approach to jobsite safety," said Stephen Healey, senior portfolio underwriting manager with Liberty Mutual. "The Moss team does a tremendous job of both analyzing industry data and tracking their own incidents -- determining the causes and learning from experience," he added. In recent months, two other projects also earned Moss' team Gold Awards -- the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona and the Carillon Beach Inn and Condos in Panama City Beach, Fla., constructed by Moss Anderson Construction Group, a partnership of Moss & Associates and Roy Anderson Corp. contractors.
"Safety is one of our core values – it's how we define ourselves," said Bob Moss, president and CEO of Moss & Associates. "All of our people and our subcontractors play vital roles to ensure that our job sites are among the safest in the country."
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has also recognized Moss & Associates' commitment to safety. The construction management firm is a participant in the federal Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP), based on its exemplary safety and health management system. Moss is one of 38 companies – including one of only two construction-oriented employers – in Florida who was accepted into the program in 2006, and one of five construction-oriented employers for 2007. "Moss & Associates is creating an innovative model for improving construction safety in Florida," said Darlene Fossum, area director for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) office in Fort Lauderdale. "Too few contractors are taking safety seriously enough," she added. "With real commitment at all levels, from key executives to apprentices, Moss anticipates and addresses safety issues well before workers and subcontractors enter a project site." The need is compelling, she noted, with only California and Texas showing higher numbers of job-related fatalities than Florida in 2006.
For Moss, safety is a two-stage process: (1) anticipating the location and timing of dangers on the job site, and (2) educating, communicating and motivating all personnel on the job site to follow safe practices that prevent accidents.
One of Moss' strategies is "mining" readily available data to help save lives on construction sites. For example, the team pulls aggregated data on man-hours per construction trade from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and data on workers' compensation loss by construction trades from the National Council on Compensation Insurance. From these and other independent sources, Moss synthesizes a "risk profile," showing stages in each construction project's schedule that are likely to be the most dangerous.
"Based on overall industry experience with various stages of construction projects, we can identify the higher-risk aspects of a job, re-emphasize the need for worker safety and carefully monitor safety compliance at every stage," said Brian Trusky, Moss safety director. He noted that the company's safety record, as measured by a key industry yardstick, is well below the industry average of $0.70 loss cost per man-hour.
Qualifying for the Gold Award from Liberty Mutual – the nation's sixth largest property and casualty insurer -- is based on a rate of lost workdays, injuries, and illness (LWDII) that is just 20 percent of the National Bureau of Labor Statistics average. Buildings must be at least 90 percent completed, with a minimum of 200,000 work hours.
One of the nation's fastest-growing construction companies, Moss provides construction management and design/build services throughout the United States, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Known for delivering complex, landmark projects for the private and public sectors, the firm had 2006 revenues of $612 million. Moss & Associates is based in Fort Lauderdale with regional offices in Miami and Ocala. For more information, visit www.mosscm.com.
SOURCE: Moss & Associates