Safety success goes hand in hand with execution success at LaGuardia Airport project
JMJ supported Skanska-Walsh to create an Incident and Injury Free™ (IIF™) safety culture on the largest project in the company’s history
0.17 LTIR
Lost time incident rate
Challenge
The redevelopment of New York’s LaGuardia Airport by a public/private partnership is the largest project in joint venture partnership Skanska-Walsh’s history. The $4.1Bn Terminal B project was extremely complex. The challenges of an aggressive schedule, a ‘get it done’ unionized environment, and complicated logistics were intensified by the need to hit the biggest milestones during a global pandemic. Adding to these complexities, the teams collaborating on the project hadn’t worked together (or on a project of this scale) before. From a safety perspective, this meant there was no common approach.
Solution
JMJ’s consultants worked side by side with Skanska’s leadership and project partners to create and instill a project-wide IIF safety culture. To ensure the organization’s safety vision, culture and systems were clearly articulated from day one, 100 managers participated in an IIF commitment workshop in the very early stages of civil work, prior to any major construction, and before anyone was on site.
The ensuing workshops, personal coaching, daily meetings (prior to COVID) and mentoring of the leadership team helped create a culture of caring for life and accountability. Every step of the way that safety message was shared and consistently reinforced. JMJ continued to provide an outside perspective, helping leadership hold on to their commitment when competing priorities threatened to blow them off course.
Client Goals
From the design phase, Skanska-Walsh’s leadership had the foresight to recognize the close connection between a high level of safety success and a high level of project execution success. They wanted to bring the team closer around safety early in the massive project, and were committed to creating an aligned, focused project team and a culture where people would choose to work safely. Having successfully worked alongside JMJ to instill an Incident and Injury-Free™ (IIF™ ) culture on previous infrastructure projects, Skanska-Walsh invited us to support them in pursuit of this vision.
Our consultants’ conversations with the project leader helped us understand their safety goals included:
- Embracing an Injury Free Environment (IFE) as a driver across all areas and functions of the project
- Achieving ‘flagship’ project performance status
- Redefining the industry safety performance standard for the city of New York
- Meeting environmental and community targets
We knew that if we achieved a high level of success in safety, we would similarly achieve a high level of success in execution.
JMJ helped us through some difficult times. They brought us together as a team and pushed us to have more action-driven conversations and really look at our performance/commitment to safety.
Results
A culture with safety, care for life and accountability at its core became the ‘glue’ for the entire project, creating an environment where safety practices were much more than a tick in a box.
Key takeaways
At a roundtable meeting, leaders across the project team discussed their experiences on the LaGuardia Airport project and highlighted the following takeaways:
- Ensure safety culture, value and vision is clearly articulated from day one
- The earlier in a project you strike the right balance between caring and accountability, the better the results
- It’s essential to keep a safety program alive through constant engagement. Leaders need to be approachable and present on the ground to achieve this
- Executives need to challenge themselves and their teams to constantly disrupt the norm and do better
- In a high-pressure environment, it’s essential that safety is not allowed to take a back seat. It takes a long time to gain safety momentum, but it can be lost quickly without continued commitment
0.17 LTIR
Project recorded a 0.17 lost time incident rate (LTIR)
Aligned IIF commitment
Developed an aligned IIF commitment across all project stakeholders
Created safety culture
Created a culture where leaders hold themselves responsible for safety performance
Sustainable future
Developed a plan to sustain the safety culture in future phases of the redevelopment