It’s true. Companies that are focused on safety take it into consideration through the full life cycle of a project. Here are some things that your organization can do to bring safety into the bid room:

SAFETY TALKS DURING ESTIMATING MEETINGS
Kick off your routine estimating meetings with a safety topic. It can be a personal story shared, a recent news article, a new industry standard, one of your company policies, or a number of other things. The key is to mix it up at each meeting and encourage participation from your team. This process will add anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to your meeting agenda, but it is time well spent. Employees will quickly realize just how important safety is and that attitude is infectious. Care about your people so that they care about their people. We are our brother’s keeper.

PUT SAFETY NOTES INTO WORK ACTIVITIES WITHIN YOUR ESTIMATING PROGRAM
HCSS HeavyBid and other estimating programs allow users to put notes into work activities. The notes can include calculation logic, production history, execution strategy, and SAFETY NOTES! If you are estimating a dangerous operation, add some notes about how to mitigate risk and keep people safe. When this estimate gets handed off to the project team building the job, they will see that you considered their well-being in the bid and this goes a long way. It also gets them thinking about the risk, which is the first step toward incident prevention.

ACCOUNT FOR SAFETY COSTS IN YOUR ESTIMATES
Some companies put in a general percent of labor or dollars per manhour to cover safety related cost, which is good practice, but try to capture the details in your bid as well. If the project documents require that all employees take OSHA 10, then plug in two days of training for each crew member. Do you need shoring for underground work? Put it in the bid. Do you need a rescue team on standby for deep manhole excavations? Put it in the bid. There are so many things that go beyond vests, hardhats, and glasses. Accurately accounting for the details will help protect your margin, set the project team up for success, and again – the project team will see that you thought about it during the preconstruction phase.

Be safe out there.