In this episode, members of the Graniterock safety team – Vice President Paul Cianciarulo, Daisy Kwan and David Leffel give us a rundown on how the Company performed in 2023 when it comes to keeping team members safe at work.
We talk briefly about their individual personal journeys into safety and how they've helped build a culture of safety at Graniterock.
Our conversation focuses on the positive safety trends at Graniterock in 2023.
We also discuss some of the hot-button safety topics at Graniterock: Safety helmets and telematics.
Despite initial resistance, these initiatives have improved overall safety and driving behavior at Graniterock.
We welcome your feedback.
Send us a note at rocktalk@graniterock.com.
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, members of the Graniterock safety team – Vice President Paul Cianciarulo, Daisy Kwan and David Leffel give us a rundown on how the Company performed in 2023 when it comes to keeping team members safe at work.
We talk briefly about their individual personal journeys into safety and how they've helped build a culture of safety at Graniterock.
Our conversation focuses on the positive safety trends at Graniterock in 2023.
We also discuss some of the hot-button safety topics at Graniterock: Safety helmets and telematics.
Despite initial resistance, these initiatives have improved overall safety and driving behavior at Graniterock.
We welcome your feedback.
Send us a note at rocktalk@graniterock.com.
Thanks for listening!
Did you just miss the part where she said I intentionally lose silver something Because she's trying to avoid Paul's call.
Speaker 4:And look at Paul strategically. You know it's funny, paul mentioned it a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2:I like when Paul calls.
Speaker 4:How Daisy never answers on the first time. She always calls him back. Now we know.
Speaker 2:I like when Paul calls, because it's always something nice. I never.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm always, you know.
Speaker 2:So, it's actually calls, just to compliment.
Speaker 4:Wow, Different phone calls we're getting. Let me tell you.
Speaker 2:All right. So none of us like Highway 17. We made that clear. Yeah Well, let's start off first by introducing each of you and just tell us a little bit about how you got into the construction safety industry. And this is just to kind of set the stage and let people know who you are. And we're going to start with you, paul Chinchurillo, vice president of safety and quality.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you and good morning. Thanks for having the team down here. So yeah, I'm Paul Chinchurillo and I am celebrating my 36th year in the construction industry. This year It'll be 37 years in February. And so I started my journey back in 1986. And I was always on the construction side until about five and a half years ago when Tom Square approached me and said you know, we think that you would fill in nicely in the safety role, and I've always had a. Of course, working in the construction industry, first and foremost you have to be concerned about safety and the safety of yourself and others out on the job sites. And so I was always doing kind of safety related. You know, I started the Orange Heart Hyatt project when I was in the construction division. I wasn't in the safety division but I saw a need to kind of differentiate our people so we knew who those Newton team members were. So I don't know if that's one of the things that kind of got me recognized for maybe a future career in safety.
Speaker 1:But you know, when Tom approached me and you know Tom can be very persuasive- and so encouraging, persuasive, and so, yeah, I found myself coming into safety and really just wanted to honor the people that are really true safety professionals, and so I've taken it very seriously and have allowed. You know, fortunately I have a great mentor in Mike Herges, who has Mike's a rock star, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, mike has been nothing but a gentleman and a professional and he is constantly moving me more towards being that kind of daily safety professional, so, but I have just the benefit of being able to work with wonderful, terrific people in my department. To a man or a woman, they are just all exceptional, and so it's an enjoyable and easy place for me to serve my time here at Grand Rock. I really enjoy the safety aspect of what we do here and we're having positive results.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, you're a huge asset for the company, as well as the safety team across the board.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, daisy. Introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you and how you got to the safety industry as a whole. Sure, yeah.
Speaker 3:So hi, my name is Daisy Kwan. I am a safety manager and I started in safety as a way to make money part time while going to school. That works, yeah, and originally my plan was to do a nonprofit move overseas and just do something related to nonprofit work, but did safety as a part time job and really found that it was something fulfilling and meaningful in the sense that you're helping people around you. So that was fast forward 10 years ago and here I am.
Speaker 2:Great, you enjoy keeping people free from harm and injury.
Speaker 3:I do, I love it and there's that aspect of making things better and improving everyone's well-being. That's the part I really like about it Awesome.
Speaker 2:David Leffle.
Speaker 4:So I am David Leffle. I've been a full time safety person for I guess 10 years now. Prior to that, I was in the military and safety was a huge part of my job Signing aircraft, safer flight, designing missions around safety, making sure everyone got home with all their fingers and all their toes and I always enjoyed it. So when I retired, I was looking for that same camaraderie I had in the military.
Speaker 2:And this is a Navy.
Speaker 4:So I was in the Navy I found that camaraderie in the construction area, the craft trades Just in general kind of have that same unison and so I enjoyed. My first job was getting safety for a carpentry group and I grew up in Mission Bell and then graduated to a granite rock and just enjoying my time here and enjoying making a difference.
Speaker 2:How long have you been here now?
Speaker 4:Four years.
Speaker 2:All, right Time goes fast, huh.
Speaker 4:Time flies when you're having fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we are having fun. Yeah, all right, let's talk about 2023 as a whole Big picture. 2023 described for us the safety trend and how did we do at keeping our people safe? And when it comes to either, injuries, sifts near misses, the whole picture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so safety is a. It's kind of an interesting I don't want to say profession, but it's kind of an interesting journey in safety, because safety is one of those things where you can't specifically put your finger on what is driving the needle and helping keep our people safe. So we do lots and lots of different things. We have a strategic safety plan that we assemble every year and then we manage that plan and the whole plan is built to help keep our people safe. So I can give you a reference point really that goes back five years and we've seen a downward trend in safety, which is positive to have a downward trend in safety.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And with the exception of the COVID year. The COVID year we had a big spike, and the reason for that spike is kind of twofold. One is our teams work best when we're working with people that we're familiar with. So when you have a team of people masons, or a paving team, or a carpentry team or a team that's doing finish upgrade, you always have to look out. But they know that the person on the right of them or left of them because they work with those people it's like family they know that that person's going to go right or go left.
Speaker 1:And during COVID we had so much disruption to our teams. We had so many people that were on the sideline because they were home recovering from having a COVID either contact or actually having COVID that we had a lot of teams that were working for the first time with each other. And we think that that really contributed to the incidents that we had because of the non-familiarity either with the work they were in different work classifications or whatnot. So we had to manage through that and we got ahold of that and put some other things in place and since that time we've had a trajectory that is, you know, year over year, just continuing to head down.
Speaker 1:So it was last year about this time that we started a kind of a record at Granite Rock where in November we started having no injuries and that continued on through February. And then of course, we had a minor incident. And this year in November we're, you know, knock on wood, knocking on wood. Don't know if you can hear that, but in November here we've started a trajectory since about mid-November with no injuries or no thus far, and it's continued so far into December. So I'm hoping to break that record From last year.
Speaker 1:The safety team dramatically increased.
Speaker 1:One of the first things that I did when I looked here is I looked at the resources of the safety department.
Speaker 1:I was tasked to do that and you know we put together David and Daisy here that are sitting next to me were the first hires that I brought onto Granite Rock in my new position and they were both excellent. Obviously, choices so it's the people really getting involved at all levels within the organization. Now, from a safety perspective, our technicians and our safety engineers and managers that are really helping drive that needle and helping people continue to be focused on the things that they need to focus on. We take care of the things so they don't have to think about some of the you know, the compliance type of stuff in the background. But the people that are doing the doing, they need to be able to focus on their job and do that safely, and we're hoping that our team is helping them do that. So 2023 is going to end up, I believe, better then 2022, and then you know, our plan is for 2024 to be better yet, so we hope to continue to have this trajectory.
Speaker 2:Good news, david. When you're out and about, what do you see with Grant Rock safety culture? What have you seen throughout 2023? Are the teams out there watching out for each other, taking care of each other? People focused.
Speaker 4:So the nice thing about safety is everybody inherently knows what they should be doing. You know, and we aren't here to teach the teams some new super math that's going to make them safer. It's presence and it's leadership, engagement and that's what we see out in the field. We see it in the field, in the branches and in the quarries. They're really the ones who are doing the bulk of the heavy lift on safety. We're here to provide resources and a little, you know, a little check and balance, a little check and balance. Help them out when they need it, answer their questions.
Speaker 4:You know, one of our biggest things is when you contact safety with a question, we should never go too long without answering it. You should get a pretty quick response and we drive towards that because we want them to have the tools they need to make sure them and their teams are the safe, safe level practices that they need to do to get their job done. You know, safety and operations should never be at odds. It should be a partnership to make sure everyone goes home at the end of the day better than they started for the day. You know, put food on the table, make sure there's no aches and pains and try to reduce all that so that everybody can have a good quality life.
Speaker 2:That's right, daisy. Where do you spend most of your time putting your safety focus and are you seeing stop and make it safe? I mean that's a big part of Grand Rock Safety culture is that we all have the authority to stop, work and make it safe if we see something that's not right. So where do you spend most of your time and how are you seeing the stop and make it safe throughout the company?
Speaker 3:Well, I think we see it in various layers, right? I mean, we have a Rockstar program that exemplifies that. I think for me personally, being on the safety team, we have to just resonate that even more and embody that even more. So I spend a lot of time being very conscious on what I do, to kind of drive that message home. It's definitely seen in the field when people stop and make it safe, and it could be just as simple as well hey, what do I do about this ramp? You know I had just the other day someone asked well, I'm gonna close off this pedestrian access. How should we do it? Right, those type of conversations are what we're looking to really have more of.
Speaker 2:And are you spending more of your time at the plants and the quarries, or you and David's on construction? How are you guys?
Speaker 3:So currently, right now, I'm on the construction side. Oh, you're on construction. Okay, david is in the aggregate side and you know, come January we will flip and I will be on the products and services side and David will be on the construction side.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you'll be going to the plants yes, driving all over.
Speaker 3:I will be driving all over and going back to the plants right. So that's where I started with Granite Rock and that's where my background really is, and so pretty excited about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that we had to put in place in safety about three years ago was I'm huge on cross-training and having redundancy, and so one of the things that we did in the safety team is that we set up a rotational program so that Daisy started in, you know, in the existing system she started in the plants and then she went to the quarry and then she went to construction and David started in construction and then went to the plants and he's currently in the quarries.
Speaker 1:And then we've done the same thing with Todd Borerys and we had a gentleman that used to work here that was in that rotational program also that unfortunately left us, but David and Daisy are going to. Fortunately they're going back to the positions that they I mean they're passionate about all of them, but those areas that they're most passionate about. So Daisy will be helping on the products team and Daisy and David will be in construction and we have total confidence now that, if you know Daisy needs some help and products, we have individuals that we can muster and get them right there to help where we didn't have that before.
Speaker 1:They will have the experience and then the connections with the people, which is huge, probably the most important part right, Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great. That's a great way to approach safety is having your people cross-train and experience different parts of the company. Yeah, that's awesome. Let's talk about the big topic of the year, I think Helmets. I mean we completely changed Granite Rock's hard hat requirements and moved to this type two helmets with the chin strap. I know in the beginning there was just a ton of pushback. Guys and gals were not super happy in the beginning. It's changed, it's new. We just said we're doing this because it's better and it's going to keep you safer. But talk about I mean there was some pushback, but how are they being accepted now? We're at toward the end of the year. They only got implemented or required a couple of months ago. But how are they going now?
Speaker 4:So I view this as a very successful change. There was pushback, there was fear, there was anxiety, there was whatever term you want to use there might have been a little hostility. Luckily, our success came through with both being able to lean on our industry partners through ACIG and get some information and get ahead of the game through them. Additionally, there were some fantastic leaders in Granite Rock that kind of embraced the change, saw it was coming, saw the good it was going to do, kind of dropped their bias and looked at it subjectively and gave us some really productive feedback. You know, the unvented helmets. Those came from Tommy out at the quarry saying, hey, I need something because I'm going to be in a moistened environment. Some of the accessories came from, you know, anthony Lewis with the chainsaw on the hillside. You know, saying okay, hey, we need to get something that's better protection for this. So the feedback we got allowed us to kind of mature the idea of that helmet and then so by the time the initial working group had had them for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, we were starting to look at, okay, hey, let's go broadband with this, let's bring this out to everybody because we've proven the worth of these and you know we have the capacity.
Speaker 4:It's a tough. Definitely improvement, no questions asked. Definitely improvement. The level of safety and security that the Helms provide are well and above what HardHat does. Not to give too much of a prelude, but we have a success story in Granite Rock. I don't want to give out too much of that because you'll see that at the zero and on safety meeting, but it's already proven itself and anytime a product like this, a change like this, can have such an immediate impact, it just shows that it was such a fantastic decision and I think everybody who helped us make this decision and move forward with it yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you've gotten acceptance and they're now 100% required, like there's no more grace period. I mean, it's like you go to a Granite Rock facility, quarry job site. That is what you're going to see and that's what you're going to be required to hear.
Speaker 1:On November 1st was our transition date. That everybody November 1st. Well, October 31st.
Speaker 2:At the end of October.
Speaker 1:We said that everybody after October 31st, everybody at Granite Rock, needed to be in a type 2 helmet and if they'd been issued one, they needed to be wearing it at that time. We have some projects that are it's mandated. It is a type 2 helmet. We've decided that we invested. The organization invested a lot of money in for our people and their safety, which I've always been very impressed with with Granite Rock, because they're not afraid to invest, to do the right thing to keep our people safe. And this is just another example with the helmets. You know these helmets are five or six times more expensive than a regular hard hat.
Speaker 1:And we outfitted literally everybody within the organization. And so if you've been given a helmet after October 31st or on November 1st, you are required in all jobs to be wearing that helmet with the chin strap strapped. And it's just really nice to go out onto the job sites, go to a Rockstar presentation, see everybody lined up with their helmets and they're already personalizing them, putting on their stickers, and you can see just the acceptance of the helmet is there. So I think, David, there may be a couple of stragglers, some people that were still within the organization getting those helmets too, but by the end of the year it'll be everybody within Granite Rock will have gotten the helmet.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was thinking if you could just transfer all those stickers and scratch marks and dirt over from the old.
Speaker 4:Not the scratch marks, please.
Speaker 2:OK, not the scratch marks, sorry, just the stickers over from the old hard hats to the new helmets. That might have sped up the acceptance a little bit. Oh, that's great. Are we seeing these from other contractors as well? I mean, we're not the only ones out there in the industry wearing helmets.
Speaker 4:So private industry or private construction have gone to it. A while ago, initially, when I retired from the military, I went into more of a custom cabinet maker that did a lot of Google, a lot of Apple and we saw that years ago there. So this is a trend that's been coming. We're not at the front of it. We let the technology mature a little bit more. We didn't try to be early adopters and get a half product. We waited until the products were fully developed and out there. So I think we did a really good job on that. But yes, it's definitely coming. We aren't seeing it so much on the public specs yet, but it's probably just a matter of time. All this is going to take is a couple engineers through Caltrans or whatever to start changing the thoughts on it. But, more to the point, the insurance industry is going to push for it. These traumatic brain injuries these are mega-new, serious, serious costs.
Speaker 4:And to not provide a little bit better protection or a lot better protection at a little bit extra cost. That's what it really comes down to. The higher protection, the availability is there. It's not questionable technology. It's definitely mature, it's ripe, it's ready. There are no reasons not to adopt it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see just driving down the road. I would say that two years ago very rarely on a grading and paving type or a heavy civil type contractor would you see these new Type 2 helmets, but probably about a year ago as you drive down the road and you drive through other contractors' construction areas, I would say probably half of the industry right now has probably adopted the Type 2 helmets. That's a. I don't have anything other than just driving through job sites and saying they're wearing Type 2 helmets now and they're wearing Type 2 helmets now.
Speaker 1:So I think it's the right thing to do for our people. It's the safest application that we have for them. The chin strap keeps the helmet on. So when there is a fall and we've had several falls at Granite Rock here from elevation not from elevation, but from just standing on the ground and people have fallen down we have a couple incidents in the last couple of years where people have concussed themselves pretty badly just from falling backwards and the conventional hard hat fell off and they hit their head. We don't have that problem now with the Type 2 helmet.
Speaker 3:That's great. Yeah, just the other day actually ran into a subcontractor that does underground, so that was very interesting, because you have another company that adopted the helmet too. So it's always a good chance to have those conversations on how they integrated their helmets and whatnot. But I think the other highlight of the helmets is this is Granite Rock's chance to be proactive. We've had a few falls.
Speaker 3:But it's better that we have these helmets in place than not and then add a later time, and I think that's the one thing that we've been driving is this is our chance to really offer more protection, before anything.
Speaker 2:Well, scrolling through, because I oversee Granite Rock's Instagram and so we follow a bunch of other construction companies as well, so we can keep an eye on what other people are doing, and we're seeing more and more of these Type 2 helmets on other construction companies. Social media pages, not just Instagram.
Speaker 4:And making the decision before a catastrophic incident. That's the huge win. We've got it out there. We've got the protection in place. We never had to wait for the. Why didn't we moment?
Speaker 2:Well, great, I'm glad to hear that there's some positive momentum and that people are getting on board with this. So, also, staying with things that are relatively new to Granite Rock and safety, I want to hear a little bit about telematics and how that is going, because that's a relatively newer program for safety and having the cameras inside Granite Rock owned vehicles Again something similar to the helmets. There was some pushback, not every driver was happy to have telematics implemented, but I'm hearing positive things. Can you shed a little light on how that program's going?
Speaker 1:Sure, I wish Carl was sitting in here, because he's.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's the pro, I know yeah.
Speaker 1:He's an absolute rock star and just an amazing team member to safety and just couldn't have asked for a better person. So I have to give Carl a shout out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, glad.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, telematics was one of those things. And one of the things that we do have done very well here is we're very deliberate about what we do. We were very deliberate about helmets. We did our research, we sought input from the team members and then we delivered the product, and we're most successful when we do that. We did the same thing with telematics. We put together a focus group that represented all of the areas of Granite Rock and we did that for 18 months and we also did a trial group of individuals and then we took everything that we learned and we started delivering on our telematic program in early 2023. And to date, we've installed 285 cameras.
Speaker 1:Mainly, we started in the construction division and then we moved into transportation and we've got a spattering of vehicles in all other areas of the organization and it's just been phenomenal. I mean all of the fears of the team members. Carl has a discussion with every member that's receiving a telematic system in their vehicle and we have a discussion, and the one thing is that we have to manage the program the way that we say we're going to manage the program and we've done that. We're not listening in, we're not tracking people. We respond to the harsh events that occur. The whole system is in place to coach people to be better and we have really exceptional people here. Our average score through the end of November was 94. So think about that If you're if you're taking a class and you everybody would love to get a 94% that means that you have a solid A right on your.
Speaker 1:That's a solid A and, um, you know, we we see every month four or five people that are below the 75, which is kind of our mandatory co we're coaching everybody and we don't see those people the next month because they get coached and then they get better, and so, um, it's interesting, there's some stories We've we've had some people that were very passionate about not having telematics in their vehicle. And and of, course they you know, they, they, they allowed well they had to.
Speaker 1:They had to have the installation in their vehicle and you know it's two or three weeks or a month later. You know we circle back because we want to make sure that you know the people are comfortable with what's going on. In the comments we typically hear our yeah, that's not a big deal, that's not what. I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1:Like this is not, this is not a big deal. You know, I'm I'm sorry that I was so excited because you know, I had heard from this person or that person that this was happening or that was happening, and and so, and we, we actually had a. Um, we had a driver in the transportation division that was very adamant that we weren't going to put telematics in in his vehicle.
Speaker 1:And we did and it's got the 360 camera so he can see the front, the back and all the sides of his vehicle. And he came back to us about a month later and said okay, if you take this camera system out of my vehicle, I'm I'm going to quit. I mean it was like you put it in, I'm going to quit. And then a month later it was if you take it out, I'm going to quit. So Wow.
Speaker 2:So he did a full 180.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so people see the benefits of it and and and again it's. It's in place to um, to make people better drivers, and to, and then and then again back to Carl. You know Carl's natural state is to be just a gentleman and to, you know, want to coach people and help them be better, and that's what he's out there doing. So you know, we will finish telematics next year. We've learned a lot. One of the things that we've learned in having telematics is that, you know, we live in the Bay Area and everybody's in a hurry to get somewhere, and so speeding is our number one detractor from points. We lose about 6%. So think about that. Our average score is 94 and we lose a little under 6% a month for speeding. So all of our deductions are from people speeding.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:And so, um, you know, we, we coach people and we say, look, if you're going to be late, then be late. Just just own it. Just, you know, we don't want you to rush, we don't want you to speed, we want you to arrive at the job site safely. And so, um, around the zero end meeting which is coming up in January, um, Carl's component for that is what we've learned from telematics is speeding is the number one offended thing that our drivers do. And so, in response to this being a coaching platform, we're going to take that information and we're going to give some coaching to the people to hopefully help everybody slow down a little bit. So I get it. You know, I'm, I'm, I commute every day and you know, you can, you can convince yourself if I don't drive 80 miles an hour, you know.
Speaker 3:I'm going to get run over and you just have to take a deep breath.
Speaker 1:You just need to pull over and you need to get in the middle of the road Over and you need to get in the number three lane instead of the number one lane and you need to drive 65 miles an hour and, just you know, get to your destination. You know when you, when you think about it, you know if you're driving 60 miles and you slow down by five miles an hour, you're going to get there five minutes later. I mean it's you know we're not saving hours of time, we're saving minutes of time and all of our lives, um, our livelihood and and our families. You know we owe it to them to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah so the telematics has been a wonderful system thus far and, um, you know, I'd love to hear from people when they when they hear the podcast. If, if they think otherwise, you know, please reach out to me or Carl. But, um, it was a big, a big lift in the organization and, um, we're delivering on our on our promise and we're delivering on the fact that it's a coaching platform.
Speaker 2:And again, another huge investment on grant, huge investment and not mandated.
Speaker 1:I mean um it. You know, nobody came down and said you will put these in your vehicles, but we saw this as a tool that was going to help us be better. Someday the insurance industry may come out and say you know, we're not going to ensure your auto liability unless you have cameras in your in your car. But it's being adopted. I mean, you know, tiker construction has it, oc Jones has it. You know, george Reed has it, good fellow brothers has it, de Silva has it.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're far from yeah.
Speaker 1:It's, it's it's getting more and more adopted in the industry because people see the value in it. So, um, I would, I would suspect that probably in the next five years uh, you will it'll be hard press to see any of our competitors not have telematics in their views in some fashion. So I think we delivered it at the right time and we're driving the right results with our, with our program.
Speaker 2:It's awesome you guys want to pipe in anything related to telematics.
Speaker 3:So I was actually on the trial team of the telematics. I put it on my personal vehicle and it was interesting in the beginning. You know you think you're a safe driver and I thought I was a safe driver, but what was your speed? You know Paul shaking his head because he was my coach, Saw your scores, yeah. And then you realize how often you do a rolling stop in California and how that's kind of become the norm.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah right and and. Yeah, I would say I don't have the, I don't have the camera in my vehicle now, but I've taken those learning lessons and I've still challenged myself to learn and still be a better driver. Improve, yeah.
Speaker 2:I can imagine it would be an eye-opener. Yeah let's shift to another topic. This one doesn't get a lot of headlines, or at least it hasn't in recent months or years, but let's talk about the internal traffic control plans, obviously a very important topic At our plants, at our quarries and, of course, at our job sites that are changing all the time. And Daisy, tell me about what kind of focus the company is putting on internal traffic control plans going forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely so. One thing that we were tasked with Moving forward was how do we do a traffic control plan Right? This idea has been Sort of nebulous in the fact that what goes in it? Who does it? How often do we do it? When do we need to do it? What goes in it?
Speaker 2:And real quickly tell people what it is. This is like guiding the trucks and Providing a plan for how the trucks move about a job site.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if you think about when you go to a job site or at a plant, you have Trucks, you have pedestrian, you have mobile equipment, right, the. The purpose of the internal traffic control plan is spelling that out. So everyone knows where this truck is moving, everyone knows where people will be walking, and it's really just to outline where the where, the hazards in this, in the safe area, is.
Speaker 3:Our one thing that we did was we basically got a group of Individuals together on this team and we made that path forward. Now we are still in the I'm gonna call it the infancy stage right of this internal traffic control process, because we still have a lot of training to do. But one thing that the team did and when I say the team, I'm talking about Alex Wingate, greg Olivera, john Torres, sergio Rubio, bob Kelly, trevor Nemero, george Sanchez and Randall Jacobson, as well as Lisa Prasad we basically got together and said, well, what are we doing, right? What do we? What is the expectation? Who's gonna do it? So we answered all those questions and made a standard moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to add to that. So, you know, internal traffic control plan kind of came. It came out of a tragedy that we suffered here at granite rock with, you know, with Bobby Gill, you know, being struck and run over up on highway 17 that was in 2017, in 2017.
Speaker 1:And so as a result of that, we realized that we needed to have an internal traffic control plan to help us understand the flow of traffic and whatnot on the on the projects.
Speaker 1:And Carl Philipovich and construction at that time, you know, took the, you know took the mantle and said you know, I'm gonna work on this. And so Carl put together a paper form specifically kind of for the construction division so that they could draw on this form what their internal traffic control plan was and then share that with the drivers that were coming on and off the jobs and they would sign in so to make sure that everybody was on the same page. And we found when we went in and kind of checked on those traffic control plans that they were being used Differentially. We had some people that were doing outstanding jobs and they were doing it on a software program and then we had people that were literally doing it on the back of a napkin right and and we had some jobs that weren't doing it at all, and Not for a lack of of not doing it, but maybe they didn't have an understanding.
Speaker 1:You know Some people thought, well, I only have one truck coming in and out of my job, do I really need to do an internal traffic control plan?
Speaker 1:And you know we found that the jobs that had 30 trucks coming in and out, we're doing it.
Speaker 1:So, you know, we tasked Daisy with, you know, making this better.
Speaker 1:And in making it better we realized that we have Software programs here and we wanted everybody to be trained equally and use the same platform for doing an internal traffic control plan.
Speaker 1:And a lot of our learning came from an ACIG partner, ajax, out of Florida, that unfortunately suffered five fatalities over a period of time on their, on their jobs in in Florida, and so they put together what I would be, you know, consider the kind of the diamond internal traffic control plan and and tremendous amount of detail, and they're their highway pavers and they're out on the highways all the time and we use that template and that's one of the great benefits of being an ACIG member is that, you know, we we just share that kind of information, and so they gladly shared that information and we use that template, or days use that template to to help put together the internal traffic control plan that we have today, and so everybody will be trained the same, everybody will be using the same software program.
Speaker 1:You know again, kind of what David said earlier is that we don't want to have another Bobby Gill incident and, and you know, around the internal traffic control plan and these are all intended to help us be safe and to continue to be safe, and so I really applaud the work that Daisy and the team that she put together to do this and they've really got an excellent product and I think by the end of the year perhaps.
Speaker 3:End of the year, early next year.
Speaker 2:I was going to say is this a 2024 ramp up?
Speaker 3:Yes, so our, our plan is to move forward with. 2024 is when we're going to be working with this new standardized process, right? So what Paul was alluding to instead of everyone?
Speaker 3:doing it different ways, then we have one path moving forward. So we will definitely start with the training aspect of that and the other thing that we will do is as, as we always do be a resource to help guide. You know, the hurdles as we see them, and and then sometime in in 2024, we will kind of audit what we've rolled out to see where we're at in very early 2024. Yes, very early 2024.
Speaker 2:Very early. Yeah, paul, paul said it here it's happening.
Speaker 3:But I will say it was really nice to kind of get all these individuals into a room right and have their expertise and their experiences, and you know this has worked in the past. This hasn't worked and you know this program is going to be hard to to use this one's easier, right. So it was nice to get everyone in that room and say that we, collaboratively, have made this, this path forward instead of just this is a safety thing, right? No, this is a granite rock thing.
Speaker 4:Right. What I really like about it is now we're going to train to an expectation. So we've, you know, we've researched what a realistic expectation is. Daisy and her team have done a fantastic job of defining that, and so that we know what the realistic expectation is, we can train to that expectation. And there shouldn't be any assumption. There's no questions asked. People will get the training they need to hit that expectation and we can hold them to that expectation to a certain quality, to a certain level, and so we don't end up with napkins. But also, on the flip side, on some of those big jobs, some of those engineers were putting in a lot of work, a lot of work for for what? Something that could have been done a little bit more streamlined. Reduce some of the administrative load on them while still giving a fantastic communication product that everybody can understand.
Speaker 1:And so, while while Daisy was working hard with the you know her team and really focused on the construction aspects, where, where there's a tremendous amount of risk, you know David was doing the same thing at the plant sites, right? So internal traffic control plans don't mean job sites. That's a that's a big part of the risk.
Speaker 1:But we understand that we have trucks that are driving in and out of the quarry every day and driving in and out of our plants every day, and so you know, David worked with his partners at the quarry sites and at the product sites to make sure that we had proper signage and striping and that people understood where they needed to go. So we've made improvements there also.
Speaker 2:So Great, so it's across the board, across the board.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole company, one company, and make it better and safety before LL. So I'll, I'll tie together, absolutely All right. Well, we're going to, we're going to start to wrap this up, but before we completely say goodbye, I want to touch on the safety rock stars. It's such a great, great celebration of the people, team members across the company, who are just doing outstanding work, keeping themselves, their team members safe and even the community safe. Tell us just quickly, if you have a team member that you think is a safety rock star, how do you go about nominating them and getting them this recognition?
Speaker 4:Firstly, I'd like to say that we have a thousand people in the company that do amazing things every day, and so the safety rock star is really taking an individual or somebody who stands out at the moment, does something a little bit over the top or just does something outside of their scope. And so when you have those individuals and you recognize individuals, please bring them forward to your supervisor, to your foreman, to your superintendent, to your branch manager. The safety engineers and safety technicians are always in and around the locations. Communicate with us. You know we'll, we'll help you nominate that person and get that brought up. Those safety rock stars are approved through the executive team and then brought to Paul to communicate out to the rest of the company. But it really starts at the frontline leaders, the leads, the senior foreman, the other labor standing right next to them, the person who actually sees the act and goes wow, that was over the top, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, I couldn't have said it better there's, we know that there's. I think thus far this year we've given out about 65 rock stars, and you know, I wish it was 650 rock stars, and they're probably. It probably could easily be, because you know, we have a tremendous workforce that just very quietly goes about and does their job every day and they're very unassuming and when they, when they have one of those rock star moments, they don't acknowledge within themselves that they did anything other than just doing their best. You know, at the rock here, right, and so we have a tremendous amount of those individuals within our organization and so but but bring the stories. You know, we all know what it is, we can all see it, we all understand it.
Speaker 1:You know, when you, when you pause on a job to make sure that a handicapped person is safely going to transition, you know, across our job site, I mean, do we have to stop and do that? No, we don't. There's no law that says that I'm responsible for getting that pedestrian from point A to point B. But we know that the right thing to do is to stop and make it safe. And that doesn't mean just for us, it means for everybody, right?
Speaker 1:So we have lots and lots of stories where, you know, those, those rock stars extend beyond the confines of the job and it's, it's, you know, the, the community, it's the, the people outside of the job that we're going out to help. So you know, when you see something like that, you know it, it takes five minutes. It really does. All you have to do is contact your supervisor, you know, contact an airy manager, now a new, a new construction manager, and say, hey, I saw this. Let them write up a paragraph or two, let's forward that up to the executive team, let's review that, and let's reward, and, and and acknowledge those people whenever we can. They're great stories, great stories.
Speaker 3:And I'm just yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just and and then it just amazes me you know you go out and and and you award somebody and and you know I've been out there, you know Robert was just recently out on a couple of them we did and you know grown men and women, you know you're giving them a, you know you're giving them a jacket and they're just beaming. I mean, they're just, they're so proud.
Speaker 1:Absolutely they're so proud of the fact that they're being acknowledged for something that they did and I just. It's such a feel good, you know, when you can stand in front of a group of your peers and and give somebody a pat on the back for doing the right thing and acknowledge that. It's just, it's a wonderful program. I hope it expands. I hope we get more of those stories in 2024. Great.
Speaker 3:And I think it's um to encourage more stories, right? So yesterday I went to a rockstar presentation in San Francisco for Jose Garcia and you know, after the presentation we did a job site visit and in a conversation the operator there was telling us a story about how he was at another job site and he noticed that the operator of a crane like a high rise crane right, was picking something and on his level he was able to see that the leg of the crane was lifted and then, you know, he stopped that, he made it known to the contractor right, and then we all kind of looked at each other and be like, well, that's a rockstar moment. And he was like, oh no, you know. And he said, no, we'll write it up, you know. So the superintendent was there and he's going to write that up as well. But I think it goes back to encouraging individuals that, hey, this is a rockstar, and if you don't think it's a rockstar, one it probably is. And two, you know, ask and see what people's reactions are right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you share a story like that, yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean, when you really think about that story, the days you just told, I mean that operator could have done nothing, he could have seen that and he could have said not my problem, I don't work for that company.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And you know who knows what could have happened. You know, when you have a crane and part of it's coming off, it means that it's unstable and you know that could have ended up in a catastrophe. So that five or 10 minutes that that person took there's no news story. That's going to occur now because that person, you know, did the right thing and we know that that happens every day. We just want to hear more about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, it's great. It's great that we can celebrate these people and these team members and all the great work they do. You guys, thank you so much. It was so great to have you on the podcast and I appreciate all the work that you and the rest of your team does to keep Grant Rock team members safe and to keep our safety culture strong.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much, thank you, thank you.