A year and a half ago, Dave Iglesias came on board with Form Works as the new director of safety and risk management. Iglesias, with more than 20 years of experience in construction safety, built upon the safety program in place but applied his personal safety philosophy to take the program further. "All the things the former safety manager did I would have done, but my goal was to take it to the next level," Iglesias says. "Instead of us working safely, my philosophy was to push everyone to do safe work and for that ideal to become part of who we are."

Iglesias indoctrinated his safety philosophy into his field safety manager, John Van Riel, and his jobsite safety officers. Once Iglesias won them over, it was on to the employees. "If I can get all employees to do safe work, that's a lot of pressure off my jobsite safety staff," Iglesias explains.

Iglesias changed the safety culture among Form Works employees by showing them the company was serious about safety. New employees complete safety orientation, drug tests and equipment compliance tests to earn in-house training certification. "I need to establish the fact that people know how to do what they say they can do. And I don't mean just operate a piece of equipment; they need to know how to inspect it too, because that's part of safety requirements," Iglesias says.

Routine safety procedures include weekly safety meetings and special training topics specific to a certain site on an as-needed basis. Iglesias is bilingual, speaking fluent Spanish and English, so all safety training is offered in both languages.

Iglesias also enforces the utilization of high quality, effective safety equipment. Workers must have a double-legged lanyard and proper personal protection equipment. Employees are expected to wear their Form Works-issued safety equipment, purchased through Form Works at a deep bulk discount price. Iglesias says when employees pay for their own safety equipment they take better care of it. If an employee loses safety equipment, they're expected to replace it; if an employee brings in a worn out piece of safety equipment, Form Works replaces it.