When it comes to safety, PCL Construction has always lived up to and exceeded the highest standards. In 2024, the company set a new benchmark: There wasn’t a single lost-time incident recorded among all employees and trade partners on PCL job sites during the entire year across all locations — 46,896,923 hours, to be precise. It was the first time this has happened in PCL’s 119-year history, and it represented a truly exceptional safety record across the whole construction industry.

In March 2025, PCL became a founding member of the Canadian Construction Safety Council, a collaboration that shares the collective safety knowledge of Canada’s 12 largest general contractors to act as a force for positive change. The CCSC advocates for the mental health and overall well-being of people who work in the construction industry. That means it works to reduce serious injuries and fatalities on job sites, builds the industry’s safety reputation, fosters stronger relationships with clients and regulatory bodies, and pushes for safety improvements and the adoption of best safety practices. Some changes the CCSC has already implemented include:

• Switching from traditional hard hats to Type II safety helmets with chin straps, which offer a more secure fit and provide more protection for impacts to the side of the head.
• Adopting Level 4 cut-resistant gloves, which provide better protection against lacerations and severe hand injuries when handling sharp tools and materials.
• Increasing fall protection measures by setting the height threshold at six feet instead of 10 feet to significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic incidents. These include guardrails, safety nets and personal fall arrest systems.

As these accomplishments and actions demonstrate, safety is PCL’s top priority. With Construction Safety Week 2025 being celebrated May 5-9, PCL employees — along with trade partners and clients — are living out the elements of this year’s theme: “All in Together: Plan. Own. Commit.”

While safety is everyone’s responsibility on a PCL job site, the driving forces behind PCL’s exceptional HSE record are its strong, cohesive safety teams across Canada, the United States and Australia. These teams are dedicated to pushing beyond minimum safety standards and using every tool and technology available to ensure everyone goes home safe to their loved ones at the end of each day. They’re the ones who build strong, precise safety plans, ensure everyone is accountable for safety, and fully commit to executing safety plans without compromise.

Construction safety personnel once had an unearned reputation for scouring job sites to look for the tiniest infractions. But, according to Jim Barry, PCL’s vice president of HSE, the proactive aspect of safety has grown in prominence in recent years, with careful planning across departments to ensure the best possible outcomes.

”Enforcing protocols is still part of construction safety, but it’s not the major part,” he says. “We want to ingrain a culture of safety that encourages our employees and trade partners to make safe decisions — even when no one is looking over their shoulders.”

Sarah Ryan, HSE manager for PCL’s BC Region office, agrees with Barry, saying that PCL has adopted a more holistic approach to safety over her 12 years with the company. “Today, we’re very focused on integrating safety into our planning and execution,” she says. “We’ve moved the needle away from safety being only about compliance and the role of the safety professional being only to monitor that compliance.”

In Australia, where PCL has several solar energy projects underway, HSE manager Scott Goddard notes that safety messages mean more when there’s a personal connection.

 “Safety isn’t a practical approach — it’s more of an emotional approach,” he says. “As much as we need our foundational systems in place, we’re complementing that with a more human approach now. I tell my team all the time that we’re here to support and to educate.”

“It’s changing from a culture of compliance to more of a culture of care,” adds California Buildings HSE manager Will Grizzard. “People are more willing to do what you’re asking them to do if they believe that you care for them.”

To effectively carry out that human-centric approach, though, you need the right humans working together on your team. Safety managers look for a wide variety of qualities in the people they hire.

 “I look for someone who demonstrates initiative, who always seeks to learn,” says Craig McAuley, HSE manager for PCL’s Calgary office. “Someone who’s a good listener and can identify efficiencies to make the implementation of safety easier.”

“I want people to be curious,” Grizzard adds. “I want people to question the way we’re doing things. If something doesn’t make sense or you feel it could be made better, those are things we need to explore. The company isn’t going to get better and we’re not going to improve personally unless we’re doing those things.”

PCL is also committed to identifying promising young talent early and providing opportunities to advance their skill sets. It’s why the company has prioritized the professional development of interns in safety roles, many of whom go on to get further qualifications and develop a career with the company. Across the United States, each PCL office hosts at least one HSE intern per fiscal year and actively builds relationships with schools in their respective areas to recruit potential interns. HSE leaders in each office are encouraged to think about ways they can be more accommodating to students and identify projects that could potentially support multiple interns. In 2024, PCL employed 19 HSE interns across the United States — up from six in 2023 — and five of them were offered full-time positions with the company at the ends of their terms.

For Ryan, leadership skills are important but — as evidenced by the number of HSE students PCL has hired who have developed careers with the company — a willingness to take advantage of development opportunities and having the right attitude is vital. “Once we identify those students, we ask ourselves, ‘How can we add to their skill set and build on what this person has?’”

Assembling a safety team is one thing; maintaining the cohesion and making sure the members remain on the same page is another. PCL keeps its teams strong through constant proactive communication, including visiting, auditing and learning from other job sites under their jurisdiction. “There’s a free flow of information that keeps them connected, and that’s a key part of making sure there’s no isolation felt on the team,” Goddard says. “It’s one team, one approach.”

While cooperation among safety teams is critical, it’s also crucial for them to collaborate with other teams. As Grizzard stresses, “safety is a combined effort” in which everyone needs to be involved to achieve the desired result. The earlier safety is taken into consideration when planning a construction project, the better the outcomes for everyone involved.

“Planning for HSE starts even before we win the job,” Ryan says. “Our estimators need to be familiar with safety requirements so they’re budgeting appropriately for what the project needs. And once we win the project, we get HSE staff working with superintendents and project managers while they’re actually planning the execution. The earlier it starts, the more likely it will be successful.”

“Increasingly, I think people see that safety isn’t an impediment to production; it actually helps that safety processes force advanced planning and communication to avoid costly mistakes,” McAuley adds.

The combined effort of construction safety applies not only to planning, but also to accountability. Like any team sport, everyone has a role to play, and all those players must perform at a high level to meet the goal of sending everyone home safely. PCL’s safety teams recognize that actions have consequences beyond employees and trade partners — they affect members of the community, too.

“Personal responsibility and integrity are paramount to what we do,” Grizzard says. “PCL has very high expectations for how we approach HSE, and it’s really on us to ensure we’re instilling that level of accountability.”

Yet, even with those high standards, people are still fallible. For that reason, the company’s safety teams have increased their focus on empowering workers to contribute to safety processes and setting them up for success.

"If you start by asking, ‘How did this person get into this situation?’ you end up fixing things in a totally different way,” Ryan says. “Maybe they didn’t get clear instructions, maybe their setup was off, or maybe they just didn’t have what they needed. Most of the time, safety problems aren’t about someone being lazy or reckless — it’s usually about something that wasn’t working right around them."

The high expectations PCL has set are a result of consistent practices over the years. Elevated standards and good safety habits are something everyone is encouraged to work toward every day. Issues are to be addressed promptly as they arise, and workers are asked to speak up when they see something that could be improved upon.

Ryan adds that part of setting high safety standards is having the right people in the conversation, especially when it comes to new equipment and processes that project teams might not be familiar with. “Everybody doesn’t have to know everything, but you need the right people in the room,” she says.

For Grizzard, a major factor is ensuring what’s included in the safety plan is actually happening on the job site. “Inspect what you expect,” he says. “We have expectations going into every activity that occurs on our operations, and it’s on us to ensure those are being carried out the way they were planned. Those are easy conversations to have with superintendents and trade partners. If we have those open dialogues and continuing conversations, it makes life a lot easier.”

Safety, of course, is a process of continuous improvement, and teams are always looking for new ways to improve outcomes even more. Take new technology, for example. PCL recently signed a multi-year contract with HammerTech, a safety intelligence company whose software platform is being rolled out across North America — and is already being used in Australia — to help construction teams work safer by making it easier to collect, track and understand safety information. PCL also recently partnered with technology and software company Pixaera to provide immersive, cutting-edge virtual reality safety training that boasts retention rates 15 times higher than traditional lectures.

With constant innovation and a drive to keep everyone on the job site safe, PCL’s safety teams will continue to push the company’s HSE standards — and standards for the rest of the construction industry — to new heights.