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.

PCL also works with other general contractors to share collective safety knowledge and effect positive change within the industry. Together, these contractors advocate for the mental health and overall well-being of people who work in the construction industry. That means they work to reduce serious injuries and fatalities on job sites, build the industry’s safety reputation, foster stronger relationships with clients and regulatory bodies, and push for safety improvements and the adoption of best safety practices.

PCL has already implemented many of the changes that the industry has advocated for, including hand protection enhancements that provide better safeguards against lacerations and severe hand injuries when handling sharp tools and materials. PCL also emphasizes fall protection measures when communicating with employees and trade partners, and installs guardrails, safety nets and personal fall arrest systems on all job sites, significantly reducing the risk of catastrophic incidents. 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 record are its strong, cohesive safety teams. 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 safety plans, ensure everyone is accountable for safety and fully commit to executing plans without compromise.

Construction safety personnel once had an unearned reputation for scouring job sites to look for the tiniest infractions. But, according to T.J. Izykowski, PCL’s director of health, safety and environment (HSE) for U.S. operations, the proactive aspect of safety has grown in prominence in recent years, with careful planning across departments to ensure the best possible outcomes.

“Construction safety isn’t just about catching people doing unsafe things,” he says. “We want to influence our employees and trade partners so that they make safe choices all the time — even when nobody’s watching.”

Over the past two decades, PCL’s HSE philosophy has become even more holistic. The emphasis has moved away from solely monitoring compliance to integrating safety into the planning and execution of every project.

“It’s changing from a culture of compliance to more of a culture of care,” says 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 across the company look for a wide variety of qualities in the people they hire, including approachability, good listening and interpersonal skills, and an ability to demonstrate initiative.

“I want people to be curious,” Grizzard says. “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.

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.

The earlier safety is taken into consideration when planning a construction project, the stronger the team — and the better the outcomes for everyone involved. It can even begin before a job is awarded. When figuring out costs, estimators are familiar with a project’s safety requirements so they can budget appropriately. Once the contract is awarded, HSE staff work with superintendents and project managers while they plan how to execute the project.

“A lot of times, we can get some very good improvements for both the safety side of things and for production. Those two go hand in hand, so being able to walk through plans and ensure we’ve got the best plan possible, that helps everybody,” Grizzard says.

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 ask why someone made a mistake instead of focusing solely on the outcome, the corrective action becomes very different,” Izykowski says. “Maybe they didn’t fully understand the instructions, or maybe they weren’t set up correctly for success. We’ve found that most safety incidents don’t happen because workers chose to do the task incorrectly.”

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

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. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” Izykowski says. “We need people who have technical expertise on the equipment we’re using so we can understand how to operate it safely.”

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 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.