Of late, incidents are a rare occurrence. In 2012, a year after launching Safety for Life, an initiative encompassing behavior both on and off jobsites, the firm achieved more than 5.5 million man-hours with zero lost time injuries or illnesses.

"We still had some recordables, and that's not acceptable," says Acton.

West acknowledges Safety for Life remains a work in progress, with recent modifications arising from the firm's reorganization a year ago. To relieve the bottlenecks associated with assigning branch managers the task of supporting jobsite safety, "anyone who has the title of director, including employees involved in marketing, finance and information systems, serves as a safety sponsor on one or more projects," says West. At a minimum, each has attended OSHA 10-hour training.

Recent changes also require project managers to perform site audits, attend toolbox talks, monitor daily safety plans and perform safety presentations to senior management. Site supervisors, meantime, evaluate daily safety plans and audit subcontractors.

West says new initiatives are critical to maintaining and improving safety as the firm continues to grow. At the Whiting site, BMW placed particular emphasis on fall protection while contending with hazards associated with working at an active refinery, including exposure to hydrogen sulfide. "One of the main issues is sudden changes in wind direction," says West. Although audible alarms ring in the event of potential exposure, "we established or checked evacuation points every morning, particularly since the location and nature of our work is continually changing. That required extensive coordination with the plant to ensure those points were clearly blocked out and remain open."

"Field supervision for a project of this scope is critical," adds Buckman.

As part of its Continuous Quality Improvement Program, a company-wide initiative to improve client satisfaction, all candidate supervisors must enroll in an internal training and development program. "What becomes clear is there's sometimes a difference between a good craftsman and a good supervisor," says Buckman, speaking of managing skills.

Whiting provided a "great opportunity for us to develop more senior supervisors," he says. "That paves the way for projects of comparable scale—projects we might not have had the resources to tackle in the past."