Safety Week 2016, celebrated May 2-6, featured a safety rodeo at the 35 Express project in Dallas and other events at the Tappan Zee Bridge project site in Tarrytown, N.Y., and the Crenshaw/LAX transit project in Los Angeles.

Speaking at the Tarrytown event, Terry Towle, president of Tappan Zee Constructors, said, “Raising awareness improves safety performance. Being aware makes it harder to do the wrong thing. If our craft workers are asked to do anything unsafe, they are allowed to stop the work.”

Speaking at the Dallas event, Ross Myers, CEO of Allan Myers and Safety Week co-chair, said, “At times, we are competitors, but, this week, we remember that there is no competition in safety.” He noted that, this year, there were 58 companies sponsoring Safety Week, adding, “Our goal is for every executive [at each of those firms] to visit every crew and establish a personal dialogue about safety.”

Now in its third year, Safety Week is the public face of a much deeper effort by two groups to share and strengthen safety practices. The Construction Industry Safety Initiative is a group of chief executives of a dozen large contractors who meet twice a year to share best practices and brainstorm about safety. “We help each other get better,” said Myers. “We’re holding a seminar this fall and inviting 30 contractors to attend.” The Incident and Injury-Free Forum is a group of senior executives who strategize about ways to improve safety.