Inside a Safety Turnaround
My first workday at CityCenter—the Las Vegas Strip’s $8.6-billion mixed-use development, the country’s largest privately financed project—started last fall at the pitch- black hour of 6:30 a.m. I was nervous about my decision to shadow new construction hires during their safety training. Six workers had died on the project since 2007, sparking pickets and pressure that led to mandatory safety training. In the back of my mind was the fact that my brother-in-law, Darin, had suffered a near-fatal construction accident about a year earlier at another project and had returned to work at CityCenter. Now, months after my first day of training at CityCenter, the project’s safety crisis seems strangely distant, pushed from mind by the headlines about the just-concluded financial pact between the developers to finish the project. But I was determined to see for myself what happens in the middle of a safety turnaround.
So there I was on a cool, eerily quiet October morning when a crush of ragged work cars and pickup trucks converged onto Dean Martin Drive for the morning shift change. The sole access road onto the jobsite is a narrow stretch of asphalt that takes an hour to navigate a quarter mile. Some workers riding motorcycles weave in between cars for shorter travel times. New hires are immediately corralled into a mandatory two-hour orientation held inside a makeshift classroom in the basement of the employee parking garage. A safety trainer from Perini Building Co., the project’s Framingham, Mass.-based lead contractor, does the talking.
It feels like the first day of school. There is excited talk, off-color jokes, old-friend reunions and nervous glances. People size one another up and separate into clusters—ironworkers, carpenters and Spanish-speaking laborers. The room at the all-union project fills with 70 men ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s. Everyone has been called up to meet City- Center’s insatiable manpower needs. The 18.7-million-sq-ft project is the equivalent of nine Empire State Buildings going up simultaneously. At the time the Empire State Building was constructed, expectations were that one worker would die for each floor that was built: the final number was much lower. CityCenter thankfully is judged by today’s safer standard.
Outfitted in frayed blue jeans and cotton T-shirts, the workers share a similar style: goatees and handlebar mustaches, tattooed forearms and stiff leather boots. Everyone carries plastic lunch coolers and weathered hardhats caked with stickers of employers, projects and skill certifications. The labels serve as merit badges, narrating prior work history and experience. Andy Campbell, a wiry Perini safety trainer and former paramedic, delivers a blunt and at times abrasive orientation speech. Everything is translated into Spanish.
“A lot of people are talking smack about this project,” Campbell says. “We are doing our best to remove the knuckleheads to make it as safe as possible.”
CityCenter earned the grisly nickname “CityCemetary” from its trade workers because of the six well-publicized deaths and the 1,000 accidents requiring medical attention. The fatalities spanned 18 months, starting in February 2007, when a concrete form collapsed and crushed carpenter Bobby Lee Tohannie, 44. The string ended in May 2008, when a crane counterweight system crushed operating engineer Dustin Tarter, 39, as he serviced the machine. Unions, workers and elected officials pressured the project owners and managers into providing 10 hours of required federal safety training for everyone on-site. I am part of the new class.
Perini staff members hand out employment paperwork, with copies translated into Spanish. Rules prohibit alcohol and drugs, graffiti, wrestling, running, unreported accidents and horseplay. Employees must sign legal waivers acknowledging their full understanding of work policies and the consequences of violations. Failure to follow any policy can result in immediate termination and lifetime banishment from MGM Mirage projects. Violators additionally face a minimum of a one-year suspension from Perini jobs. To help make his point, Campbell has stacked revoked work cards, including some from superintendents and managers, ankle high in front of the room. The talk emphasizes workers’ responsibility for their own safety and welfare as well as those working around them.
“A foreman or project manager oversees at least 30 people,” Campbell says. “They are not standing over us like an umpire watching every move we make.”
Live To Spend
An average CityCenter journeyman earns $80,000 a year—more than many college graduates. Project officials want workers to take home fat paychecks and live to spend them, Campbell says. It is a message repeated like a mantra during orientation and training. A deepening recession and rising unemployment are other touchstones Campbell uses to unite the ideas of employment, safety and productivity. Break the rules and you are out. “Is it worth losing your job?” he asks.
Campbell gives the same orientation speech once a day to about 100 new workers. “Communicate with each other, work together, and we will get this job done,” he says.
In his orientation, Campbell never refers directly to CityCenter’s grim history of deadly accidents. I cannot imagine that it is not the subject of late-night diningroom-table talks. But it is considered bad luck to speak...
...about the fatalities too often or too loudly on the job. And there already has been enough bad luck at City- Center. So the issues and circumstances surrounding the six deaths are never exactly addressed. No one brings up how or why operating engineer Harvey Englander, 65, was hit by a man-lift counterweight or what the circumstances were when ironworker Harold “Rusty” Billingsley, 46, fell through an opening in floor decking.
I have another reason to be concerned about construction safety: I know the physical and emotional wreckage that can result from one lapse. My 44-year-old brother-in-law, Darin, who is a sheet-metal worker, was working on another job on the Las Vegas Strip a year ago when he was nearly killed in an 18-ft fall. A sweet and likable man, a perfect football and beer buddy, Darin had always taken great care of himself, eating right and getting to bed early in order to do his job well and make it home okay. The day of his accident, he was on a scissor-lift installing overhead ductwork and leaning against a cage bar when it unexpectedly gave way. Only Darin’s angle of impact and his beefy 220-lb frame saved his life.
Falling is a lot like being hit by a car, only you are the one that is moving. Darin shattered his left-eye socket, broke his nose, dislocated his right shoulder, snapped his right femur and cracked two ribs. The impact left him black and blue with contusions and cuts.
We found ourselves in the hospital waiting room wondering if he would live. The day of his accident, there was no comforting Darin’s sister or mother, both sick with grief and worry. A storm of emotions swirled inside my head: Would Darin be permanently crippled? Wheelchair bound? Hours passed, scraping our nerves raw.
Doctors said he was lucky. Over the next few days and weeks, plastic surgeons twice reconstructed Darin’s face. After eight months of intense, painful physical therapy, Darin is walking and working again. There’s a metal rod in his leg and a twinge in his shoulder that will never go away. Yet things could be worse. Darin once again is knocking tin, this time at CityCenter.
The employers at CityCenter, starting with Perini, are supposed to have turned a corner now that everyone goes through the Occupation Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) 10-hour training. Perini says it was prepared to provide the training even before the brief strike and picketing erupted at the project on June 3, 2008. “We did not bat an eye at the idea,” claims W. Shelton Grantham, Perini’s vice president of field operations. “It is a proactive way to make sure everyone goes home at night.”
On the surface, both Perini and building trade unions now appear happy. The contractor has since upped its safety staff to 34 people, and its subcontractors must have at least one safety professional for every 40 employees. All new hires since the agreement are required to provide an OSHA 10 card or undergo mandatory on-site training. Only 15% of CityCenter’s workforce had gone through training at the time of my visit in October. New hires are immediately processed. But with a peak total workforce of 9,200, it is much harder to find and train existing employees since many are from out of state and were working on the site before the union pact. Perini has additionally hired 14 trainers and created seven classrooms to get everyone up to speed. Unions help train their members with assistance from the union-funded Center to Protect Workers’ Rights. Altogether, employers and unions have trained 10,000 workers in less than six months. That number includes workers at the adjacent $4-billion Cosmopolitan resort project where Perini also is general contractor. Perini’s goal is to train all of the approximately 11,000 workers currently employed at both projects by midyear. The numbers are large, like everything at CityCenter.
Squawking
Subcontractors, which number in the hundreds, must pay for their own staff training. The cost? $500 per worker. That has many subs squawking over the expense and lost productivity. The overall cost for OSHA 10 safety training will be about $5 million, Perini says. No one has been killed since the training push started.
But there may be less improvement when it comes to lost-time injuries. One safety official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the training has not made a noticeable difference. At the time of my visit, lost-work-time numbers posted inside the job’s offices seem to confirm as much. The Mandarin Oriental condo-hotel tower, a part of CityCenter, had only gone three days without a recordable accident.
In fairness, it is important to keep numbers in perspective. The project had recorded a staggering 24 million hours of work at the time of my visit; that week’s daily payroll was $3.125 million. The project’s injury rate, when examined in context, rises only slightly above the state average. Yet the effectiveness of the training push remained unclear at the time of my visit.
Fatigue is one of the worst hazards on the job. Surprisingly, little or no mention is made of it on the job, except to...
...say that we all are in this together, employer and staff, and we better get it together and follow the rules. In other words, don’t do anything stupid. The OSHA 10 training mentions the importance of taking breaks, but Perini does not exactly invite new workers to rest, either through breaks or days off, if they are tired. According to the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, fatigue was a major factor in the high accident rate.
Back in training, new hires are shown a map of the sprawling 76-acre jobsite that is a beehive complex of concurrent building projects between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo resorts. MGM Mirage’s onsite headquarters is dubbed “The White House” by workers. It is strictly off-limits for field personnel. Perini’s building is called the “Pentagon” for its warlike planning and strategizing, while Perini’s management offices are known as “The West Wing,” or brain center of CityCenter’s construction operations. Like a wartime operation, there are casualties. It is important to know the terrain; it is easy to get lost or hurt.
CityCenter is divided into three large blocks, each with its own managers, estimators and supervisors. A friendly but fierce rivalry exists between block teams, each vying for bragging rights and racing against one another to finish schedule milestones. About 800 diesel-powered “buggy carts,” similar to golf carts, shuttle staff around the expansive property. Cart parking is an issue, as is unauthorized use. Some drivers use the Club, a steering- wheel-lock device, to deter cart borrowing.
After orientation, new hires form a serpentine line for routine breath-and- urine testing. It is conducted inside a trailer in the parking garage. Next, workers are shepherded into a classroom for the 10 hours of required federal safety training that takes place over two days. After drug testing alongside the staff, we head to class.
My OSHA 10 class consists of about 40 people from different trades with varying levels of experience. The group includes electricians, pipefitters, concrete finishers and operating engineers. One trainee tries to pay the instructor, a Texan with a noticeable drawl, a cash bribe to let him out of the classroom stint. “Can I get out of this? What if I was willing to pay you?” He is swiftly rebuffed by our instructor, who says, “I hope, for your sake, that you’re joking.” The red-faced worker sinks deeply into his chair, hoping to escape. “Because I’ll give you the boot right now! And you won’t be able to work. Do you want that?” the instructor asks. The answer is a soft, chagrined “no.” A cash bribe for skipping school? But everyone is here to make a buck.
Lessons
Class begins with standing and stating your name, trade and number of years in Las Vegas. Workers hail from everywhere: Texas, Illinois, Florida, California and even England. Instructors review program components with individual illustrated booklets that cover a specific OSHA code segment. Ten booklets, averaging 28 pages each, are reviewed at a rate of one per hour. They cover everything from confined spaces and fall protection to fire safety and material handling. Designed with large, bold type, the booklets contain short multiple-choice quizzes to reinforce the content.
The trainees read portions aloud, like a Bible study class, alternating round-robin so the information in the book comes from peers. Quiz questions are answered together as a group, so no one is singled out or ridiculed for a wrong answer. A PowerPoint presentation conveys the book content on a screen during the readings.
We learn that 15 out of every 100 full-time construction workers suffer a lost-time injury annually—more than other industries. Sprains and muscle strains account for 38%. By conservative estimates, 50,000 workers a year—137 each day—die from diseases contracted on the job in all industries. Meanwhile, falls cause 100,000 injuries and up to 200 deaths annually in construction. Eight-five percent of fall injuries result in lost time that costs employers $2 billion annually in worker compensation and productivity.
The force of an impact from a fall increases geometrically with height. The potential impact is 16 times greater for a 0.4-second fall of 31 in. than a 0.1-second fall of 2 in. For example, A 200-lb. worker who falls 31 in. creates 4,096 lb of impact. The impact force of Darin’s fall from the scissor-lift was much greater.
The statistics batter the class into a grim, reflective silence. It reinforces the idea that there is malevolent, bone-shattering violence lurking behind every task and that construction collects a toll of lost fingers, herniated discs and smashed toes from its practitioners. Much of it does not seem real until our instructors, who rotate every few hours, share personal anecdotes and jobsite horror stories about someone getting crushed to death by...
...a piece of machinery or suffocating in a confined space. Workers chime in with their own stories. We soon are all survivors as well as workers, reciting horrors of toppled materials, errant bucket swings, iron splinters. Is this how soldiers feel in combat?
Trapped in such an existential nightmare, one worker saw only randomness. “This is a crapshoot out here,” says Kim Murray, a local operating engineer and OSHA 10 instructor. “One guy might fall off a 12-ft ladder and live, while another might fall and die.”
Classmates bond fast, and first-day jitters dissolve. Attention spans grow short as time wears on, leading to restlessness, squirming in seats and doodling. These are physical guys that are used to being in constant motion; sitting still for long periods of time takes them out of their element, tiring them more than swinging a hammer all day. Instructors provide intermittent breaks, which everyone uses to smoke, snack or make cell-phone calls to girlfriends and wives. Others stretch out and rest their eyes.
When the training concludes, workers receive their OSHA 10 card, enabling them to obtain a jobsite badge that is checked and rechecked by security personnel entering and exiting CityCenter. Badgeless workers, as well as those without reflective safety vests, hardhats and protective eyewear, are refused site access.
Asleep at the Wheel
Fatigue is a constant challenge. Workers, per union contracts, are given 30-minute lunches and intermittent breaks. Many stretch, relax, rest and refresh during this time. One guy routinely flattened himself on a concrete slab, lit a cigarette and laid it atop his chest. He proceeded to pass out cold amid the noise and chaos, sleeping soundly. The cigarette was a timer: When it singed his fingers, the break was over.
Weariness can compromise safety. It can result in slow movement and feelings of heaviness, symptoms that produce psychological distress and impair thinking, according to a 2008 University of Texas study. Sluggishness or a lack of concentration can make the difference between life or death on a construction site.
Although the training does not address the issue, the OSHA 10 program wins at least one backer. “I think this is a damn good idea,” says Trent Vanoostendorp, a 20-year Las Vegas veteran plumber and pipefitter. “People take shortcuts, or they are trying to be heroes and rush work. It is your attitude that makes you safe.”
By the third day, actual work begins. I meet Mike Janowski, a Chicago-native Perini superintendent, who takes me atop CityCenter’s highest point—the 600-ft-tall “Aria” hotel tower. An aria, in opera, is an elaborate vocal solo, but nothing here is done alone. Workers rely on one another. We travel along the building’s outer edge inside a red metal-mesh cage on a construction elevator that feels like a low-impact carnival thrill ride that creaks and groans as it moves. It is crowded, with everyone pressed against one another. Riders enter and exit at different floors, carting tools and building supplies. Union stickers and duct-taped photocopies festoon the cage interior: One sheet announces a picnic, another sells a “slightly used power saw—cheap!”
We exit at one of the mammoth 125,000-sq-ft floor plates that engulf workers in darkness, as a fine layer of dust coats the interior like a soft, silent snow. Stale air and ventilation are major dilemmas due to constant sawing, grinding and vehicle exhaust. Airplane-sized propeller-blade fans help circulation, but it is not enough. Workers use comfort masks, respirators and water for improved breathing. Aria has 1,700 construction workers, CityCenter’s highest concentration, but Janowski knows everyone’s name and navigates the terrain efficiently.
Las Vegas plumber-pipefitter
“Plans were only 30% complete when we began construction,” says Janowski, a Chicago Bears football fan, who cannot count how many times plans changed. Yet the project remains largely on schedule to finish in December. Perini is acutely aware of what is riding on CityCenter: It is a showcase project for a publicly traded company. “I think about it all the time,” admits Richard Rizzo, Perini’s vice chairman. “It keeps me awake at night.”
Leaders should be concerned because it is not clear that 10 hours of safety training can stem the carnage. If it were that simple, no one would ever get hurt. That seems unlikely because the classroom instruction, booklets and blunt warnings do not tell the whole story. Perini may have eliminated the mixed message that “safety is first but productivity is even more important.” But you cannot force someone to behave safely even if you teach them all the rules. You cannot badger or terrify.
I cannot say for sure why the fatalities stopped at CityCenter. Maybe tragedy helped forge a familial closeness, a protective atmosphere with more caring and guardianship. Maybe craft workers are being more cautious amid a deepening recession in which high-paying jobs are in short supply. But even that does not stop you from getting tired—and tripping and falling.
