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During Construction Safety Week in Portland, competing builders are uniting to pursue a common goal: zero-accident work sites.

Contractors and subcontractors that often vie for jobs are sharing their safety secrets and finding ways to improve workplace safety around the city. That includes both technical training in use of things like gloves, scaffolds, ladders and first aid, as well as a change in mindset, said Steve Clem, vice president of preconstruction for Skanska USA Building.

suffered more fatalities than any other industry, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The top cause of construction deaths was falls. A cultural shift is needed, Clem said, to make safety a shared goal.

“It obviously continues to be a dangerous profession,” he said. “Even companies that have good safety records are still struggling to get to the point where we are each investing time, effort and money into new programs and policies each on our own. What if we shared our ideas? We would be that much more effective.”

On job sites, Clem said, that means leaders being active and crews looking out for each other.

“Compliance doesn’t get you there,” he said. “Following the rules, checking the boxes – you might cut corners when no one is looking. Changing the culture is when you do the right thing when no one is looking.”

To encourage builders’ commitment to change, the – an 85-member nonprofit – is promoting Construction Safety Week, as declared by Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.

“We said, ‘Hey, we’re the spokesperson for industry safety in Portland – let’s get on board with this,’ ” said Clem, board president of the SafeBuild Alliance. “The mayor issued a proclamation. A number of contractors and subs across the city are doing something special from ladder and scaffold safety to emergency preparedness. It’s generated a lot of buzz.”

The event is geared toward changing the culture of safety on construction work sites so that it becomes more integral to daily work flows, said Karen Blythe, SafeBuild Alliance’s executive director.

“Construction is typically one of the most dangerous industries, so it’s important that everybody do what they can to have their job sites safe and secure,” she said. “While the construction industry is coming out of recession, we need to pay more attention to safety and changing the culture so that we don’t fall back to the old habits of high incident rates and complacency where injuries were just a cost of doing business.”

Companies are changing their mindset from tolerance of accidents to realization that all accidents are preventable, said Brett Dutra, a Hoffman Construction Co. superintendent for work at Oregon Health & Science University.

“In the big picture, we’re not going to settle for injuries,” he said. “Twenty years ago, someone might have said, ‘Oh well, I got injured.’ Today, it’s a complete culture shift. No injuries are acceptable.”

At OHSU and the Intel work site this week, several builders – including Skanska, Hoffman and INLINE Commercial Construction Inc. – are joining subcontractors such as Charter Mechanical, Oregon Electric Group and TCM in safety training and team building activities. INLINE crews are starting every shift with a safety meeting to bring issues to the surface, said Pat McLean, general superintendent and safety director.

“Our desire is that safety becomes integrated in everything we do,” he said.

INLINE requires its crews to arrive with a pretask safety plan every day, and be able to adjust that plan when conditions change, McLean said.

“That means taking a minute and figuring out what they’re going to do differently so they can maintain a high level of safety,” he said.

However, a plan isn’t enough, Dutra said. It’s important to know how to use equipment properly.

“There is a right way and a wrong way to use it,” he said of the Baker scaffold, an all-purpose tower that can easily roll or collapse if not used correctly.

On Tuesday, workers learned the manufacturer’s guidelines for setting up and elevating the scaffold. On Wednesday, they learned about glove awareness.

“Hand cuts are the most common thing we get on sites,” Dutra said. “You have to fit the glove to the task you’re doing or you’ve got a false sense of safety.”

Safety break

Oregon OSHA on May 14 will hold Safety Break for Oregon. Businesses representing various industries will hold safety trainings and discuss safety issues. For more information, visit .