My career in construction has opened up so many fantastic opportunities over the last 18 years. It has allowed me to participate in cutting-edge projects, work with creative people and get a behind-the-scenes look at fascinating industries. I have been to the tip of a rotating tower crane 10 stories above ground as well as in dark and cramped underground steam tunnels.

Along the way, I have looked for ways to make a lasting impression on people and our community here in Portland. For a long time, I assumed that legacy would come in the form of a building, but I have realized (perhaps because we often demolish obsolete buildings) that buildings last only for a season. The things that outlast buildings and projects are relationships, and I am extremely privileged to be participating in a safety mentorship program created by SafeBuild Alliance and funded through a generous grant from the MDU Foundation.

Ten member companies of SafeBuild Alliance have been partnered with MWESB-certified firms that have self-identified as wanting to take the next steps in their journey to an injury-free workplace. There are several reasons why this program is so unique.

First, it is recognition that safety for one is safety for all. The mentors are freely giving their time and resources to accelerate the progress of their partner firms. This comes in the form of monthly meetings and discussions as well as sharing of actual templates, forms and proven best practice programs that the mentors have used to develop safety cultures. Creating company safety culture is an enormous investment – one that small companies often defer for the more pressing issues of winning and executing work.

Second, it is unique because several of the mentors are partnered with companies that could be future competitors in the same specialty trade. Some people may feel that helping a potential competitor build safely is eliminating a differentiator that could jeopardize selection on new work. The way I see it is that it lifts up both boats in the harbor; the emerging firm benefits from measurable safety performance improvements and the established firm benefits from the credibility that comes from being a mentor.

Last, the program was designed specifically to accelerate the progress of motivated MWESB firms. There is no correlation between MWESB certification and low safety performance; accidents can and do occur at all companies. SafeBuild Alliance desires its membership to reflect the community in which we live, so we saw it as an opportunity to increase the diversity of our membership. The mentorship program has become a member benefit as we all benefit from the increased perspective our new members bring.

Skanska is partnering with Crestview Construction, an earthwork contractor; we are meeting directly with one of the owners, Mark Dominguez. His commitment to his employees is admirable. Although he has a generally good safety record, he has been very transparent that it has been mainly through good luck, and not focused planning. He sees creating a safe work environment as his ethical responsibility to his team; he wants to send each person home at the end of the day the same way they arrived in the morning.

However, Mark has been equally transparent in describing the challenges faced by small businesses. In addition to being the owner, he also is the safety director, business development manager and project manager; plus, he likely fills many other roles as issues arise. He would love to create a safety culture, but he has the very real pressure of staffing jobs and keeping equipment in good working order. I am optimistic that this mentorship program can help provide practical tools for Crestview and that we will all be able to increase our level of commitment to the well-being of our people.

The nine other mentor relationships are developing and going through similar processes. We are all learning from these relationships and have room for improvement. Moving closer to injury-free is a legacy that will endure in Portland and beyond. It is a worthwhile movement in which I am privileged to be involved.

Steve Clem is vice president of preconstruction at Skanska. Contact him at 503-382-0909. He also is president of the SafeBuild Alliance – a nonprofit organization working to achieve incident-free construction projects through the transformation of workplace cultures. For more information or to join, visit www.safebuildalliance.com.

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The Oregon Sustainability Center was pitched by former Portland Mayor Sam Adams and former Gov. Ted Kulongoski as a way to advance the green reputation of the city and state. Instead, it became a reminder of the substantial “green” needed to pay for development of a net-zero commercial building.

Ultimately, the project fell apart as the Oregon Legislature voted not to approve $80 million in bonds.

“Maybe we were trying to do too much too fast,” said Steve Clem, vice president of preconstruction for Skanska USA Building, which was part of the project team. “People in other parts of the state feel like we always get center stage. It never got traction in the Legislature.”

Only two buildings in Oregon – the Hood River Middle School Music and Science Building and Pringle Creek’s Painters Hall in Salem – have received from Seattle-based International Living Future Institute. Nationally, 15 buildings – mostly educational institutions and other commercial structures – have been certified, according to the ILFI.

Certification accounts for multiple factors including energy performance and conservation, and requires buildings to generate at least as much energy as they consume on site. Buildings can qualify after one year of occupancy.

Economics are holding back more commercial net-zero projects from moving forward, Clem said.

“It’s got to make financial sense,” he said. “We can’t just keep doing experimental projects and hope that people continue to invest extra money for the sake of doing the right thing.”

Clem, who co-authored a looking at the costs and incentives of net-zero building development in Washington, D.C., says the status quo could improve via implementation of new policies that provide incentives.

“The story in Portland is that we don’t have a deep green building policy,” he said. “We don’t have a policy that would give incentives for people who want to outperform the sustainability metric.”

The city of Seattle, as part of the program, allows developers to request building code exemptions in exchange for meeting ILFI’s Living Building Challenge. In Portland, no such policy exists, Clem said.

“If you can build an extra floor or two, it becomes very economical when it comes to development,” he said. “The more you can stack on top, the more economical it becomes.”

The Energy Trust of Oregon offers for greater energy efficiency, but they focus more on low-cost efforts rather than design and construction of a net-zero building, said Oliver Kesting, commercial sector lead for the nonprofit. It administers incentive programs for utilities based on federal guidelines.

“As you push further and further into a (highly energy-efficient) building, there may be things that would save energy, but it would come at a cost too high to incentivize because of our cost targets,” he said. “We cannot incentivize it because it would not provide value to the ratepayer.”

The Energy Trust of Oregon rewards projects that exceed code by at least 30 percent; however, net-zero projects, which exceed code by 60 percent or more, are not fully compensated, Kesting said.

“As you get closer and closer to net zero, it’s going to get harder and harder to increase those percentage points,” he said. “As you get further and need to improve the envelope or install better windows – the deeper you get into net zero, the steeper the barriers.”

Some net-zero techniques may not immediately increase energy savings, but create long-term sustainability and should be encouraged through incentives, said Alex Boetzel, chief innovation officer at Green Hammer. He cited envelope glazing, which extends a building’s life span.

“It costs a lot of money, but saves little energy per their calculation,” he said. “This calculation that they’re using falls short. I have a strong belief that we should incentivize those more.”

House Bill 2801, which the Oregon Legislature passed in 2013, could help. The rules of a new program are still being formed, Kesting said, but developers could receive incentives for taking measures such as glazing when they are bundled with other measures that increase energy savings.

Power generation also is a significant hurdle holding back more development of net-zero commercial buildings, Clem said. As buildings increase in size, they need more photovoltaic panels to provide power and feed it back into the grid. Taller buildings are further challenged because one floor of photovoltaic panels feeds only five or six floors of energy usage, he said.

“You can’t really be net zero building by building,” he said. “Either you locate the panels elsewhere or you find a way to share (photovoltaics) between buildings, or it doesn’t work.”

The Hassalo on Eighth project in the Lloyd District is the best example of an integrated approach to water, waste, transportation and power usage connected among different buildings, Clem said.

Before the funding for the Oregon Sustainability Center vanished, the project team had scaled the building to eight stories and 130,000 square feet. The group also was prepared to rely on occupants to further decrease energy usage, said SERA Architects principal Clark Brockman, who worked on the project.

More than 50 percent of the building’s energy consumption would have come from tenants’ usage of computers, phones, heaters and coffee makers, he said.

“What was so interesting working on the OSC was that we met with tenants,” he said. “There is only so much (photovoltaic energy) that you could produce to be net zero. You couldn’t get there without engaging the occupants.”

To achieve net-zero energy usage, requirements were placed on the building’s owner and operator.

“Right now, there aren’t that many owners that are eager to do it,” Brockman said.

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Typically, competitors in the building industry do not share best practices with each other. But for safety, they can make an exception.

The SafeBuild Alliance, an 85-member nonprofit, has created a unique mentorship program in which nine contractors or subcontractors share with nine minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small businesses their methods of facilitating safe workplaces. Over the next 12 months, the partners will discuss both technical and cultural actions needed to improve workplace safety, SafeBuild Alliance board President Steve Clem said.

The basic premise is not for one company to show another how to rewrite its safety manual, said Clem, Skanska USA Building vice president of preconstruction. Rather, the idea is for experienced firms to share lessons learned whenever possible, he said.

“The bigger companies have invested money in consulting and training,” he said. “If there is a form needed, they probably have it. Small businesses meanwhile are just trying to stay in business. Safety takes money, time and effort.”

Each partnership will operate through its own rules. Participants will visit each other’s shop and work sites with the goal to make measurable improvements in safety over the next year.

The SafeBuild Alliance is hoping to generate from each partnership feedback that it can share will all of its members, Clem said.

He stressed that MWESB firms were participating willingly and that their role as mentee had nothing to do with poor safety records. Both sides can learn from each other, he said.

“Our organization (in the past) hasn’t embraced diversity as fully as it should,” he said. “People were contacted and self-identified who were really motivated and concerned about safety.”

The program mentors are: Mortensen Construction, Hoffman Construction, Skanska USA Building, Andersen Construction, McKinstry, TCM, Oregon Electric Group, EC Co. and Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty Co.

The mentees are: Affordable Electric, Inland Electric, PacificMark Construction, Crestview Construction, NWR Construction, Art Cortez Construction, Professional Minority Group, Parrish Excavating and Liberty Steel.

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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 .

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Contracting companies are facing a risky situation as their costs continue to rise faster than the prices they charge for new construction. Oregon firms are adjusting their business plans to suit the weak economy, but overhead fees are shrinking and could lead to trouble down the road – especially if those fees are artificially low, as one regional executive contends.

The latest figures from the Associated General Contractors of America, released earlier this week, indicate that contractors’ overall nonresidential construction costs – including materials, wages and overhead fees – have gone up 4 to 6 percent over the last couple of years. Bid prices are rising, but only by 2 to 3 percent this year – and on the heels of a year of dropping or stagnant prices, according to Ken Simonson, the association’s chief financial officer.

If contractors’ nonresidential construction costs continue to outpace earnings, many businesses may be in danger of shuttering.

“It’s a risky situation if contractors aren’t generating enough cash to replace equipment or cover overhead costs,” said Simonson, who noted that contractors nationwide are being forced to absorb construction price hikes because of weak demand.

The price index for new construction – what contractors charge for projects – is still being suppressed in the regional market, according to Steve Clem, vice president of preconstruction at‘s Oregon office.

The weak economy is making low overhead fees necessary, but Clem agrees with Simonson and said that large companies not making enough money to reinvest in technology and cover overhead costs could be forced to close local branches and that smaller shops could shut down altogether.

Making matters worse, according to Clem, major contracting companies are proposing unreasonably low overhead fees for negotiated contracts – those in which the contractor specifies a price for the client and avoids the bidding process.

“All of the big players in town have the same fee structures for general overhead … and the owner ends up paying for it one way or another,” he said.

Skanska‘s strategy is to educate its clients as to what “the real fee structures are,” Clem said. “When someone proposes a fee of 1.5 percent, there’s more to the story.”

Skanska, in contrast, is aiming for an incremental increase in fees – from 1.5 to 2.5 percent.

“It’s hard for owners to pass up a low fee on proposal day, but when everything is artificially low, (the owner) is making a decision based on a low price up front. But it’s quite possible that there are costs that will be included later that are not apparent to the owner when they first make their decision,” he said.

If contractors continue to underbid on negotiated projects, Clem contends that pent-up costs could lead to a spike in bid prices and fees when the market shifts and confidence increases. Until bid prices and fees rise, however, the pressure on company budgets will continue to mount.

“If the market is going to be so cutthroat that even in a collaborative method of project delivery people are being adversarial, it’s a negative for the entire construction community,” Clem said.

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