Committed to Safety: Active Aggressor Training

Oct. 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people were killed when a man opened fire on a crowd at a music festival in Las Vegas from a hotel room.
July 1, 2017: 28 people were hurt when someone opened fire in a nightclub in Little Rock, Arkansas. Police believe it may have been gang related.
June 30, 2017: A New York physician entered a hospital and opened fire killing one person and injuring six others before killing himself. The doctor was a former employee of the hospital and believed his former co-workers were responsible for him losing his job
Jan. 6, 2017: A 26 year-old man said he was working on behalf of ISIS when he opened fire in the baggage claim area of a Florida airport. He killed five people and injured others.

These are just a few of the recent stories of active aggression. There is really no pattern. No way to predict. Our companies, our jobsites and our employees could be at risk at any time. With that said we don’t think much about an attack as an imminent danger. Our jobsites, our corporate offices, we aren’t thinking about what could end up being the unthinkable.

At LPR, we don’t anticipate that there would be an active aggressor attack at our Loveland offices or at any of our projects located in areas across the map. But in the current world of uncertainty, we wanted to give our employees the tools to act swiftly and in their best interest if something ever happened.Tapping into our local law enforcement resources, LPR’s Safety Director Pat Hagan worked collaboratively with Master Police Officer, Dave Sloat of the Loveland, Colorado Police Department to evaluate our Loveland office and, as a result provide ‘Active Aggressor Training’ for our employees. Having a deep understanding of security and how to neutralize threats, Officer Sloat provided recommendations on how to protect ourselves in the event of an active aggressor.

One of our employees was directly impacted by the October shooting in Las Vegas as his daughter called him directly from the festival during the incident. This hits close to home and I am sure that there are a hundred stories just like this one that I don’t know.
LPR’s Core Value Committed to Safety goes beyond site-safety. Here’s hoping we never need to use our new training.

LPR Boasts 2018 Board of NCCER Trustees Chairman, Rocky Turner

LPR and Longbow Industries are proud to boast that our CEO, Rocky Turner, has been appointed Chairman of the 2018 Board of NCCER Trustees. LPR’s continued commitment to a cutting-edge apprentice program for our ironworkers, as well as other trades, facilitates our continued commitment to being both an NCCER Assessment Center and a Training Center. Currently we have apprentices in all levels of the program and assigned mentors, journeyman and above, to answer their content questions, serve as proctors and instructors, and provide the hands-on site-based training we know is most effective for our craft workers. Looking to partner closely with local high schools, Front Range Community College and other community programs supporting the craft trades, we hope to develop a ‘grow our own’ program utilizing a strong NCCER curriculum, coupled with training provided by some of the most skilled ironworkers in the industry.

LPR’s Craft Program is managed by Christopher Schock. Please feel free to contact him directly if you have questions about utilizing NCCER curriculum for workforce development or if you are interested in a skilled trade career with LPR. He can be contacted at training@lprconstruction.com.

Celebrating Results

Written by Pat Hagan, Director of Safety LPR/Longbow

LPR Construction is proud to announce our achievement in Total Recordable Incident Rate Reduction for yearend 2017. We completed the year with a TRIR of 0.38. Although we realize that recordable rates are a “Lagging” indicator, we believe our success is deeply rooted in our LPR Core Values. The elements of which drive our process, methodology and who we are as a company. Our commitment to ensure everything we do protects our employees, customers and the public is always in the forefront.

How those Core Values relate to our reduction in the recordable rate can best be explained by reviewing each value:

Committed to Safety
• Our commitment to safety starts at the top with our Executive Management Team. They are engaged in every step of creating, socializing, implementing and evaluating our process. They drive participation from job site audits, incident reviews, project/supervisor training, to our craft listening tour. This is the example that is set every day for our work force.

We Over Me
• The word “I” is not in our vocabulary. Everything we do from education for our craft on hazards associated with their work, to detailing safe steps in the work processes that drive our business, is a Team Effort.

Competitive Sprit
• We apply this in how we approach our business regarding finding ways to better the safety of our craft and staff. We never settle for the status quo, but rather always search out better ways to protect our most valuable asset…Our Employees!

Do What You Say
• We tell our craft and staff that we are “committed to their safety, and want them to go home the same way they showed up”. Although that may sound cliché, we apply that to the development of all processes, programs, training, etc. I order to better protect the employees of LPR.

Be Part of the Solution
• We engage our craft to participate in all aspects of safety, from driving the responsibility to “never walk by a hazard” to performing audits and job site safety briefings. We value input from all of our employees, making adjustments for improvement.

Driven to Learn and Share Knowledge
• This is where the ‘rubber meets the road’ for eliminating hazards that injure employees. We are constantly researching new ideas for safety training, equipment, methods, etc. and leveraging technology to apply it to our business. Our founder invented a fall protection device for steel erection that has become the industry standard in protecting workers from falls!

So, when people say “TRIR is a Lagging Indicator” I just point to the Core Values that drive our business every day!

 

 

 

Technology and Social Media: Powerful Tools for LPR

The construction industry has the reputation of being a hard hat, hands-on, trade specific and ‘blue collar’ business.  Many ironworkers, when asked why they do the work they do, will talk about a time when they started as a laborer, got up on some steel, and they were hooked.  One of our apprentices who just completed his NCCER apprentice training, becoming a full journeyman, shared his thoughts:

“Oh boy!!! The feeling you get watching pieces fly into your position to connect.  The feet, the miles of weld you lay.  The feeling of being the baddest trade ever to step onto any construction site.  The feeling of other trades watching you as you’re 10 feet or 400 feet off the ground.  That is the feeling like no other.  Being an Ironworker is not for everybody.  But those who are, are incredible human beings.”

But even though construction continues to be the choice of hard working people, interested in building with their hands and being proud of a finished product that they can point to, they are finding a place and purpose for tablets and software, as well as for Facebook and Yammer.

Many companies have issued iPads and tablets to their foremen and other field leaders in an effort to bring technology into the business.  Some have done it better than others.  The organizations that have provided the hardware but have had little to no training on the software and its purpose, have found that the devices ride around in the back of the truck, while notebooks, spreadsheets and plans sit on the front seat, dusty and stained with dirt, signs that they are highly utilized by the company.  Other companies are purposeful about the software that they choose and use.  They provide comprehensive training and there is an expectation that the field will shift to the new programs.  These are the companies that no longer have offices full of rolled up plans or paper timecards.

At LPR our foremen are issued tablets with software such as PlanGrid and Mobile Field Manager.  These programs are just a few of the applications that allow foremen to instantly access plans while out on the site and allow real time input of employee hours.  We also issue these devices to our craft mentors, who provide on-site guidance and training for our field apprentices. Our craft training model relies on access to NCCER ‘book-skill work’ on our LMS (learning management system) and mentors can utilize the tablets to support apprentices in access to their e-learning, as well as reinforce concepts and skills that are more knowledge than performance based.  In addition the mentor can review his/her mentee’s OJT hours to ensure they are having the opportunity to get the work that will move them along in their programs.  Laptops, tablets and access to smart phones allow all employees in the company to hear a quarterly ‘State of the Company’ update from our company president.

Although social media is not new, identifying a productive application of these ‘open’ communication tools has been challenging in all businesses but especially for the construction industry.  Posting updates on Facebook and LinkedIn may seem without purpose but the feedback and exposure gained from sharing our projects and the great things about our employees has been validating. LPR is also using ‘texts’ as a way to immediately communicate with the whole company, as well as individual groups such as our craft tradesmen.  Consistent and informative updates through texting helps to bridge what can be a communication chasm between corporate and the project sites.  Employees at every level can be better informed and hear a consistent message or update, improving the level of employee engagement and the feeling of being bigger than the whole.

Next steps for LPR involve the ‘Yammer’ technology platform, with the hopes of providing an open communication forum for anyone working with LPR.  Every employee will have the opportunity to provide company feedback, comment on questions posted and have the opportunity to create groups or ‘small communities’ where the sharing of ideas can be done in real time.  Implementing a system where there is open conversation relinquishes a level of company control over information and messaging, but allows for open and candid conversation within the company.  As a result, we hope to be able to communicate better within all divisions and provide updates and new initiatives to all employees.