An outstanding safety program protects not only workers but also the profit margins and the reputations of the general contractor and the owners and developers they serve. Having an excellent internal safety program is not enough; the subcontractors who are so vital to the safe, efficient completion of the work must also fully understand the requirements, the expectations and the law in order for the work to be completed on time, on budget and with zero injuries.

As profit margins are squeezed and allowances for general conditions are all but eliminated, many general contractors are looking for ways to save on overhead in order to gain the financial advantage that will secure them the bid. Unfortunately, many look at the safety department, if they have one, as a convenient place to cut. This not only shortchanges the safety on the job site and the safety of the workers, but may lead to losses far in excess of the payroll cost of a safety department.

Such general contractors may base the decision to cut on safety expenses on their internal losses, which may be minimal due to the management nature of most general contracting jobs. What they fail to consider, however, is how a lack of safety diligence on the part of subcontractors may lead to expensive legal costs, such as the defense of lawsuits filed by subcontractor employees or third-party liability claims from tenants or members of the general public, as well as bad public relations for the general contractor and owner. The general contractor who fails to realize that the company's good name rests on the ability and safety record of its subcontractors is a general contractor who is waiting to fail.

As a general contractor, you must understand that although your name goes on the finished product, the success of the project does not depend on you alone. The performance of each of your subcontractors is crucial to the project being completed on time, on budget and safely. General contractors are hired to meet the owner's expectations, not to give excuses. Any failure on the part of a subcontractor points to a failure on general contractor's part to manage--a position that is unacceptable.

When it comes to safety, Sweetwater Construction Corp. has brought our subcontractors into the company fold. We make our safety decisions transparent by providing our subcontractors with clear expectations from the bid process on, including reviewing the site specifics during kick-off meetings, thoroughly auditing and assessing subcontractors' performance and providing the vital training and support necessary for subcontractors to effectively manage their workers.

We have developed a Safety Incident Tracking System that continuously monitors subcontractor safety records for use in selecting subcontractors during the bid process and as a performance appraisal tool for project management. The SITS program includes data from subcontractors' OSHA 300 forms that we use to compare the number of work-related injuries per employee hours worked when working for us to the data when working on their own or for other general contractors.

Such an analysis provides an understanding of how well your safety programs are working by showing a measurable trend when working for you by comparison to other general contractors. Your preliminary data can show that subcontractors have fewer incidents when working for you than when working for other general contractors. By going beyond EMR (an insurance industry safety standard) review, you can learn more about your subcontractors, thus identifying where you can assist them.

We also conduct a thorough review of subcontractors' internal safety programs with the intent of determining whether they have a functioning program or a paper program--one that gathers dust on the shelf rather than being a living document. Management commitment is key to the success of any program, and our review of subcontractors' internal safety programs ensures that we have full participation of subcontractor management in our programs.

Additionally, we incorporate our subcontractor base into our ongoing internal safety training programs. We invite our subcontractor partners to participate in our internal 10- and 30-hour Safety Standards for Construction classes, and we offer these classes at a discounted rate to subcontractors who choose to hold them internally. Also, we work with our insurance carrier to bring subcontractors who need extra training into our internal classes at no charge to them.

The commitment of time and money to a safety program provides you with a better-trained, higher quality subcontractor, which in turn provides you with the added benefit of improved project completion and higher customer satisfaction.

Relationships with subcontractors are the linchpin of your ability to consistently bid and win projects. As the late business consultant W. Edwards Deming, widely considered the father of quality management, said, "The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs." Your established relationships are not only in your clients' and your subcontractors' best interests, they are what set you apart from other general contractors.

Patrick D. Moore is environment, health and safety director at Sweetwater Construction Corp. in Cranbury. The views expressed here are the author's own.