Dallas

Legacy West Developer Steps-Up Safety Training

The building boom happening along Texas Highway 121 in Collin County is mind-boggling.

Liberty Mutual Insurance, JP Morgan Chase and Toyota are all building huge new campuses in Legacy West on the corner of the Dallas North Tollway and Texas 121 in Plano.

Commercial real estate company KDC is smack dab in the middle of all it.

"We're building the new North American corporate headquarters for Toyota. It's about two million square feet. We're building a regional facility for Liberty Mutual. It's about a million square feet. We're about to start one that I can't name at the moment that's also about a million square feet," said Don Mills, executive vice president for KDC.

Those projects put people to work, and KDC is part of the effort to teach workers how to do those jobs safely.

"We've adopted the Safety First program that TEXO and the large contractors and subcontractors in the market have developed to give the workers who come on our sites a baseline of knowledge. So that when they get there, they understand how to keep themselves safe, hopefully how to watch out for folks they are working with and keep each other safe," explained Mills.

TEXO is the North Texas construction association and represents general contractors and specialty contractors. Safety First is a program started three years ago by the member contractor groups to train workers in commercial construction.

"They saw a need to raise the level of safety training that was happening in our industry," said Meloni McDaniel, TEXO President and CEO. "So, they took it upon themselves to create something that tested the comprehension of our workforce."

The result is a hands-on, interactive orientation based off the 10-hour training model established by the federal Office of Safety and Health Administration.

"We've added a comprehension component to it," said McDaniel. "So, they're actually tested after each of the 10 modules, and then there's the hands-on component for four of the 10 modules where they come into the safety lab and they put on harnesses, inspect ladders, inspect harnesses, hard hats."

McDaniel said in three years, 12,000 workers have been through the Safety First program. General contractors and subcontractors are responsible for training workers as mandated by OSHA. McDaniel said KDC is the first developer in the region to join the push for training.

"Now we're entering a new era where KDC has mandated TEXO Safety First training for all their projects, so it raises the level of what the general contractor performs on site, "said McDaniel.

"It doesn't take the place of site-specific training which we still do to get people acclimated, because all sites are different with their own specific risks and things you have to make people aware of," said Mills. "But this gets individuals ready to perform on a construction site safely." 

Mills said there's already proof the extra training for workers is a smart investment. 

"On one (job site) in particular, we've about the to hit the million man-hour threshold, which is a pretty big marker of how huge the project is, and we've had two lost time accidents," said Mills.

"The bottom line to this is we are ALL responsible for safety on our projects.  We at KDC have chosen to take our participation to a different level but it takes all of the players in a project to make safety work," said Mills. 

Pablo Alaverez, the safety trainer for TEXO, said the primary message he wants workers to hear is that they have a right to speak up and ask to be trained. 

"That's one of the biggest mistakes we see in the field. When we walk the job sites and we inspect the tools and the inspect the employees, that's the first mistake we see." said Alvarez. "Don't be scared. Don't be afraid. You have the right to be trained. You have the right to know."

"Right now, we're in a boom like we've never seen in Dallas-Fort Worth. Between our general contractors and specialty contractors, they are beyond capacity. So we are raising the awareness of why you've got to pay attention every day on the job site, "said McDaniel. "You need to train every work who steps onto your job site. No untrained workers should be on your job site."

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