9th September 2019 by Construction Tech Review
In the midst of a massive boom, the construction landscape is still ripe for disruption. The demand for top-notch quality for construction companies is greater than ever with evaluations being based on the highest level of adherence to safety while performing a job as well as the record of regulatory fines. With quality, cost, and safety being paramount, companies need to excel at safety in order to compete for these bids.
With safety as their “lifeblood and passion,” environmental health and safety firm OSEA gives companies and individuals instant access to safety experts via their Safety Badger application to allay their safety concerns. “The Safety Badger app is extremely affordable. At less than a cup of coffee a day, it can save lives and money. Our mission is to leverage technology to make every jobsite in America safer,” remarks Joseph Coniglio, President of OSEA and Co-Founder of Safety Badger.
To illustrate Safety Badger’s functionality and benefits, Coniglio cites a customer instance where a quality control inspector was sent to conduct an inspection on a roof, but a sign stopped her in front of huge satellite dishes and antennas, warning her not to cross. Torn between getting her job done and worrying about her safety, the employee sent a picture to one of the seven safety managers of the company as well as to the Safety Badger app enquiring whether to go ahead. Within minutes she received a response from the app advising her not to cross unless she was protected with the right equipment or the hazard had been neutralized. As she went down to the host employer, their response corresponded with that of the app. In the end, Safety Badger’s swift reply saved the employee from a potential accident or grave injury.
What speaks for itself about Safety Badger’s credibility is their capability to yield quick responses no matter which part of the world an individual resides. With the app, users can take a picture and ask a question about a specific or general safety concern, to which they are guaranteed a reply in less than 15 minutes from an industry expert. “Our safety experts are not simply citing regulations when people pose questions, rather we’re providing real world relevant experiences and solutions to mitigate the specific hazard,” says Joseph Coniglio.
For proactive safety, OSEA provides safety consulting, along with safety training and onsite safety management. The training can range from basic awareness level and out- of-the-box training, all the way to competency levels such as NFPA 70E, lockout/tagout, authorized effected scaffold, CPR/ AED, even covering workplace violence, sexual harassment, and active shooter training. The company brings together a team of more than 35 industry professionals most of which are 15 year veterans with a lot of experience to offer a hands-on training experience. To serve clients that require onsite support for their safety challenges, OSEA provides full or part-time safety officers for both large and small scale projects according to their requirements. “We provide top notch safety professionals to all our client projects, these folks really are the best in the game. We separate ourselves from the pack by our quality. I seek out military and civil service veterans in my industry as they tend to have the team mentality and motivation I demand in my employees. Recently, we had 5 safety managers working for a single client on a massive project and with our support they went over 1 million man hours without a single injury,” cites Joe.
On the reactive safety front, the company helps clients facing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines or other regulatory charges or infractions; with a team of experts who scour through the details to come up with a strong defense. “We get calls from new prospects when they find themselves in trouble with OSHA and we help them through that process and then support change within the organization to ensure they don’t get into that situation again. I can say, in my 15 years of being at OSEA, none of our clients had been cited during an OSHA inspection on their site and it’s because we are great at creating a proactive solution for our clients so that they don’t have any troubles with regulatory infractions,” extols Coniglio. Now imagine that you’re in the middle of a project in Florida or South Carolina, for example and OSHA shows up on your site. Do you know what to do? Do you know what you can say? If it’s your first experience of a government safety inspection, you might find yourself in a little bit of a panic. First off, inspections can be nerve wrecking, but the possibility of getting fined in dollar amounts that could cripple your business is of more importance. Now, imagine you have Safety Badger on that site, OSHA shows up and with a click of a button you’re on the phone with a safety expert who has been through dozens of these and he/she is walking you through the process. Again a few dollars a month could save you literally thousands.
OSEA is always breaking new ground, trying to find new areas to be in. “Every dollar that we make, we pour back into the company to take our niche of safety consulting and expand it beyond our service offering. The success of our business is our service, product and team. We have put together the best team to accomplish this mission,” says Coniglio. With the publicly released version one of Safety Badger being well received in the construction industry, the company is working on some really exciting developments for version two. In further updates, OSEA is slated to release short video based safety toolbox talks among other enhancements in the application.