Case Study: William A. Berry & Son
Industry Safety Leader William A. Berry & Son Uses Vela Systems Field Software to Improve Safety Verification and Subcontractor Accountability
Construction Management Firm Drives a Consistent Field Safety Approach that Enables Personnel to be More Productive
William A. Berry & Son, Inc. (Berry) is a well-respected New England-based global construction management firm that is the only construction manager in the country to receive the Liberty Mutual Gold Award for Safety. The 46th ranked contractor for Design- Build and the 9th ranked Green Contractor by ENR Magazine, Berry consistently delivers the highest quality work on projects for many prominent hospitals, educational institutions and landmarks.
Berry ensures that its worksites are safe through its award-winning, in-house "Q Four Safety Program." However, managing the mountains of paper that this program creates was almost another program all by itself. Keeping on the top of documents slowed the process down and required significant resources to maintain. Also, since all of the safety information was on paper, it was almost impossible to measure subcontractor performance across projects.
Vela Systems: At the Heart of Berry's Safety Program
Berry adopted Vela Systems' mobile field management software as a solution. The Vela Safety Inspection Module is an integral component of Berry's Q Four Program, and is also part of the larger Vela Systems mobile software suite for field management. This suite puts all the contents of a trailer's file cabinet, including the tube of drawings and field notebooks, onto an easy-to-use Tablet PC. "We can see the screen clearly whether we're outside in full sun or inside a building," said Michael Willett, project director for the Brigham and Women's Hospital new cardiovascular center in downtown Boston. "And because we can write directly on the screen with a special pen, it feels a lot like using pencil and paper, which makes it easy to learn."
Automation of Safety Benefits the Field and Executives
"When you're doing a walkthrough, it's easy to become distracted and lose your place in a paper document," said Willett. "And once you finish, you've got to get all that paper back to someone who will transcribe it into the master document." Vela Systems also provides Berry's executives with visibility. For example, Berry can manage safety compliance for sub-contractors across a portfolio of over 70 jobs. Plus, the software automatically creates an auditable trail of consistent, repeatable processes that gives owners visibility into safety performance and helps protect against lawsuits. "Our clients appreciate being able to see, concretely, how we're ensuring the safest possible work environment," said Peter Campot, CEO at Berry. "From the outset, the audit trail showed its value to our legal team and now it has become a standard for executives." Likewise, Ralph DiNapoli, Berry's safety director, said that Vela Systems gives him visibility into safety across jobs and subcontractors, quickly alerting him to those that require immediate attention.
"Vela makes it easy to track safety on job sites and that's important because I can't be everywhere at once," said DiNapoli. "I can run reports to look at deficiencies on job sites and, if there are trends, we have a safety meeting to talk about why this issue is important and understand why it's coming up. If there's a dispute, I now have all the OSHA standards right at my fingertips, so I can pull the ruling right up. And after the meeting, I can use the Vela to make sure that any issues are taken care of."
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