When construction veterans Doug Woods, Peter Nosler, and Ron Davidowski founded DPR Construction in 1990, they started with $750,000 in pooled resources and 11 employees working out of one office.
Less than a decade later, DPR became a billion-dollar company. Today this GPRS partner employs nearly 2,000 professionals across 13 offices nationwide and consistently ranks among the top general contractors in the country in their five core markets: advanced technology, healthcare, higher education, life sciences, and commercial.
Woods, Nosler, and Davidowski say it’s because of their dedicated team members that the company has been able to experience such exponential growth and success.
Since the very beginning, keeping those team members safe has been an integral part of DPR’s identity.
“With every project we do, we’re aiming for zero incidents,” explains DPR Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Manager, Sixtus Aliriagwu. “Zero accidents, zero near-misses, and zero unplanned interruptions to business operations… It’s very important to me, as a safety professional, to make sure we’re working safe every day and doing the job perfectly without having any issues or incidents.”
EHS is the department of a company or organization focused on environmental protection, safety at work, occupational health and safety, and compliance to required standards.
DPR’s EHS department aims to make safety something that can be measured and evaluated daily to ensure everyone on the company’s jobsites leaves the same way they arrive.
The contractor’s EHS culture is based on seven fundamentals:
- Safe Mindset – Team members are committed to their own wellbeing and that of others
- Engagement – Team members are actively contributing to an incident-free environment
- Integration – DPR strategically aligns EHS into their entire business and the entire project lifecycle
- Competence – DPR ensures each of its team members has the knowledge, skills, and behaviors to do their jobs safely
- Planning – DPR establishes EHS goals and identifies and mitigates risk in every phase of the project
- Leveraging Data – DPR captures and applies EHS data to influence and drive change
- Continuous Improvement – DPR is committed to improving their culture through continued education, innovation, and the application of lessons learned
In addition to expecting their team members to buy into this safety-first culture, DPR asks its clients to prioritize health and safety when pre-qualifying contractors. This means encouraging them to ask questions not only about injury rates and trends, but also about how the client communicates EHS standards and techniques between their home office and the field.
DPR recognizes that EHS goes hand-in-hand with quality, schedule, and budget, and they ask that anyone they work with commits to regular meetings with project teams and active participation in holding all members accountable.
GPRS Business Development Manager, John Poulson, has extensive experience working with DPR and says their passion for safety is not just talk.
“Their safety managers do an excellent job of keeping safety at the forefront of all construction activities,” he said. “Safety is a buzzword for many contractors, but DPR is committed to keeping their staff and subcontractors safe on the job.”
DPR has earned numerous awards over the years for their commitment to and execution of best safety practices. Their awards include the WWCA Safety Award, the ABC National Award Safety Excellence Award, and the Construction Employers Association Presidents Safety and Excellence in Safety awards (Northern California Region).
“DPR has been great partners of ours, as we have a shared vision of 100% jobsite safety.” – John Poulson, Business Development Manager, GPRS
Safety is at the heart of everything we do at GPRS, and we are proud to partner with companies like DPR Construction who share that passion. Our elite Project Managers use only the most advanced technology to conduct utility locates, concrete scans, video pipe inspections, and other services that ensure our partners such as DPR can Intelligently Visualize The Built WorldTM.
We will soon schedule our second leg of the Safety Tour of America, where we visit with our partners and discuss our shared passion for safety. To register, visit https://www.gp-radar.com/safety-tour-of-america.
You can learn more about DPR by visiting https://www.dpr.com.