ASCCSAFE Fall 2023
Cassie Hilaski, VP of Safety and Health, Nibbi Brothers Concrete
In September 2023, Nibbi started requiring all individuals on our jobsites (including subcontractors, vendors, clients, inspectors, and visitors) to make the switch from hard hats to safety helmets. But the journey started in 2018.
As part of our constant pursuit to provide the best, most innovative safety equipment for our employees, Nibbi noticed when one contractor started wearing safety helmets in lieu of conventional hard hats. Intrigued, we started to investigate and talked to that contractor about why and how they had made the switch. Unlike conventional hard hats, safety helmets are rated for impact protection on all sides (not just the top) and are equipped with a chin strap to ensure the helmet doesn’t fall off during a fall. According to NIOSH, construction workers sustain more traumatic brain injuries than employees in any other industry and represent one quarter of all construction fatalities. More than half of fatal work-related traumatic injuries are a result of falls – particularly from roofs, ladders, and scaffolds.
By June 2018, our Safety Field Operations Manager started to wear a KASK safety helmet to assess it. After a few months of very comfortable and enjoyable fit (as well as some good-natured ribbing like, “did you bike to work today?” or “you off to hike a mountain?”), we selected about ten tradespeople to try the helmets. We chose individuals we knew would be open to trying new things and who also tended to be leaders on all fronts including safety.
Over the next year, other employees started requesting the helmets as they heard how comfortable they were from the “trial employees.” Better yet, they recognized the benefit of not having to worry about the helmet falling off when they bent over or looked straight up. This was especially true of Nibbi’s concrete division. In June 2019, our company President, Bob Nibbi, attended the ASSP Safety Conference and spoke with the KASK vendor at the exhibition expo. This convinced him further that making the change to safety helmets would provide significant benefits to our employees and would be worth the much higher cost.
Soon thereafter, Nibbi started to work with KASK to get our logo to the exact specifications we require and select the model number and accessories that would be provided as standard issue for every employee. In the meantime, the senior management team and Safety Department started wearing the safety helmets to model, by example, the upcoming change in equipment. The final order was put into the vendor by early 2020. Unfortunately, the pandemic caused significant delays in shipping from Italy, but all employees were issued safety helmets by the middle of that year. (We are pleased that KASK now has a production facility in Chicago.)
Within the first six months of making the change, we saw returns on our investment. One of our employees suffered a trip and fall from grade, simply from walking through the jobsite. Their pant leg caught on a chain link fence and the force of the fall to the ground caused two broken bones – but no broken head. The employee later thanked the company for having switched to the new safety helmet. “My head was a bit sore from the fall; but I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if my safety helmet had come off! I’m very grateful Nibbi gave us those new helmets!”
A year later saw another significant save from a serious brain injury, or worse, when one of our long-time employees slipped and fell on a flat roof. The miner’s light attached to their helmet flew off about 50 feet, but the helmet remained securely in place. This employee credits the safety helmet for saving their life as they are convinced, they would’ve suffered a brain bleed otherwise. It’s worth noting that this employee had initially been very resistant to wearing the safety helmet when they were first issued.
The next step in our journey has been to require all contractors on Nibbi jobsites to wear safety helmets. When Nibbi started to discuss expanding the safety helmet policy in early 2023, we debated whether we should limit the requirement to trades more prone to falls from heights, or if we should include all individuals. But our experience had already shown us that simple slips and falls from grade could have severe consequences and included employees who didn’t normally perform work at heights. Indeed, according to the National Safety Council, 136 workers were killed in falls on the same level in 2020. Hence, for Nibbi, it came down to the basic premise that we value all life equally in the project. If we felt strongly that the safety helmets could save lives and had experienced that benefit ourselves, then we felt we owed it to all individuals on our jobsites to require the same protection for everyone. Therefore, we decided to roll out safety helmets as a requirement for every individual on our project sites; specifically, “an ANSI Type II or an EN12492 approved safety helmet (rated for vertical, front, back, and side impacts and penetration) with an integrated four-point chin strap tightly attached and secured under the chin.” Adding a chinstrap to a conventional hard hat would not be considered compliant with the new requirement. We chose September 1, 2023, as the implementation date and rolled it out as a zero-tolerance policy.
This last step in our journey required a significant amount of communication with all our subcontractors, owners and vendors. We picked a date that would provide us with at least six months to make the transition. We immediately updated the contract language and bid documents, and created an announcement that explained the who, what, when, how and why behind the change. This announcement was sent to all trade partner executives and project team contacts multiple times over the six months. We also reached out to our clients to request that they require their personnel and third-party inspectors to wear the safety helmets, and we would have available for them during their visits. Every project was provided with at least five visitor helmets for this purpose.
Coincidentally, the date chosen for implementation (9/1/23) happened to be the Friday before Labor Day. This allowed any subcontractors who might still show up unprepared on September 1st (despite our best efforts) to only lose one day of work while they made the adjustment over the three-day holiday weekend (vs. 3-4 days of lost work if implementation had been on a Monday). In addition, every project team was issued an extra ten safety helmets to loan out if needed to keep the work progressing while still ensuring the new policy was fully implemented. All these efforts paid off beyond our best expectations and there were very few people who had to be turned away on September 1st; and only one full crew who needed the loaners.
Overall, the journey has been long but relatively smooth in our transition to better head protection for all individuals on our jobsites. And we are very glad we made the change. Nibbi prides itself on having a very strong safety culture that values our people more than anything else. Therefore, once we determined that the safety helmet was indeed safer and more comfortable for employees to wear, it was an easy decision for us to switch to this better form of protection.
