All five levels of structure at the Consolidated Rental Car Facility are in place, and the crews who built them have done it without a single lost-time injury. It is an internal milestone, not a trophy. It was earned one shift at a time, many of them overnight, beside terminal roadways and an airport that never stopped running.
A job site with an airport for a neighbor
Building next to a busy airport brings hazards most job sites never see. Shuttle buses and passenger traffic on roads that cannot close. Height limits for cranes set by the flight paths overhead. A loose piece of debris that would be harmless anywhere else can end up on a roadway or an apron. And every delivery has to fit around an airport's own schedule. The team built its safety plan around those facts, level by level.
- Pre-task planning every shift. Each crew walked its work area and reviewed the hazards before starting, and changed the plan when traffic patterns or weather did.
- Crane and height discipline. Every pick was planned inside the airspace limits agreed with the airport, with lift plans, exclusion zones and a signal person on every lift.
- Debris and edge control. Covered loads, daily sweeps of haul routes, tethered tools at height and edge protection on every open deck kept people and materials where they belonged.
- Stop-work authority. Anyone on the site, from a first-week laborer to a trade partner foreman, could stop the work. When they did, the response was a thank you.
- One standard for everyone. Trade partners worked under the same orientation, badging, expectations and daily huddles as our own crews.
Nobody on this job worked safely for a milestone. They did it so everyone could go home in the morning. The milestone is just what that looks like added up.
Safety manager, Tum Harry
Fit-out to go
A milestone like this can make a team comfortable, and comfort is a hazard of its own. The team marked the day with a crew breakfast, then went straight back to the morning huddle. Fueling, the car-wash bays, the covered link to the terminals and the systems that run the building bring their own risks, and the expectations do not change. Our thanks go to every crew member and trade partner on the project for the care they bring to each other every shift.
