Background
A regional general contractor engaged Advastar after its experience modification rate rose above 1.0 following two significant incidents. The firm had operated with part-time safety coverage, with project superintendents carrying safety responsibility alongside their production duties and a single corporate safety manager covering all active sites.
The Challenge
The immediate commercial problem was that the firm was being screened out of owner shortlists at prequalification without being told why. Insurance costs had risen and the carrier had begun asking questions the firm could not answer with documentation. The deeper problem was structural: safety had never been anyone’s undivided responsibility, orientation and training records were incomplete and incident investigation had been informal. Any candidate would need to rebuild the function while the firm continued to bid work, and the leadership team had limited appetite for hearing that the causes were organizational rather than accidental.
The Solution
Advastar prioritized candidates who had personally led an experience modification turnaround rather than managed an already-healthy program, which is a much smaller group. We asked each candidate what specifically had changed under them, distinguishing those who had rewritten a manual from those who had changed staffing, reporting and consequence. A corporate EHS director was placed first, then three site safety managers so that part-time coverage on active projects ended rather than being redistributed. Recognizing that the carrier audit would turn on records rather than intent, we also placed a training and orientation coordinator to rebuild documentation from the ground up.
The Outcome
Dedicated safety coverage now exists on every active project. The carrier audit was completed with documentation accepted in full, which had not been achievable before the coordinator hire. The experience modification rate has trended down across two policy periods and the firm has returned to shortlists it had been quietly dropped from.