68. Keeping Your Sites Safe With Luke Williams

If you had have told me, you know, four or five years ago that I'd be pedalling QR codes around the world, I would have said that you're crazy. You know, accidents will always happen. So what are you doing to minimise the likelihood of that happening? The engagement of subcontractors inherently creates risk. Ultimately, health and safety is about active safety management. It's the ultimate shortcut that ticks all the boxes. Someone who operates our platform is three to four times less likely to have an incident on their construction site.

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Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales processes, financials, operations and marketing. We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builder Secrets podcast. Joining us today is Luke Williams, General manager for Hazardco. Luke, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your role, and a little bit about Hasico?

Yeah, absolutely. Hey, thanks for having me on Bosco. It's exciting to be on the podcast and hopefully I can share some value. So Hazardco is a digital health and safety platform focused on the residential construction industry. So we made a pretty conscious decision early on in our journey as an enterprise to focus on small and medium residential builders and ANA contractors. So additions and alterations. From my point of view, I'm the general manager at HazardCo. I started the Australian business so I was kind of first person on the ground and set it up from. From day one. So I've done everything in Hazardco from, you know, sticking QR codes onto site signage boards and sending them off with Australia Post, all the way through to running the business now that we have about 30 people in the team. And my background is very much the building industry. So I've worked in a number of roles throughout the construction industry, from materials manufacturers through to wholesale distribution and run my own businesses as well. So it's been a fun ride and it's going well.

I smile when you said QR codes because there was a back in the day when people would look at a QR code and go, what's that? And now even our grandma knows how to use it. Thanks to current events.

Unbelievable. Yeah, unbelievable. If you had have told me, you know, four or five years ago that I'd be pedaling QR codes around the world, I would have said that you're crazy and, you know, get out of your time machine.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. How did Hazard Corp get started? You talked a little bit about health and safety and digital transformation, which surprisingly, they go hand in hand. But how did this idea come to par and why is it so essential for builders today?

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So 14 or 15 years ago, a couple of tradies in New Zealand were having a chat, probably over a beer. I definitely wasn't there. But having a chat over a beer about all of the list of requirements that commercial construction companies and their friends in commercial construction had to do from a health and safety and a risk management point of view. And imagine if we had to do all of that. And almost as soon as the thought came into their mouths and out as words, they said, that can't be right. Surely, surely that's wrong. And sure enough, the list of requirements and what you have to do is the same in residential and construction. So they set about on a journey to make health and safety easier. Construction industry has very much always been a she'll be right kind of mentality and that's certainly not how health and safety should be viewed from a construction point of view. And they started their journey really around enabling awareness and education of people on site to do better health and safety. And then we got some incredibly talented and intelligent investors on board that saw the opportunity to digitize the offering. And then four years ago we entered the Australian market with a purely digital platform for builders. And it now takes care of their end to end safety needs for residential construction sites.

I've always wondered what's likely to go wrong on a residential building site or the most common injury on site that you've seen. I mean, obviously you're building a tool to prevent that. But what are some of the potential dangers on a site?

Yeah, absolutely. So construction is a particularly high risk industry and it can be from the most benign things. So slips and trips are right up there in the rankings as far as accidents that happen on site. And that just starts from quality, site maintenance and cleanliness. But slips and trips, electrical ladders and fall from heights. Fall from heights, always a big one and it's always a massive one that the regulators are looking at as well. So SafeWork Australia and the state bodies are looking at that. They're the things that can happen and it can be minor all the way to Serious in terms of, of the incident that can happen on site, particularly once you're, once you're working at Hybe.

Obviously I'm going to ask the obvious question here, but what are the risks that builders face when it comes to health and safety on the work sites? And if they're not paying attention to it, what are some of the biggest impacts to their business?

Yeah, absolutely. So some of the things that they are thinking about but probably not executing on, terrifically site specific. So site to site risks. One of the things about construction is that it's dynamic. Right. That's one of the things that makes it interesting. It's an exciting industry to work in, but every site is dynamic. You know, you walk onto a building site, the same site today and the same site tomorrow, something will have changed. And so the need to consider risk from site to site is super important. Where we see that fall down and the emphasis isn't on managing risk consistently. So SafeWork Australia and the state bodies would be looking at risk from three points of view. You know, you've got to consider it in the first place, then you've got to identify it and then you have to control it. So, you know, if you're not considering risk from job to job, that's where risk literally starts to creep into the things that you're doing and the impacts can be massive. You know, we've seen businesses go out of business, into liquidation, close down due to the size of the fines all the way through to, you know, things like stop having to stop construction on your sites. And, you know, there's a people impact as well. And from our point of view, we don't focus as much on the, on the legislative impact, so the financial implications, but the weight of personal burden that comes with having people injured inside your business or on your work sites is pretty huge. Yeah.

That could also impact the culture of the workplace as well. Right. So are most of the sites that you work with safe? I know it's a tricky question to ask, but I'm just curious, when you look at your clientele, where's the validation of the technology?

I guess, yeah, absolutely. Great question. Fair question. So what we look for and what we achieve, and we can see it in the data, is improving. So are all of the sites that operate with HazardCo safe? It would be very hard to say, yes, they're all 100% safe and nothing's ever going to happen. The pursuit of zero harm, you know, I really believe is the pursuit of maximum minimization of harm. Accidents will Always happen. So what are you doing to minimize the likelihood of that happening? And that's something that we've been able to achieve at HazardCo. So what we can see, you know, we've got 10,000 construction businesses across Australia and New Zealand that operate on our platform. And then the industry itself has tens of thousands of businesses of which data is readily available. So the data for likelihood of incidents or frequency of incidents in the construction industry more generally is available. And then we've got that data for our subset of that industry. So the reality is, at the end of the day, a HazardCo member, someone who operates our platform, is three to four times less likely to have an incident on their construction site if they've implemented the platform well. And the better they implement it, the higher that likelihood decrease. So the more that likelihood decreases, I should say.

And what should builders pay attention to? Because I'm assuming that yes, there's technology and we're trying to automate this, but at the same time there's a human component to this. Right, so what should they pay attention to when they're working with you?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two key things that I would suggest that they really start thinking about. One is site the site specific nature of what they do. So the fact that they're operating multiple sites or their different jobs from job to job. And the second thing is, is people, you know, like you just said, Bosco, you know, the engagement of subcontractors inherently creates risk. You're giving the task of doing a job on your site to somebody else and the set and forget principle just really doesn't apply. And so part of the journey that a customer would go on coming on board with HazardCo is not only streamlining their systems and their processes and unlocking a huge amount of time efficiencies, but also that education and awareness journey that they can go on in terms of, okay, you know, I've got a duty of care for my subcontractors, but they've also got a responsibility as well. So, you know, it's not all on me as a builder, it's not all on them as a subcontractor, how do we engage with them? And then ultimately health and safety is about active safety management. So it's about doing the doing. And then the compliance part is just being able to show that you can, that you've done the doing. Yeah, the daily habits, the weekly habits, the monthly things that you can do to consider risk, identify risk and control risk, and then having a simple, easy system that can Capture and surface that as well.

Do you feel that the health and safety side of things in the industry has evolved? Is it more proactive? I'm assuming the tool that you're bringing is a lot more about prevention and proactivity as well. But where do you see the health and safety processes currently in place?

Yeah, so the industry has certainly evolved. So, you know, in New Zealand, five years ago, we saw changes in legislation wa. So Western Australia is just going through that at the moment. We've moved to harmonise across Australia and there have been recent history. So legislation is evolving all the time. And that's a really tricky thing. You know, when you're a carpenter or a tradesperson and you get your building license and you go out and you want to start running construction jobs, you certainly don't go and sit down and read 180 pages of Health and safety regulations and then the next 20 pages, when they get issued, and they get issued in the worst language possible that, you know, you can't understand. So a big part of what we do is our health and safety advisory. So we've got health and safety consultants that sit in our. In our offices in Australia and New Zealand and are literally there waiting for the phone calls of our members to help them out as safety consultants. But also they're digesting all of that crazy legislation and putting it back to our members, servicing it to our members in a really consumable way so that they're educated. And so what we see from a trend point of view is the easier it is to understand, the more people do it, the easier it is to do, the better the outcomes, the less risk, but also then the less chance of running foul of the regulator. And then from a regulator point of view, they can kind of go on and off between an education focus. So they're really just trying to make sure that everyone knows what they should be doing to a compliance focus, which is really about, you know, we're going to catch out the people that aren't doing the right thing. And we're probably in a phase of, and certainly moving into a phase of compliance. They're about enforcement and they're looking at making sure that everything's been done, it's been done.

Right.

And wanting to check in on sites. They're hiring more safety inspectors from a safe work and worksafe point of view, and they're more active. And so it's just arming our members, our builders, with the best possible tools and the right knowledge.

So is there anything that builders tend to miss in this process, you just talked about the fact that, you know, when there's changes, there's a lot of changes and it's not usually the best user friendly language. What are some of the most common things that builders are not aware of or should be aware of better?

Yeah, absolutely. I think delineation of responsibility is probably a good one. So what do I have to do versus what do a subcontractor does a subcontractor have to to do versus what do we both have to do? And so the HazardCo platform is really designed to break that down. So it's user driven, but it's content guided. So what that means in plain speak is all the answers are in there. You just got to tick the right boxes. And that education awareness happens just by using the platform. And often our members will go from a stage of, oh, I didn't realize I need to, needed to do that to wow, that's so easy to do. And then it just becomes part of running their business.

Are they common blind spots that you've seen in the industry that often get overlooked in this space as well? You talked a little bit about their roles and responsibilities, but if you have to look at the last few years, what's the one most common blind spot that most builders face today?

I would go with site specific safety that covers everything that you do. The biggest blind spot for subcontractors is site specific swms. So a safe work method statement. You know, lots of them are running around with a photocopied SWMs from three or four years ago. It's just the same one on every job. And you know, recently we've seen a few investigated and prosecuted cases where the one thing that was specific to that site that wasn't in the safety documentation was actually what they got caught out with. And there were massive fines. You know, a couple of businesses went out of business. And so that starts with builder documentation as well. So site specific safety plans are literally that, you know, a lot of builders will get a pack of a safety pack of documents and they replicate that document and they fill in a new address. They might change a few things, but again, not health and safety professionals. Neither should they be they miss stuff or they don't do stuff. And so the banner behind me is one of our messages around confidence. And 90% of builders that move onto the HazardCo platform speak about a significant increase in confidence that they're doing everything now because before they did have those blind spots and they were missing, you know, how easy it was to create new Site specific plans on a platform like HazardCo.

It's kind of ironic because what you're just saying is that sometimes they take shortcuts. And here is a tool that can automate and give them a better shortcut, but make them feel more confident. But they just have to do it the right way, I guess, is what you're saying.

Yeah, spot on. You've nailed it. It's the ultimate shortcut that ticks all the boxes.

Right, Right. Fair enough. All right, so what are some of the resources that you offer builders? You talked a little bit about phone support and you've got consultants, obviously. Tell us a little bit about the app. What are some of those really incredible features that could really help them?

Yeah, absolutely. There's a couple of parts of the HazardCo platform from a digital point of view. There's the HazardCo Hub, which is really your control center and has evolved even over the last 18 to 24 months to an incredibly powerful tool in terms of not only safety creation from a documentation point of view, but safety management and then the analytics and reporting that give you really good oversight. So from a builder point of view, you can do everything from pre qualify your subcontractors and manage your contractor management from a credential management point of view through the platform, create site specific safety plans literally in a couple of minutes all the way through to really good clear dashboards and analytics that give you oversight of your business. You know, where are your biggest risk areas? What is most likely to go wrong on your sites? Have you got coverage across your current active projects of inducted contractors and SWMs, documentation and site reviews and those sorts of things. So it brings an incredible level of visibility very easily to the safety and risk element of your business. And then on site, the app is really about safety in your back pocket. It's got ready to go swims templates and a template builder. The content's already in there, so you don't have to know the answers. Site reviews, toolbox talks, reporting of incidents which are then backed up by, by our advisory team that we talked about. So we've got a team of safety consultants, qualified safety consultants, not only providing phone based support for. I'm looking at some scaffold and it just doesn't look right. Or do I have to put some edge protection here all the way through to 24, 7 incident support. So when something does go wrong, you know you've got that backup that's genuine peace of mind. You know, you don't need it until it goes wrong and then it goes wrong and you really need it. And so they've got that, They've got that 24, 7 incident support to help them out when things do go wrong.

Now, health and safety can be pretty complex, as you said, with the changes and the updates and the regulation and everything else. I imagine there's a lot of misunderstanding or myths that surround this topic, usually. What are some of the more common questions you receive or areas you often need to correct or debunk?

Yeah, absolutely. So we focus the majority of our efforts, our attention and our product at the small, the medium, residential construction business. And so often the biggest myth in that space is I'm too small to be noticed. And so, you know, the feeling is that I'm a small fish. The regulator is out there looking for, looking for the big guy. They're looking to make examples. You know, they won't, they won't come and see me. And that certainly, you know, that's certainly not the case. What we see more often than not is the little businesses that they get caught, that make the mistakes that then get prosecuted. They don't have systems in place. You know, they fall into that trap of I'm too small to have to do anything. And the reality is it's no different for them. So that's a big one to debunk. The other one that I'd probably say is subcontractor management. So where the line of responsibility is, oh, hey, it's my plumber. Is my plumber. It's his job to do stuff. Yeah, absolutely. It's his job to do stuff. But you need to do stuff as well. So there's that duty of care, providing a safe site, making sure that you're capturing the right details. If you've got their insurances, their plumbing certificate, their white card, their plumbing license, that sort of thing, and then providing a safe site. But then also the plumber has that responsibility to make sure that their employees are safe, that they're inducting themselves onto site because you've provided a means of induction. So that blurring of the lines between subby and builder and whose responsibility it is is something that we help out a lot with and provide the tools to manage.

What's a typical observation of the industry right now when it comes to residential builders? You know, what are you seeing right now? That's a common sort of observation.

Yeah. So it's a challenging market out there, so interest rates are rising. We've come off the back of the home builder grant from the government. The number of approvals has Been huge. The number of completions is kind of separated from that in terms of the gap has grown, which is just putting huge pressure on both supply chain and the labor market as well. So being able to easily and effectively working with your subcontractors, have a good pool of quality subcontractors, so that you've got labor for your jobs is really important material supply. Managing your project pipeline. So not taking on, you know, it'd be really easy time in construction to take on a heap of work, but that's where. Where we see builders often getting into trouble. So, you know, managing cash flow, managing labor and materials are real focuses at the moment. And then, you know, I think demand will start to drop. So businesses have an opportunity to really position them well now to make sure that they're running efficiently.

What are some of the trends for health and safety for the future that you can see coming down in the future? You know, obviously you're around it so much. If you had to sort of prepare builders, what, what are they preparing for coming up in the future from a.

Legislation point of view? So what's required of them? I think it's less about changes coming, more about focus on getting it right. So I think what we'll see is an increased investment in, in inspectors, in funding available to WorkSafe and SafeWork Australia so that they're able to get better coverage. There'll be a higher focus on the higher risk industries of which construction is one of those. With the prevalence and proliferation of digital tools, so it's easier to do better health and safety. The expectation is that you will do better health and safety. And so we can see that coming down the line for us in particular. And from a digital technology point of view, some of the things that are going to start to develop are really interactive health and safety. So getting automatically assigned tasks and getting people to close out on safety actions, assigning a control measure, getting interaction at the point of site entry. So all those sorts of things, health and safety will really start to become interactive and a daily habit, which is what it needs to be if it's going to drive best practice and keep people safe.

Do you think we'll ever get to the stage where augmented reality and virtual reality will start to change the and transform the technology out there?

Yeah, absolutely, we see that. We can already see a little bit of that on the horizon. So I think virtual reality, particularly from a training point of view, it's very easy now to create a training package. It's quite expensive, but, you know, it's Easy to create a training package via VR and show someone how to identify risks on a construction site or you know, what control measures should they be looking for. You can do that via VR. Augmented reality starting to come into play in the construction industry. You know, one of the things I think will happen in the, in the future is the ability to use drone footage and AI to automatically, without human intervention pick up on, on risks on a construction site. So might be a forklift driving too close to, to something or it might be, you know, something that's precariously perched and could fall. These sorts of things where we get to a point where between video and AI we're able to identify these things and potentially mitigate them pretty quickly.

So tell us a little bit about the app. How does it work? You know, obviously there's people that need to learn how to use it and some people who are already tech savvy. Typically what can a builder or tradie sort of expect when they're working with the apps?

Yeah, absolutely. So they can expect something that's built by tradies for tradies. So we absolutely understand that. You know, when we started developing the app and getting it in the hands of people in the construction industry, particularly in Australia four years ago, I was the one that was out there on site chatting to people and playing around with the app and you know, you'd have a concreter it come up and you know, I've got a flip phone, I can't do any of this. Those days are pretty much behind us. You know, 90, 95% of the of the industry have, have a smartphone. A lot of them know how to use it. So what they can expect is a tool that's been developed for the residential construction industry for trades to use. It's got all of the content in there. So it is genuinely a really guided experience. It's not intended at all to require health and safety expertise or knowledge. You go in and you'd open up the SWMS functionality in the app as an example and there's pre populated templates, there's a library of SWMS templates in there. So if I'm a carpenter and I'm doing roof framing, I can click on that template. It's got a lot of the info that I would probably know but wouldn't know how to import or lay out or you know, how to explain safe work steps. All of that's in there quite interactive. I click on the boxes. If I click one answer, it'll give me some options of the next Answer. So it kind of guides me through the process and then it creates a really robust compliant SWMS document on the spot. Literally. You know, I think I've seen people do them from already done templates in 30 seconds. You can build a new template in a minute and a half, two minutes. And then you've got a compliance SWMS that everyone can sign off digitally and it's submitted straight away, I guess.

I mean, I could talk to you about this for days because you're basically mixing health and safety with technology. So you've already had my attention. But I'm just curious for the listeners out there that aren't prioritizing health and safety or aren't aware of this tool, or more importantly are taking shortcuts they shouldn't be taking, what words of wisdom do you have for them?

Yeah, absolutely. And so what we do know is that 20% of the industry doing nothing, 30% of the industry are using basic paper systems which are nearly always falling short of where they need to be. So, you know, they're big numbers. That's half the industry that could be doing a lot more. And so what I would say is what we have seen over the years is it's not that builders don't want to do it, it's not that they don't care about it, it's not that they don't value the safety of people on site, it's just that they don't know where to start. Right. So as human beings, if we don't know how to do something, it's probably not something that we're going to willingly do. I would say that it's easier to do than you think. It's better to start than to, than to do nothing. And there's digital platforms out there like Hazardco that take all the work out of it for you. It's a confidence thing. You don't need to be an expert. Get the right tool and you're off and running.

Well, thanks so much for being here today. We really appreciate the insights as well and I look forward to seeing many more innovations, innovative ideas coming from this particular platform. Before we go, one final question to you is what can the current users experience or what can they expect to see from you guys in the near future?

Yeah, great question. So some of that interactivity that I was talking about earlier, that's where a lot of our focus is on at the moment. And so the ability for two way interaction via the app. So we've got a lot of engagement, engagement between builders and subcontractors but how do we. How do we create that really true two way communication and interaction? Notifications, tasks, reminders, assignment of responsibilities, control measures, submission of documents straight from the app, take a photo of something or upload a SWMS document that you've already got, send it straight through to the principal contractor. So really just expanding the capabilities of the app as a genuine safety tool on site in your back pocket that provides two way interaction and engagement.

Thanks Luke. We really appreciate you being here and we look forward to having you back here again.

It was terrific to come on. Great chat and always good to be involved in these things.

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