Just out of a great session at DCD Dallas by Doug Mouton of Microsoft that was short, sweet and undeniably compelling. 

Doug reminded the audience of the famous transformation of Alcoa by the then highly controversial CEO Paul O’Neill. In 1987, he put worker safety top of the company’s agenda. Investors, industry commentators and employees thought he was crazy. When O’Neill retired, 13 years after this famous speech, Alcoa had dropped from 1.86 lost work days to injury per 100 workers to 0.2. Also, Alcoa’s annual net income was five times higher than when he started.

That story is the context behind the quote below from Doug’s session.

Doug also touched on the workers’ camps that are now commonplace to house project construction workers for hyperscale DC builds. Again, not to overcomplicate matters, Doug asked the audience to apply one standard “would you let your kids live in those conditions?”.

At Yondr, health and safety is the first item on every agenda of every meeting and anyone, on any of our sites, no matter what rank or position, can shut down unsafe work instantly. We’ll be re-sharing that Alcoa story in our employee and project inductions from now on….

Thanks Doug!

Safe, ethical projects are our moral obligation, but are also proven to deliver better quality, cost, schedule and availability