PHOENIX, AZ Skanska is kicking off its 13th annual Safety Week, focusing on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle of continuous improvement. Skanska's hundreds of job sites nationwide and its regional offices will mark the event with activities such as toolbox talks, safety demonstrations and training sessions. Additionally, Skanska is once again participating in the annual Construction Industry Safety Week, which it helped found in 2014.

"Our industry has made great strides to protect workers and we are closer than ever to achieving the ultimate goal of zero injuries," said Skanska USA Chief Environmental Health & Safety Officer Paul Haining. "With construction volume forecast to increase and a significant number of seasoned craft workers nearing retirement, we must all work to sustain a culture that rejects the thinking that incidents are an unavoidable part of the work we do."

The construction industry is looking at a potentially grim equation if it doesn't reinforce its safety efforts. Dodge Data & Analytics is forecasting a 5 percent increase in construction starts in 2017 at the same time as the construction industry tackles a labor shortage with more than 150,000 unfilled positions. With many industry veterans leaving the workforce, the risk is that newly-hired skilled workers enter the field without sufficient knowledge of how to plan work to avoid injuries.

The focus on Plan-Do-Check-Act aims to reinforce and sustain a culture of continuous improvement among Skanska's thousands of craft employees and subcontractor workforces. The cycle asks workers to plan their work and adjust future plans based on performance. If a plan fails to address any sort of hazard, workers are empowered to stop and reevaluate.

Investigations have shown that incidents and near-misses often have root causes tied to complacency with existing conditions, which can then lead to a cascade of factors that injure. Plan-Do-Check-Act is a thought system central to Skanska's Injury-Free Environment® that is designed to eliminate complacency.

"I truly believe our industry can achieve zero accidents," said Ross Vroman, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Skanska's Phoenix, Arizona, office. "As our Phoenix operations continue to grow, we have a tremendous opportunity to ensure we create a culture on all of our projects that finds any type of injury unacceptable."