The Ontario Construction Report – DECEMBER 2013 – PAGE OCR B7 Cruickshank achieves “level best” with enviable safety, innovation and employee engagement STAFF WRITER – The Ontario Construction Report Special Feature Cruickshank has been named one of Canada’s safest employers in 2013. The company received a national gold award on October 30th at a gala in Toronto. Cruickshank has lived by the company motto “we do our level best” since 1956 – driving ingenuity in road, bridge and infrastructure construction serv- ices with an engaged team and leading edge tools to get the job right – every time. Founder Les Cruickshank started the Kingston-based business as a con- tractor on the St. Lawrence Seaway project. His son Steve, now the com- pany’s CEO, says his father always had a philosophy of providing great quality, doing better than industry standards and always bringing an extra touch to what he did. After working on the Seaway, Les started road building. “My grandfather helped him get into it,” says Steve Cruickshank. “My mom did the books and my uncle got involved. It was a time of opportunity with more cars in use after WW II and more road construction. Dad had a plan, watched bigger companies to see how they worked and began building the company.” Today, the business has expanded and thrived with branches in Alberta and Tennessee, with 500 employees and an enviable safety record. Cruickshank says a lot of the old rules, taught long ago to his father by his grandfather, are still there and provide the basics on which the company still runs. “Safety is number one,” he said. “Ensuring quality delivery is number two. Number three is getting the job done as quickly as possible, without compromising numbers one and two.” Cruickshank says Les has served as chair of the Construction Safety As- sociation of Ontario (CSAO) and that the company’s focus has always been on safety – leading rather than following the industry standards. For example, in Ontario the company followed the standard weekly safety meeting protocol. Then, as Cruickshank expanded to Alberta, staff discovered contractors there have daily meetings. These daily meetings are now scheduled company-wide. “Making people think about safety daily creates a change in culture,” Cruickshank said. “It isn’t something they only need to consider once a week when meetings happen; it’s at the forefront every day.” Cruickshank says the company’s president, Dave Read, has a dedicated safety focus and has further elevated the company’s safety efforts. Two years ago the company began to host an annual safety day. Employees take a break from regular operations one day each summer and go through a series of stations, set up in a local arena, learning about various safety aspects and responsibilities.