In 2023, we conducted the EcoRodovias group’s first safety culture assessment. The work began by understanding the organization’s maturity level and led to strategic planning for 2024, 2025, and 2026. Based on this understanding, we defined the pillars that needed to be developed and organized implementation support.
The project involves approximately 6 thousand direct employees and more than 15 thousand professionals from contractor companies. How could we conduct this work across highway concessions and companies with their own teams and routines? This question remained with us throughout implementation, from leaders’ participation in designing the tools to how we worked with contractors.
Safety in highway concessions and contractor companies
Two audiences involved in the culture transformation project.
The project involves approximately 6 thousand direct employees and more than 15 thousand professionals from contractor companies. These are reported levels of reach, not counts of people trained.
Each mark represents a thousand professionals. The arrow indicates that the contractor group exceeds 15 thousand.
Leaders take part in development
My work brought together the assessment, the design of strategic planning, and mentoring during implementation. With technical support from HS Brasil and its professionals, we created a structure to support project implementation and tool design.
For each pillar of the plan, we organized a working group: up to 12 people, led by senior leadership and with middle managers from all highway concessions participating. In these groups, we developed the tools and supported their implementation. Participation began with designing what would be implemented and continued through execution. It was a choice about how to conduct the project: involve leaders in decisions at every stage, with mentoring and technical support throughout the work.
Proteção Ativa as a competency
The Proteção Ativa competency was created within this project. Professionals began to be evaluated on how they lived safety as a value in their daily routines. When this value becomes part of evaluation, we need to examine how it is expressed in people’s actions. This was one of the project’s choices for addressing the relationship between the safety the organization declares and what it expects of each professional in everyday work.
How we began working with contractors
To work with contractor companies, we defined which groups would take priority. As a mentor, I participated in this choice, considering the number of people involved, the degree of risk in the activity, and the value and duration of the contracts. These criteria guided the scope of work within a population of more than 15 thousand professionals.
We assigned regional consultants to support implementation. In the first year, we developed the culture transformation project’s tools within EcoRodovias and took them to contractor companies. In this way, we expanded the work begun in the highway concessions.
During implementation, we realized that contractors still needed to understand which questions they should consider about their own culture. Taking the tools to them had opened an area of work that called for this deeper examination: each company needed to examine its own circumstances and understand what it should develop.
Plans built around each company
We then approached contractors with a safety culture assessment methodology designed specifically for them. Based on this understanding, we began supporting them in building their own plans.
This was an important adjustment to implementation. We had started by taking them the tools developed in the EcoRodovias project. The work came to include an assessment focused on contractors’ circumstances. The client organization was reaching into its supplier chain to prompt reflection and support these companies’ development. We are monitoring the first benefits of this stage.
Results and continuation
Throughout the project, we have observed greater leadership engagement and a reduction in accident occurrence. Proactive safety practices have also been strengthening, alongside the work to sustain safety as a value within the organization.
The project remains underway within the 2024 to 2026 plan. Investments in the highway concessions are increasing the presence of third parties, and support for contractors’ assessments and their own plans remains one of the implementation areas.