Guy Lawrence / ENR

If all the fatal accidents of the past two years on the Las Vegas Strip had happened in a single day, the clamor for reform would have prompted immediate reaction. But this was a stealth catastrophe, one or two fatalities at a time, and the response from all stakeholders, and the media, was woefully late. Las Vegas, by making deadly accidents routine, and New York City, by turning tower cranes into icons of trouble, now stand as the twin capitals of poor jobsite management and disregard for human life. You have to wonder what Americans think of our industry after those grim performances.

Granted, the gaming industry and apartment developers have not been the most safety-minded owners. There must be a system of checks and balances to make sure that along with project owners elsewhere, owners on The Strip are accountable for the consequences of their actions on projects.

As soon as shifts on a project go back-to-back around the clock and workers are hand­ed over­time as casually as a glass of water, a tipping point generally has passed in which safety is left more to chance than sound hazard management and training. It is worth noting that at the investor conferences for Perini Corp., analysts generally congratulated the company for its successful financial performance during the months in which lives were being sacrificed on the Las Vegas Strip. Perini is only one of the companies involved in the fatalities, but it is the biggest and most influential and should be performing at a higher level.

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The problems in Las Vegas started with very ambitious schedules prepared by the owners and their construction managers, and workers were pushed like chips into the center of a game of chance in which resources were disproportionately spent on meeting those schedules and earning maximum fees. The thrilling scale-up in project size never was matched by a scale-up in safety effort, which only now is taking place. It’s too late to help the dead, but playing catch up can help the many thousands of workers still on the job.

Las Vegas is a special case because it is a one-industry town controlled by a handful of powerful companies. Those firms finally need to have some skin in safety performance.