The end of the dog days of summer welcome an annual rite of passage—back to school time—for students coast to coast.

Building on an Active College Campus
For construction companies working in a fluctuating campus environment, the back-to-school season brings a heightened awareness of the importance of safety. Specifically, this means maintaining a stringent, comprehensive safety program to keep the public—as well as workers—safe on and around jobsites. And even as they push to meet critical budget and schedule goals, savvy owners and builders understand that a safe project and a successful project are ultimately interwoven.

The Arizona Center for Law and Society project is just one example of a project currently underway on a busy college campus. DPR is building the $128 million facility on Arizona State University’s downtown campus, a beehive of activity since fall classes recently began. The project is slated for completion by the start of the 2016 fall semester.

Culture of Safety
Over the past 25 years, DPR’s focus on continuous improvement has been directly reflected in a culture of safety. Our safety culture promotes awareness of the need to work continuously and collectively better and more safely—as a company and as an industry. To further that goal, this past May some 6,670 individuals across 79 DPR jobsites and 18 offices nationwide participated in OSHA’s annual National Safety Stand-Down. OSHA’s industrywide safety effort raises awareness about fall protection on construction jobsites.

Integrated, Holistic Approach
An integrated and holistic focus on safety, quality and productivity has long been the cornerstone of DPR’s approach to successful project delivery, whether we are building on a college campus, within an operating hospital or anywhere else. Our record reflects that—in 2014, DPR’s OSHA incident rate was less than one-third the industry average.

At DPR, we promote and nurture an Injury-Free Environment (IFE), with the goal of achieving zero incidents on every project.

*This blog post is part of a series that celebrates DPR's silver anniversary and focuses on 25 great things from the company from over 25 years. Here's the last one. Follow #DPR25 on social media to learn more.