At a project site in Madagascar, Haskell Safety Coordinator Tie Zamble collaborated with the project team and the site’s subcontractor partners to make this year’s Safety Week one to remember. The site ran a full week of training and competition that brought together 200 to 300 workers from nearly 7 companies.

“We started planning months in advance,” Zamble said. “In weekly safety meetings, Haskell’s site safety leadership, project leaders and subcontractor HSE partners asked a bigger question: How do we make Safety Week belong to everyone?”

The answer was to organize the competition across companies rather than within them. Painters from different employers formed one team. Surveyors and electricians from other companies competed. The cleaning staff and store manager competed together and finished third in the safety competition.

“We mixed everybody. We involved everybody,” Zamble said. “The approach matched this year’s Construction Safety Week theme, ‘All in Together.’ We were intentional in making everyone feel included and valued in our safety efforts and strategies. Every activity and challenge was a call for shared ownership and engagement.”

The activities tested fundamentals. In one, crews used an Energy Wheel print-out to identify the hazards associated with a specific task. The crew that flagged the most risks scored points. In another, teams chose the correct equipment for a given job. Crews reviewed site photos and raised a green card for safe conditions or a red card for unsafe ones, and they answered quizzes on hazard recognition, PPE selection and high-risk work.

Once the site announced the competition, it used daily toolbox meetings to run practice exercises, including photo-based hazard hunts.

“Carpenters argued they would win because they sat through toolbox talks every morning,” Zamble said. “Crews kept asking when the activities would start. Everyone became very excited for the chance to compete and show what they knew. It was all in a friendly, competitive spirit.”

“When somebody missed a quiz, everybody would clap or laugh. We were learning. We were improving our safety culture. It was very supportive and encouraging to see.”

Haskell brought in firefighters from Antananarivo to lead fire-safety training for site personnel and subcontractor HSE representatives. The training included a classroom session and a hands-on demonstration of fire-extinguisher use. On Saturday, HSE participants received official fire-extinguisher handling certificates signed by a senior fire service officer.

Safety Week closed with a recognition celebration. Participants received medals, practical tools such as grinders and awards for competition performance, HSE engagement, and safety documentation compliance. One subcontractor, Société de Construction et de Bâtiments (SCB), was recognized for the strongest documentation compliance. A driver was recognized for setting up the toolbox meeting area each morning. Superintendent Aaron Hamson received the Safety Hero award for conducting daily permit inspections and working closely with all crews to ensure that the work is performed safely and efficiently.

In a separate event, teams recreated the Haskell logo using materials of their choice and were judged by project manager Epie Alobwede and subcontractor directors. The first-place team built its logo from concrete and rebar.

At an earlier milestone of 250,000 safe hours, Zamble used AI tools to create a project safety song in French and Malagasy, set to a Madagascan rhythm. The song became the soundtrack for Safety Week.

Zamble said the crews understand the reason behind the site’s stringent safety policies.

“Life has no price,” he said. “All we do is protect life. That’s what safety, in practice, is all about.”

The site treats safety as a shared responsibility and has logged no lost-time injuries in roughly 425,000 work hours. Zamble tests the culture himself.

“Sometimes I leave my hard hat on my desk in the trailer and head out, walking toward the site to see how they react,” he said. “The moment I step out, the workers say, ‘You don’t have your hard hat. Don’t come here.’ I’m very proud of the culture we’ve nurtured here. Everyone cares.”