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Ensure Your Construction Site Safety with Zero Stress An interview with Homecore Site Safety For a busy construction site developer or general contractor, supervising on-site safety compliance is just one of a long list of responsibilities - but it’s an area where even a single mistake can have serious and costly repercussions. A DOB violation brings fines and Stop Work Orders that cost the developer thousands of dollars per day. And, of course, there’s the risk that the violation of safety protocol will cause damage, injury, or worse, G-d forbid. Enter Homecore Site Safety. By hiring Homecore to take care of all of the construction site safety requirements, the stress of safety compliance is removed from the contractor’s shoulders – allowing him to focus his efforts on getting the construction job done. We spoke to co-owner Ben Stark to hear more about the unique service his company provides. Who are your clients? We work with developers of projects up to 9-stories high (under 100,000 square feet) based in NYC. Since we opened in 2014, we’ve serviced thousands of construction sites. We have plans to expand to larger buildings in the future (which have more stringent supervisory regulations). Tell us about the full-service site safety supervision that you provide. Homecore has developed the reputation as the gold standard in ensuring safety compliance on construction sites. We provide complete oversight of all your safety compliance needs, from A to Z. This includes sending licensed superintendents and 62-hour SST Competent people to your site, handling all paperwork and maintaining careful logs, and ensuring that every safety protocol is maintained, down to the last detail. Why would a developer hire you rather than use someone from his own team? While a developer may often have someone on his staff who’s a licensed safety superintendent, in our experience, when a developer uses someone in-house to oversee safety compliance, things can get messy. There’s a lot of daily documentation required, and if the overseer is a team member who really has a different job responsibility, it’s very easy for the documentation to get sloppy and for things to slip by him. In addition, if the in-house Competent person happens to call in sick or come late one day just when a DOB inspector arrives, they’re in trouble. When you work with us, if our Competent person isn’t able to come one day, it’s our responsibility to make sure another one is at your site within the hour. So while a developer or general contractor may think he’s saving money by using someone in-house, in reality the expense of just one violation – which results in a SWO (Stop Work Order) that can quickly run into a loss of tens of thousands of dollars – more than justifies hiring us. And that’s putting aside the immeasurable benefit of peace of mind, knowing that the entire safety compliance headache is off your shoulders. We had one very jarring example of this several years ago. Our sales team had approached the general contractor of a big project in Brooklyn, but he insisted he had no need for an outside site safety service. Soon after, on a very windy Friday in late November, the DOB issued a warning that no one was allowed to do any work with cranes because of the high winds. However, this contractor’s subcontractor decided he didn’t want to lose a day’s work, and told his staff that if they don’t come in to work on Friday, they shouldn’t bother coming back at all. Unfortunately, what happened next made the news headlines. A heavy block fell from a crane, crushing and killing one of their workers. We saw the news but didn’t realize it was connected with the contractor we’d spoken to until we got a call the following week to come to their office. “In the end, we see that it’s too much for us to also focus on safety. We need you to do it.” What makes you unique in your field? Well, for one thing, we really ARE unique! There’s no other company that provides this type of service. But aside from our actual service, what stands out is the way we treat our customers. We pride ourselves on our trustworthiness and reliability; if we tell a customer we’ll do something, they know they can count on us to get it done. You were a sponsor at the recent OJBA. What was that experience like? This was our second time sponsoring the OJBA. As our head of sales put it, the OJBA is like LinkedIn come alive. Since we were the first booth as soon as you walked in, we served as the “greeting committee”. The OJBA is a wonderful opportunity to meet our clients face to face, and being sponsors is a great way to get our name out there. We’ve gotten lots of customers from the OJBA in the past, and b’ezras Hashem we’re sure we’ll get more!
