Home/Safety & Quality
EMR 0.61 · 11.4M hours
That sentence is on the wall of every Ironwood site office, along with the name of the last person we lost. It has been on the wall since 2013, when a 34-year-old ironworker named Michael Arellano was killed by a falling load on a project in Utah. We have not had a fatality since. We do not intend to have another.
Down from 1.14 in 2013. Industry average is 1.00; lower is better.
Across all operating companies, as at 30 September 2026.
Michael Arellano, 24 August 2013, UDOT Region 4 project.
Denver, Casper and Phoenix, the only contractor in Colorado with three.
What we actually do
Every contractor you shortlist will have a safety policy, an EMR and a poster in the site office. The difference is what happens on a Tuesday afternoon when the schedule is tight and a shortcut is available.
Any Ironwood employee can stop any task, for any reason, without asking permission and without retaliation. We track stop-work events as a leading indicator and publish the count monthly, 1,412 in the last financial year, of which 38 shut a job down for more than a shift.
A company that reports zero stop-work events does not have a safe workforce. It has a frightened one.
Forty per cent of a superintendent's annual performance rating is safety and quality performance. Cost and schedule together account for thirty. We have removed superintendents from projects for chronic risk tolerance, and we have kept superintendents on projects that lost money because they shut work down at the right time.
Every near miss gets a formal investigation within 24 hours, a root-cause analysis with the crew present, and a corrective action assigned to a named person with a due date. Last year we closed 2,847 near-miss investigations with a 94% on-time closure rate.
Injuries are lagging data. By the time you have one, the warning signs went unread fifty times.
Owners receive our full incident data, including near misses and first-aid cases, not just OSHA-recordable injuries, in the weekly report. If we have a bad month on your project, you will know before your safety director finds out from someone else.
Michael Arellano, 34, an ironworker with eleven years' experience and two children, was struck by a load that fell from a crane during a steel erection sequence in Utah. The investigation found that the rigging plan had been changed on site without review, and that the lift had proceeded over an area that should have been cleared.
Two Ironwood employees were disciplined. The company paid a substantial OSHA penalty. More importantly, the case produced three changes that are still in force: every critical lift plan must be reviewed and signed by a licensed engineer, no lift plan may be modified on site without that review, and the area beneath any suspended load is cleared of all personnel as a condition of the lift starting.
His name is on the wall of every one of our site offices, next to the sentence at the top of this page. We are not sentimental about many things. We are sentimental about that.
| Year | Hours worked | Recordable rate | Lost-time cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 3,580,000 | 0.84 | 0 |
| 2024 | 3,910,000 | 0.71 | 1 |
| 2025 | 4,020,000 | 0.61 | 0 |
Rates are per 100 full-time equivalent workers and calculated from carrier-reported claims data, not self-reported figures.
Quality
A quality system is only worth what the turnover package proves. Ours is built so that an operations team can run the asset and an auditor can follow any element of it back to a specification clause.
01, Before the work
Every definable feature of work gets an ITP identifying the specification clause, the inspection type, the hold points and who witnesses each one. No ITP, no work. Hold points are exactly that, work does not proceed without the client or engineer present.
02, During the work
Weld maps, heat numbers, concrete pour records, batch tickets, torque records and cable pull schedules are captured in the field on tablets and linked to the asset. On mechanical and process work, every weld on every line is traceable to a welder, a procedure and a set of test results.
03, At handover
As-builts, O&M manuals, spare parts lists, commissioning records, training sign-offs and warranty register delivered as a searchable digital package, not twenty-three binders. We have refused to accept contractual completion on projects where the turnover package was not ready, and we have paid the liquidated damages that resulted.
04, Non-conformance
Any deviation raises a non-conformance report with a disposition, use-as-is, repair, or replace, signed off by the engineer of record. NCRs are reported to the client weekly whether or not they have been closed. We closed 96% within the contractual period last year.
05, Certification
ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 are certified by a UKAS-accredited registrar, audited annually with surveillance visits in between. Our AISC fabricator certification covers building structures and major bridge components. Welding procedures are AWS and ASME qualified.
06, Cost of getting it wrong
We track warranty call-outs by cause and by crew, and publish the results to our business lines. Roughly 71% of call-outs trace to a small number of recurring installation details, which we then redesign out of the standard drawings used on future work.
Certifications
Certificates, letters of good standing, OSHA 300A summaries and pre-qualification packs are provided within one business day. Call (303) 555-0142 or email info@ironwoodgroups.com.
Management systems
Safety programmes
Trade certifications
Government & compliance
Anyone, employee, subcontractor, client or member of the public, can report a safety concern about an Ironwood site or operation by calling the emergency line on (303) 555-0199 at any hour, or by writing to ethics@ironwoodgroups.com. Reports may be made anonymously. Every report is logged and answered, and you will be told what was done about it unless you ask not to be contacted.
| Commitment | Current position |
|---|---|
| Scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas inventory | Independently verified annually since 2019 |
| Non-road equipment emissions | Tier 4 Final or retrofit on 78% of fleet; 2030 target is 95% |
| Construction and demolition waste diversion | 71% diverted from landfill across 2025 projects |
| Erosion and sediment control | Permit-equivalent or better on every project, whether or not a permit applies |
| Protected species and cultural resources | Third-party monitors on site where required; tribal monitors on all Rio Grande and Front Range projects |
| Spill response | Trained responder and spill kit on every site; quarterly equipment inspection |
Next step
Call the switchboard and our automated receptionist will take the details, book a call-back with the right estimator, or put you straight through to dispatch. It answers in under two seconds, day or night.
