Today, many contractors require workers to wear helmets with anti-concussion technology to protect against side, rear, and frontal impacts to the head, as opposed to helmets that only protect against impacts from above. But Clark Construction Group has required the most protective helmet on every job site since 2017 and has been the industry leader in helmet safety for longer. Seth Randall, the company’s regional director of security for the infrastructure group, began experimenting with protecting Clark’s concrete group in 2013.
A decade later, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration caught up with Clark and required hard hats for its own personnel by December 2023. Today, Clark requires its subcontractors to use the helmets and has a program to help defray the cost.
“It was definitely a leap we took that a lot of people were against,” says Randall, an outspoken construction voice for helmet safety. “The industry… I just thought [it was] different I didn’t want… chin straps. Everyone looked beyond the fact that it was safer for employees. They couldn’t get past the look of the helmets or the difference [from other hardhats] were People were afraid of being judged.”
In front of the Regulators
In 2015, Randall began studying how Clark would provide hard hats for all jobs. In 2016, the contractor’s self-executing concrete division required them for all carpenters, laborers and cement pavers. The initiative quickly expanded under his leadership and that of Kris Manning, Clark’s chief operating officer of its infrastructure group. Six months later, the contractor began strategically dispersing them throughout the company, and by 2017, every Clark employee was wearing a helmet with concussion technology.
Doing so meant Randall had to become an expert in helmet technology and navigate manufacturers’ claims and the differences in standards between ANSI Z89.1 in the US and Europe’s previously written EN12492 standard .
“When they say Type 2 helmets, it’s still not an employee fall standard,” Randall says, noting that the standard doesn’t protect a worker in a fall. The helmets are known as Type 1 and the helmets are Type 2. “When we at Clark saw that we realized there were Type 2 helmets in the early 1990s,” he says. “EN12492 is actually a helmet standard.”
Randall said EN12492’s history as a mountaineering helmet standard ensures tests and requirements for frontal, rear and side impact, as well as the crown of the head. He said some helmets deemed to meet Type 2 requirements under ANSI Z89.1 still do not require a chin strap or proof that a strap is effective and holds the helmet on the head. “It’s optional,” Randall explained, saying that Clark felt much more comfortable with EN12492 because it’s an employee fall protection standard focused on preventing concussions and blows to the head, and making sure the helmet stays on in a fall.
Manning notes that as Clark’s then director of corporate security in 2022, he and Randall had a conversation about “too many helmets that look like helmets.” He says they feared that if they didn’t act to provide guidance, the company’s workforce might unknowingly choose helmets based on their appearance rather than the protection offered. Clark decided to use helmets made by Kask.
Clark’s lead has been followed by other contractors who now require concussion helmets. “We pride ourselves on solving complex problems,” says Clark CEO Robby Moser. “I am proud of Seth and our team members who recognized that the status quo was not acceptable. Under Seth’s leadership, our team thought outside the box, researched, tested and implemented a [better] solution.”
He adds: “Prioritizing the safety of our people has allowed us to transform our industry.”
