Construction safety is in a state of creative flux. Engineering professor Matthew R. Hallowell has made the University of Colorado at Boulder a hotbed of innovation and the home of the industry-supported Construction Safety Research Alliance. He and his colleagues have toppled the long-debunked Heinrich Pyramid, which linked minor injuries to the prevention of serious and fatal injuries, on its side, and criticized the over-reliance on total recordable injury rates, which Hallowell showed to be statistical nonsense unless they cover at least 10 million work-hours.
Hallowell’s new book, “Energy-Based Safety: A Scientific Approach to Preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities” (Taylor and Francis, 2025), presents its subject as a coherent system that, if fully embraced, Hallowell admits, can make employers used to the old ways that have been successful in preventing serious or fatal injuries uncomfortable.
One of the most interesting sections of the book is Hallowell’s recollection of meeting with some company boards where, he recalled, “they argue that all injuries are important, and a SIF- [severe injury or fatality]A focused strategy can even lead to higher injury rates. Given this perspective, I ask a provocative question: “How many recordable injuries would you trade for one life?” Faced with an awkward silence, their first instinct, whether they say it out loud or not, is usually “everyone.” If this were true, our security efforts would have to focus exclusively on preventing SIF.”
Energy-based security is often known through its key hazard recognition communication device, the Energy Wheel, which Hallowell believes may have been first introduced by Chevron Corp. Arrange in a circle easy-to-recognize icons that represent different categories of potentially dangerous energy, such as gravity, electricity, or temperature. Some safety experts had not heard of the energy wheel until Hallowell’s 2021 article in Professional Safety magazine on energy-related safety. His article has helped make the wheel a part of many contractors’ safety communication programs. But this is perhaps the easiest part of energy-based security.
Hallowell explains that the inevitability of human error, a premise of the human and organizational performance paradigm, requires that successful controls be put in place to prevent the unexpected transfer of energy into the human body. Like being hit by something heavy. Or surprised
It is not a simple matter.
Part of the challenge is devising definitions of what constitutes a serious injury, a challenge that several employers have already taken on. As with probability, human judgment of gravity is often off the mark, Hallowell writes, clouded by clouded thinking and human biases. Therefore, energy level assessment “is a better approach” for what is serious.
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Reality checks are also needed when it comes to controls. A safety plan or program should not be confused with a timely, tangible, targeted control, such as a guardrail or lockout tagging system, Hallowell writes.
Hallowell describes the need for a high-energy control evaluation (the acronym HECA is a trademark) that protects against life-threatening hazards. These assessments are “the crown jewel of energy-based safety,” he writes, and the controls must ensure the elimination of a high-energy hazard. The assessment score is calculated by using the number of direct controls and dividing it by the number of exposures remaining.
Because many companies have set standards where zero injuries or 100% compliance “are the only acceptable results,” Hi-
well write, change could be hard. “Mature” US companies generally score between 60% and 70%, meaning about one-third of life-threatening hazards are not adequately controlled. Heavy mobile equipment operating in close proximity to workers on foot can present “an insurmountable challenge” and the percentage “won’t sit well on traditional corporate dashboards.”
“It’s going to be awkward at first” to measure security, since the presence of safeguards, Hallowell says, and shared learning and benchmarking will be “crucial.”
I am told that some CSRA members and owners are using HECA. How many others will adopt it? No one can tell, but either way, this book belongs on a shelf with earlier security classics that broke new ground.
