Nominations are now open for the SCSA Awards. Nominate your safety professional or company today.
Nominations are now open for the SCSA Awards. Nominate your safety professional or company today.
Construction safety in Saskatchewan has changed significantly over the past three decades, moving from a system often driven by compliance and incident response to one focused on prevention, leadership and continuous improvement.
That shift was not immediate. In the 1980s and 1990s, safety on construction sites was often treated as a legislative requirement rather than a core part of project planning. Companies needed to meet provincial requirements, but safety systems were not always embedded into day-to-day operations. In many cases, changes were made after an incident occurred, when a hazard had already caused harm, delayed work or exposed gaps in site practices.
The creation of the Saskatchewan Construction Safety Association (SCSA) in 1995 marked an important step in changing that approach. Established by the construction industry, the organization was designed to help employers move beyond basic compliance and develop practical systems that could prevent injuries before they happened. Its work focused on industry-specific training, certification programs, advisory support and resources that reflected the realities of construction jobsites.
The results have been measurable. Between 2013 and 2023, Saskatchewan’s building construction industry recorded a 46 per cent average reduction in injuries and associated costs. The commercial and industrial sector also saw lower injury rates than residential construction or the construction trades, while 2025 represented a record year for injury prevention performance.
“The SCSA was created by the construction industry to solve industry problems — and we wouldn’t be here without that foundation. Saskatchewan’s construction injury prevention story is a strong one. Employers, workers and partners across the system have put in the work to get us here,” said SCSA vice-president Edward Pyle.
“Over the past three decades, we’ve helped shift the approach from reactive to proactive. Companies are better at anticipating risk, strengthening their systems and building leadership through practical, job-ready training and programs like COR®, NCSO® and NHSA™. We’re also seeing that this works — injuries are coming down across the board, not just the ones that are easier to address.”
The evolution of construction safety in Saskatchewan also reflects broader changes across Canada. By 2000, construction safety associations had been established in every province. Through the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations (CFCSA), provincial and territorial organizations work together to raise safety awareness, align certification standards and share best practices.
That national coordination has helped create more consistency in how safety is understood and measured. For contractors working across jurisdictions, standardized expectations make it easier to build safety programs that can travel with the company, rather than being rebuilt from one project or province to the next.
One of the clearest examples is the COR® program. Developed specifically for Canadian construction and delivered in Saskatchewan by the SCSA, COR® has been recognized for more than 20 years as the national standard for an occupational safety and health management system in the Canadian construction industry.
The program helped formalize what strong safety management looks like. Rather than relying only on toolbox talks or after-the-fact reporting, COR® required companies to establish documented systems, assign responsibilities, identify hazards, train workers and regularly review performance. That structure helped move safety from an informal site practice to a managed part of business operations.
As injury rates declined across Saskatchewan’s construction industry, COR®-certified companies continued to demonstrate lower lost-time injury rates than non-certified firms. The trend suggests that companies with stronger safety systems are better positioned to reduce higher-severity incidents, not only the minor or more easily addressed injuries.
The move toward prevention also changed how companies approach work before crews arrive on site. Safety planning has increasingly become part of estimating, scheduling, procurement and supervision. Employers are expected to think about how work will be performed, what hazards will be present, what training is required and how changing site conditions are managed.
That planning is especially important in construction, where work sites change constantly. New trades arrive, equipment moves, weather conditions shift and tasks overlap. A hazard that was not present in the morning could become a serious concern by the afternoon. Stronger systems help companies respond to those changes before they result in an injury.
Training is more accessible and more targeted. Many SCSA courses are available online with an instructor or on demand, giving workers, supervisors and employers more flexibility. That matters in an industry where schedules are tight, crews are mobile and workers often need practical training that fits around project demands.
The emphasis on prevention also expanded from worker awareness to leadership accountability. Supervisors are increasingly expected to identify risks, reinforce expectations, coach workers and act when conditions change. That helped shift safety from something managed only by a safety representative to something led at every level of a project.
Technology and analytics have also played a larger role in how construction companies understand their safety performance. The SCSA provides member companies with custom analytics that allow them to view workforce training history, compare injury rates and premiums to industry peers and assess whether their safety practices have the intended effect.
That data helps employers move away from assumptions. Instead of looking only at whether a company has a low number of reported incidents, employers can examine trends, identify recurring hazards and determine where additional training or supervision is needed.
The ability to compare performance across similar companies also gives contractors a more useful benchmark. A company can see whether its injury rates, claims costs or training levels are aligned with its peers, then use that information to support decisions about resources and priorities.
This is an important part of prevention. When companies understand how, when and where workers are being hurt, they can focus on the activities most likely to lead to serious harm. That allows safety efforts to become more precise and better connected to the actual risks on site.
As overall injury performance improved, the industry placed more attention on preventing serious injuries and fatalities. These incidents often involved high-energy hazards, complex work activities or situations where several risks came together at once.
The SCSA encourages industry adoption of the Energy Wheel, a visual tool developed by the Construction Safety Research Alliance. The tool identifies 10 types of hazardous energy sources that could cause serious injuries or fatalities in construction environments, including gravity, motion, mechanical, electrical, pressure and thermal energy.
The Energy Wheel helps workers and supervisors see hazards that traditional assessments could miss. While traditional hazard assessments identify roughly 45 per cent of actual hazards, use of the Energy Wheel has been shown to improve hazard recognition by approximately 30 percentage points, raising detection rates to about 75 per cent.
That improvement matters because serious injuries are not always caused by unfamiliar risks. In many cases, they come from everyday tasks where hazardous energy was present but not fully recognized. A more structured hazard recognition tool helps crews slow down, identify the source of potential harm and take steps to control it.
While formal programs and data are important, safety improvement also depends on culture. More companies began treating safety as a shared value rather than a checklist. That meant workers were encouraged to speak up, supervisors were expected to listen, and leaders were required to support safe decisions, even when production pressures were high.
More than 880 Saskatchewan construction companies have participated in the SCSA’s semi-annual Safety Culture Survey, reflecting growing interest in understanding how workers and leaders experienced safety on the job.
A stronger safety culture is now reflected in practical behaviours. Safety audits are completed regularly. Workers have the tools, equipment and information needed to work safely. Employees are involved in health and safety decisions. Teams are empowered to make changes when they see a problem and those who act safely receive positive recognition.
That cultural shift helped address one of construction’s long-standing challenges: the tension between getting the job done and taking the time to do it safely. Increasingly, industry leaders describe safety, quality and productivity as connected priorities. A well-planned jobsite with trained workers, clear expectations and fewer incidents is also more likely to avoid delays, rework and disruption.
The definition of safety has also broadened. Alongside physical hazards, the industry places more attention on psychological safety and mental health.
Construction work can create significant pressure. Long hours, physical exhaustion, seasonal employment, time away from home and financial uncertainty all affect workers. The culture of the industry also means stress, anxiety or depression are not always discussed openly.
According to WorkSafe Saskatchewan, construction has one of the highest rates of suicide and many workers do not reach out for help when experiencing mental distress. Male construction workers also have more mental health concerns than men in the general population.
For employers, this means mental health cannot be separated from safety performance. A worker experiencing fatigue, stress or emotional distress could face a greater risk on-site. A crew culture where workers do not feel comfortable raising concerns could also allow hazards, both physical and psychological, to go unaddressed.
The SCSA addresses mental health through conferences, events, resources and course content, including leadership and resilience programming.
“Mental health concerns are hidden hazards that we need to pay attention to as much as the physical, visible hazards seen every day on jobsites,” said SCSA president Collin Pullar. “We provide opportunities for our members to highlight mental well-being and we encourage employers to make resources and supports readily available to their workforce.”
Construction safety in Saskatchewan has moved a long way from the reactive practices that shaped much of the industry in previous decades. Stronger regulations, industry-developed certification, practical training, better analytics and a more mature safety culture have all helped reduce injuries and associated costs.
The 46 per cent reduction recorded between 2013 and 2023 shows that prevention-focused systems are making a difference. It also shows that safety improvement requires sustained effort across employers, workers, supervisors, associations and partners.
“There’s still more work to do, and we’ve got a strong team focused on continuing to reduce preventable injuries. We remain a construction-owned organization, here to support the industry and help turn insight into action on site,” said Pyle.
New construction methods, labour pressures, evolving project delivery models and mental health challenges continue to create risks for employers and workers. For the SCSA and the industry it serves, the next stage of safety improvement is expected to depend on the same principle that drove the last three decades of progress: anticipating risk before harm occurs and turning that insight into action on site.
By Brook Thalgott and Amber Huck