Safety. Quality. Service. Innovation.
At Nabholz, our decisions are guided by four core principles: Safety, Quality, Service, and Innovation. These four pillars influence how we grow our people, serve our clients, and build our communities. In the following videos, a few of our leaders will walk you through the basics of each principle and what you’ll learn as you continue the onboarding process.
Safety
We will make the overall wellbeing of our employees, their families, and everyone we encounter our top priority. This focus will include physical safety on job sites, as well as our employees’ health and general quality of life.
Quality
We will offer the highest possible quality for all our products and services.
Service
We will provide our customers with extraordinary service experiences, creating a competitive advantage.
Innovation
We will consistently explore avenues to improve our processes, services, products, and the experiences of our employees and our customers.
safety
Zero Incident Philosophy
Employee, client, and community safety comes first in everything we do at Nabholz. Our “zero-incident philosophy” is more than just a goal. It’s a commitment based on our moral obligation to ensure that everyone who comes into contact with our jobsites returns home in the same healthy condition in which they arrived.
Nabholz’ safety program has earned two national awards from the United States Department of Labor. We have achieved Level One Status in the AGC-OSHA Partnership program, which recognizes our safety performance record and leadership in protecting the lives and health of our team members. This exceptional safety record is due to the effort and commitment of all employees, and the benefits extend to everyone involved, including our clients.
- Maintain a mindset that every accident is preventable, and “zero incidents” is achievable.
- Conducting every aspect of our business in a manner that avoids accident or injury.
- Make safety a top priority in all activities, including meetings, planning sessions, and task performance.
- Refuse to compromise safe practices to improve schedule, production, or cost performance.
- Take responsibility at all levels and in all positions to eliminate injuries and incidents.
I Stop Unsafe Work
I Stop Unsafe Work is a policy that states that every person on a Nabholz project is responsible for the safety and quality of a job. As such, everyone has the authority and obligation to stop any unsafe work practice or to point out any unsafe condition. No person will be discouraged or reprimanded for using their Stop Work Authority when done in good faith. Each person will receive a card (pictured right) verifying this authority with the signatures of the CEO and region president endorsing their decisions. Cards are available in both English and Spanish.
Incident Reporting
This policy is intended for managers and supervisors to report any safety incidents that occur on a jobsite. If an incident occurs, you are required to seek medical attention for the injured employee and then complete the proper paperwork regarding the incident. Paperwork can be found here or accessed on SharePoint through the “Our Company” and then “Safety” tab.
Commitments To Live By®
Nabholz’ Commitments to Live By (C2LB)® safety program was launched in 2015 to confront head-on 12 high-risk activities that can lead to serious injuries on job sites. Our C2LB program includes videos, posters, hardhat stickers, toolbox talks, wristbands, flipbooks, and more — all distributed to our team continuously. What’s more, we’ve made it personal — our team members sign the following commitment to stay safe in their work:
“I commit to staying alive today, tomorrow, and throughout this project. I make this commitment because my life matters to my family, to my friends, and to me.”
Safety Incentive Programs
At Nabholz, your safety is our priority. That’s why we have multiple safety incentive programs in place to encourage safe practices, improve safety, spread awareness of our zero-incident safety culture, and eliminate incidents.
Good Catch
The Good Catch program recognizes employees who correct conditions or actions that could result in an injury or incident. A Good Catch identifies and then eliminates a potential hazard or incident prior to the occurrence. Cash prizes are given to selected monthly ($300), quarterly ($1,000), and yearly ($5,000) winners.
No one will ever be punished for an identified Good Catch. Not the person who reported the error, nor the party who made the mistake, nor the supervisor over the operation. The point of the program is to prevent safety accidents, not punish anyone for hazards on site.
Posted around your job site, you can find QR codes that will take you to a form to submit a Good Catch. You can also ask your superintendent for a paper form and then email it to danny.mahan@nabholz.com.
I'm A Believer
The I'm A Believer award is given to nominated employees who work to achieve zero incidents. Their actions and attitude encompass Nabholz’ safety culture. They champion Nabholz’ safety policies and adopt a personal responsibility for their team’s safety, as well as their own. The award is not given out on a schedule and does not require the nominee to receive any prior safety awards. The leadership team presents this award only when a candidate embodies our safety culture.
MEET OUR SAFETY TEAM
QUALITY
Nabholz Quality Management System
QMS, our Quality Management System, is a formal approach to managing and documenting the installation of our work to ensure that we deliver projects with zero defects. QMS guides our project teams to identify high-risk features of work early in a project’s lifecycle and develop management practices to ensure that the critical details of that work are installed correctly and documented thoroughly. The process also leads our project teams to a more intense collaboration with our design partners and trade partners.
If your role requires you to utilize the QMS, your supervisor will walk you through the necessary procedures. Our full QMS Procedure document located in Sharepoint describes QMS components at each phase of design and construction.
Quality Risk Management
Quality risk management is the effort to minimize or eliminate the risks to our bottom line from quality defects and rework. Practicing quality risk management includes identifying the high-risk features of each scope of work and making sure the critical details of that work are installed correctly the first time and thoroughly documented. To achieve these goals, Nabholz has invested in software, training, testing, better tools for communication, process efficiency, and dedicated full-time quality directors on our team — all at your disposal.
No matter your service group, everyone can adopt a quality risk management mindset by continually asking themselves these questions:
- What are the high-risk elements of the project I’m working on right now?
- How am I managing the critical details of that work?
- How am I documenting those details to protect the goals my team is working hard to achieve?
MEET OUR QUALITY TEAM
SERVICE
Surveys
After a project is complete, Nabholz has the opportunity to request feedback from the client with a survey. This gives us the chance to improve our service to our clients, either by reinforcing actions that show positive results or by implementing new ones. Larger projects tend to lend themselves to an in-person interview, while smaller projects are given a digital survey to complete.
If your role has a part in conducting surveys to better our ability to serve our clients, you will receive more training at a later date.
Meet Our Service Team
Nabholz does not have a corporate service director like our safety, quality, and innovation divisions. Instead, the service team consists of every Nabholz employee — because we’re all responsible for good client service.
INNOVATION
Brightidea
At Nabholz, we define innovation as the application of new ideas to solve problems and add value. With this definition in mind, we’re offering Nabholz team members a better way to share ideas through a platform called Brightidea. It’s easy to use, accessible to all employees, and will house all the good ideas you submit.
Using Brightidea, we’ll post specific challenges that Nabholz is facing and ask you to respond with your ideas. Sometimes we’ll post challenges we want every brilliant mind in the company to have a crack at solving. Other times, we’ll ask a smaller group of employees to focus on a challenge that impacts their work directly. We will then form teams to evaluate ideas, test them, and eventually put them into practice.
Chairman's Innovation Challenge
The Chairman’s Innovation Challenge is a pitch competition for innovative solutions. Employees are encouraged to think about challenges they face, or opportunities they’ve identified, and pitch their ideas for innovative solutions, products, or lines of business. All Nabholz employees are invited to participate and may choose to respond in teams or as individuals.
Participants are invited to submit their innovation ideas on the Brightidea platform. Following each of the first three quarters of the calendar year, a selection panel will evaluate submittals and nominate two innovations to advance to the Chairman’s Round. The selection panel will include two senior-level representatives appointed by each President as well as representation from corporate support services. A member of a submitting team may not serve as judge for that quarter. Finalists selected from each quarter will be awarded seed funding up to $2,500 to further develop their solution. This funding may be used to develop a prototype, conduct testing, or engage in outside consultation.
Quarterly finalists will advance to the Chairman’s Round where they will pitch their innovations to the TNG Board of Directors and operations Presidents. The team or individual selected for the winning innovation will receive a cash prize in the amount of $5,000, an engraved plaque commemorating the achievement, and the opportunity to lead development and implementation of the innovation across the company.
Research and Development Grants
Nabholz encourages innovation and continuous improvement in any section of the company. To that end, employees can request grants to pursue research and development of an idea that will enhance the Nabholz purpose of growing our people, serving our clients, and building our communities.
Grants are generally $2,000 to $5,000 and are intended to cover the basic R&D activities of a person or team to reach a conclusion or decision moving forward based on the R&D results.
Examples of favorable R&D Grant requests:
- Rental of new production technology on a portion of work to compare performance against traditional methods.
- Trial use of a new machine with time & motion studies to determine return on investment (before purchase).
- Experimenting with different forming systems to determine the best solutions, constructing samples on a yard.
- Trial use of software programs to determine the best solution (before purchase).
- Trial use of multiple hardware devices to determine the best model (before purchase of a large quantity).
For more information, contact Innovation Director Jon Pahl at jon.pahl@nabholz.com.
Nabholz Innovation SWAT Teams
Every day, employees encounter problems that can affect jobsite safety, efficiency, or effectiveness. That’s why we created Nabholz Innovation SWAT Teams to solve the problems you face daily. If there’s a significant problem, a team of 3-5 people is put together to tackle the issue. We value diverse points of view, so team members are selected from across the company – not just from one office or division. The team will work together to research and develop solutions to that specific issue, then will explain their findings to Nabholz leaders to implement changes. After the issue is concluded, the team is dissolved.
Examples of SWAT Team initiatives:
- Researching and testing wearable technology in the field
- Developing a plan to deliver safety drills
- Develop strategies to expand our Youth Apprenticeship Program
