Doing Safety the Lean Way: Less Busywork, Better Outcomes

Recorded for the Lean Construction Institute’s Lean Marketplace on July 22, 2026, this 43-minute, 34-second session brings together Gabe Guetta of SALUS Safety and Ben Sleeman of LMS Reinforcing Steel Group. They look at safety work through a Lean lens: not as a call to do more paperwork, but as an opportunity to remove waste from the way information is captured, reviewed, and acted on.

What you will learn

• How extra processing, waiting, non-utilized talent, and defects show up in everyday safety work.
• How to test whether a safety task creates value for the worker, the crew, or the project instead of serving record keeping alone.
• What uninterrupted information flow looks like from a hazard being flagged, to review, to action and closure.
• Why the right procedure should reach the right worker at the right moment, with field events captured at the source.
• Where technology and AI can reduce administrative effort, version hunting, and manual routing after the workflow is clear.

Start with the flow, not the software

The session treats technology as an enabling layer rather than the whole practice. The operating goal is to help field information reach the people who can act on it, while giving crews a clear channel to report what they see and supervisors more time for field presence.

Ben contributes the LMS operations and safety perspective across the crew, supervisor, and leadership levels. Gabe connects those field realities to the Lean principles of value, flow, and respect for the worker.

Three places to start

• Choose one form crews complete every week. Measure how long it takes, where the information goes, and whether anyone acts on it.
• Check whether the last near-miss was flagged from the field within an hour. If the answer is unclear, inspect the reporting flow.
• Ask a front-line supervisor for the biggest time sink in their safety week. That is a practical place to begin removing waste.

Use the Operational Safety Scorecard to assess the workflow against field adoption, information flow, action closure, and evidence quality.