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Lessons That Last: With 4Eversafe Award Winners Jerry Duprey & Ed Pellerin | 5/5/25

It’s Construction Safety week, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk to two of our safety field experts. Today I’m sitting down with 2 Jewett 4EverSafe Award Winners and seasoned Senior Superintendents, Jerry Duprey and Ed Pellerin to discuss their experience with safety on the jobsite.

1. What’s one safety lesson you learned early in your career that still sticks with you today?
Ed: I’ll start! So the one thing that really stuck with me early on is that safety is an everyday concept. You can’t just selectively go and decide when you are going to think about or worry about safety. You have to worry about safety all the time. You have to look at everyone who’s on your site and remember that you want these guys to go home exactly how they came in today. No one goes home injured. We all have families, and we work for our families, not for fun, so we need to make sure that these guys can go to work and come home safely so they can spend time with their families.

Jerry:I agree with 100% of what Ed just said, and I’d like to add that from early on, I have taken the approach that whenever I walk out of the jobsite trailer, it’s 100% about safety. If a job, or a portion of the job, is going to take longer than planned because we need the time to be safer, then ok – we get it done the right way and the safe way, no exceptions. We don’t take chances or give passes for the times where it might be faster to just run up a ladder for 2 seconds, for example, it’s not an option. I’m also a big believer that I want everyone to go home the way they came in, and on my sites, there are no arguments about safety. You follow safety protocols, or you don’t work on my site. I don’t let anyone take chances or ignore safety because they want to do things their way. It’s the safe way or no way – safety is just too important.

Ed: The only other thing I would say is to share what an old superintendent told me on my day 1: never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself. If you’re looking at a situation and it looks sketchy, then it probably is sketchy, so think twice and find another, much safer way to do it.

2. How has the culture of safety changed since you first started in construction, and how have you helped shape that change?
Jerry: It has changed dramatically! I can remember back 30+ years ago walking on steel, 3 stories up with no harness. There were no harnesses in the boom lifts, no one ever wore safety glasses – it was the time. We all wore hard hats, but that’s about it – you wore what you wore. Over the years, it has changed so much. Take trenches for example  - years ago you could just jump in a trench 10ft deep and wouldn’t even think twice about it. Now, that would be a violation. There’s been a constant increase in regulations over the years, who knows, maybe in 15yrs from now we’ll be working in bubbles! (chuckle) Sure, being safe could mean that a job takes a little longer today than it did years ago, but a lot fewer of us are missing fingers!

Ed: I’m not quite as old as Jerry (laughing) – but even over the last 20yrs, things have changed. For myself, my first construction experience was on a hospital site, so that’s a world where there was always a heavy focus on safety. I’ve only known hardcore safety practices I guess! Safety has always been a pretty big part of my life and part of my culture. Mabye whenI first started it was a little bit more lax and it’s gotten more strict, but it’s always been part of the culture. I will say that maybe the paperwork is more stringent now – with documenting everything.

Jerry: Well, I agree with that. And safety has always been part of the culture for sure, but it wasn’t as strict years ago as it is now.

Ed: Obviously, a lot has changed from the early 2000’s. Even so, the 2000’s were more safe that what happened in the 80’s or 90’s. So, Jerry, I definitely think when you started, there was probably a lot of crazy stuff that happened.

Jerry: I once worked for someone’s who’s 80yr old father worked for the company as well and every day he would drink 2 beers at lunch. Every single day.

Ed: Yeah that was the thing! Crazy!

3. Can you tell us about a time when speaking up or taking action made a difference on a job site?
Ed: This is more safety documentation related, but when I was a new superintendent at that hospital site, we were putting up a tower and had a 250 ton lattice boom crane on the job. I saw that over the weekend the forecast predicted high winds. When I talked to [subcontractors] and the crane operator, I told them about the winds and suggested they drop the boom down. They told me that it wasn’t going to be an issue and that they planned to jackknife it and call it good. Well, over the weekend, I got a call that the tower, the crane actually, fell and three different buildings collapsed. You can’t teach crisis management like that. Luckily, and amazingly, there were no fatalities, but two of the buildings it hit were residential homes. One of those homes had people who had left for work just 30 mins earlier. They could have been crushed in their beds! It was crazy, but I had put into the daily logs that I had that conversation with the crane operator and I certified it the Friday before. So, when it was all said and done, the job lost about a month, and there was $6 million worth of damage. Those couple of sentences in my daily log saved my company millions. I guess that was one of my earliest lessons on how important documentation is in regards to safety. If you don’t document what’s going on in the field and have everything together, it can come back to bite you.

Jerry: My story is more personal to me. The difference on a job site is how this incident forever changed how I approached ladder safety. 25-30 years ago I fell 35 feet off of a roof. I did things wrong, I thought it would be a quick run up the ladder, but I was carrying things in both hands and on top of that, I missed the very top rung of the ladder when I tried to jump to the roof. I fell to the ground and even landed on the guy who was coming up the ladder behind me. I was in the hospital for a few days, and I hurt my back and my hip. I had to stay out of work for about a month. I could have died.

Ed: You are lucky you didn’t!

Jerry: So lucky. So, for me, after that, I now make sure that ladders are tied off, that they stick up over the second floor by 3ft, and that everyone keeps 3 points of contact at all times on the ladder. No more carrying anything up the ladder in my hands!

4. What does it mean to you to be a 4EverSafe Award Winner at Jewett?
Jerry: It means I’m doing my job. In my eyes, safety comes first. Take the time to do things safely and like Ed said, don’t tell someone to do something you wouldn’t feel safe doing yourself. So, safety first and then the work comes after that. That’s how you get your work done right.

Ed: I agree with so much of what Jerry is saying. For me it’s also a sign that I take pride in my job and I take pride in safety and making sure people go home every day.

Sarah: In your roles, you have both taken on some coaching and mentoring to our newer employees, and winning the safety award puts you in the position of role modeling safety to your peers as well as the younger/newer supers on the job. Is that something you guys ever think about? Jerry- I think you are even a two time 4EverSafe award winner, aren’t you?

Jerry: Yup! That’s exactly why I joined the Safety Committee. I want it clear how important safety is to me. If I can take time to be on a committee for it, it has to be important.

Ed: I think it’s good for us to be recognized for our commitment to safety because part of how we mentor includes teaching new folks how to recognize a potential safety concern, because we know what to look for. We can walk around a jobsite with the younger supers and ask: “What do you see here?” Then we let them stumble through it and guide them towards the issue or potential hazards, actively observing what is happening on site and then getting them to address it versus just blindly walking around.

5. How do you build a safety-first mindset with your crews, especially with newer team members?
Jerry: On my sites, they need to come to me and be comfortable enough to say “Hey, I don’t like the way this is being done.” or “Jerry, I need you to talk to the foreman, I don’t think that that sub is doing is safe.” Then we can go talk to them. Have a five minute JSA talk. Figure out how we can do things safely and let everyone on the site know that this is how we’re going to do it. Then we’re not going to argue about it. We do it together and we make sure we aren’t asking people to do things that we wouldn’t do. Young supers sometimes just want to build a building. They need to understand the bigger picture – if you build the building but you have a major injury on the job, that’s a failure.

Ed: Yeah – I tell the newer ones to just look at what’s happening. If something looks messed up, it probably is messed up. Just look and pay attention.

Sarah: I believe that attitude is almost always a reflection of the leadership that you’re exposed to. So, by you passing on this safety minded approach to your work, whether you realize it or not, you’re passing on something that’s going to stick with them for the rest of their careers – that they will in turn pass on to the folks that they may someday have an opportunity to mentor or coach. So it’s really a legacy that you guys are creating and passing down. A legacy of safety and making sure that you yourself are modeling the behavior of how seriously to take it. It’s not a joke, it’s not taken lightly, it’s not met with attitude or resistance, it’s important to you. When things are important – genuinely important – to you, that resonates to the people you are coaching and leaves a lasting impression. It must be pretty darn cool knowing that you are passing on a legacy that will carry on for generations.

Jerry/Ed: (Mumbles of humble agreement)

Sarah: So that leads me to ask: 

6. What message do you hope sticks with the next generation of builders when it comes to safety?
Ed: It starts from day 1. I hate to say this, but when someone first comes on the site, I’m a bit of a jerk to them about safety. I’m more stern with them to make sure they know from Day 1 that this safety standard is how it’s going to be. Eventually, they get it and I can back off a little, but I like to set the tone.

Jerry: One of the first things I make clear when we go through expectation sheets and stuff, is that I will not argue with anyone about safety. If it’s a minor thing, like your glasses fell off your head while you were working, stop and put them back on. Easy. Things happen. If it’s a major violation, that person is off my site and not coming back. I document everything too, with pictures. It’s just the way it is. And, CRM helps us as well to make sure we don’t lose our safety focus. The idea is that you start safety on Day 1 so that on Day 120 your guy still has all fingers and toes and he hasn’t hurt anyone else on the site by doing something stupid or unsafe.

It has to be drilled in every day – young guys but older ones too, the ones who say “I’ve been doing this for 40 years”.  Accidents happen to everyone – people trip and fall, tools can slip and cut you, no one escapes the accidents of life, but if you are following your safety protocols, when your saw does slip, you have your guard. People say it only takes two seconds to lose your life. I don’t want that on my site. I won’t have that on my site. I’d never recover from that. So, instead – it’s safety, safety, safety, at all times.

Ed: I want the next generation of builders to care. I want them to be observant and get to know their people. Once you are connecting with your people day to day and you are being observant, you’ll notice when someone is having an off day. People have personal things that come up and when people bring their personal issues to work, accidents are more likely to happen. I call it “feeling the pulse” of your job. Try to feel the pulse and know what’s going on and if something might be off. Have conversations, care just 2% more – it kind of leads to making sure they’re actually doing safe things and their heads are still focused on safety and not home life or personal struggles.

About Jewett: Jewett Construction Company is a full-service commercial construction company, design-builder, general contractor, and commercial construction manager with projects across the East Coast.
 

Jewett Construction through its licensed division Jewett Design LLC. (“Jewett”) provides architectural services.