Zachry Group’s Fitness Center sponsored a Step It Up Fitness Challenge this past summer, and when it was all said and done, 404 employees had logged a grand total of 89,445 miles. The competition, which was open to any office or worksite across the enterprise, included 101 teams that competed over six-weeks—all aiming to be the team with the highest reported steps. But the byproduct of all those steps is what the challenge was really about.

“We had a healthy dose of competition, but we were after more than that,” said Fitness Center Manager Jamie Dantzic, who coordinated the challenge. “It was definitely about getting people up and moving, having fun and doing your personal best.” But the ultimate measure of success was to promote long lasting healthy habits that lead to real results like lost weight or inches, lower stress levels, or someone who no longer needs high blood pressure or cholesterol medication.

All indicators, both anecdotal and quantitative, point to a mission accomplished. In a post-challenge survey, more than nine out of 10 respondents—whether a beginner, intermediate or advanced participant—reported an increased fitness level. In addition, the top two reasons employees gave for participating were to improve overall health and well-being and join coworkers in a team effort.

Employees were creative about getting more steps—especially those in office settings. Many printed documents in other areas of the building; some parked farther from an office or used their lunch break to walk around an office or job site—some employees even started “walking meetings.” Many participants reported getting their families and friends up and walking with them—which increased the scale and broadened the impact of the competition.

Still Walking

Many participants are still walking. Both My Personal Physician Health Clinic Office Manager Melissa Gonzales and JVIC’s Coach Application Administrator Talia Dykes declared the challenge isn’t over for them.

When Gonzales signed up to participate, she was interested in getting more than the 3,000 steps she was already logging in a typical workday. Her inspiration came from her Star Trek: The Search for Socks teammates. “Seeing their stats made me want to do more, and our team captain was great at challenging us, even if it was to beat our own personal record,” she said.

Gonzales has continued walking. She strives to do four-to-five miles three or four days a week. “I have a dog, so that helps me get out every day,” she said, “and at work, I’ve been walking both out and indoors during lunch.” Gonzales said she also added healthy eating to her routine and the combination of both better nutrition and exercise have made a difference. “My clothes fit better and I feel energized,” she said.

Dykes had been working on an improved diet all year, but it was the Step It Up Challenge that encouraged her to become more active. “I thought this would be great motivation to become more physically active,” she said. “My job is sedentary, so I challenged myself to take 10,000 steps a day. I was pretty consistent with that and lost 10 pounds during the month of the competition.”

Dykes, who was on Team Café’een, added that the challenge was a learning experience. “I learned not to be intimidated about the sun and heat and to drink more water; the weekly micro challenges and tips also helped.”

Now, Dykes says she looks forward to getting home, changing and walking. Her goal is to continue to do so four-to-five times a week. “I don’t want more than two days to go by without doing this,” she said, adding that she gets her friends and family to walk with her in a beautiful park she discovered near where she lives. “I’m already anticipating when the time changes and thinking about how I’m going to keep this up.”

Keeping the momentum with changing seasons is certainly a challenge. But in the meantime, many employees are content to just keep walking.

These honors are based on world class safety performance, and go to sites that have an impeccable record. And “world class” is not an exaggeration. The criteria, which include having no lost-time accidents, are based on the demanding requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The awards were launched in the Industrial Services group a decade and a half ago, and expanded to the Construction group in 2010. All the employees at winning sites get Heart of Zachry medallions in five different metallic shades — pewter, copper, brass, silver and gold. These represent the number of successive years the site is being recognized for, with pewter for first-time winners through to gold for those winning for five straight years.

The result has been a measurable improvement in safety performance, and also in attitude. It has to be said that across the industry as a whole safety is not always given top priority, and supervisors and foremen are not exactly welcoming when frontline workers raise concerns. But Zachry encourages this upfront approach, making it very clear that it is the right thing to do.

If you’ve been reading a cross-section of these blog posts you’ll be getting a sense for what the company is like, and what makes it different.

Keith Manning, the executive vice president, enterprise strategic development, singled out a characteristic that’s remarkable in a company of 20,000 people:

Trust permeates everything that we do: with customers, staff, partners, suppliers and local communities.

In particular, we’ve learned that trust is the difference between just working together and truly collaborating on a shared vision of success.

We recognize that the stakes are high – that the projects we work on represent some of the biggest commitments anyone might make.

That’s why our highest priority is to do what we say we are going to do, and deliver against the goals that our customers care about the most.

This is what drives us, and it’s captured in our corporate value statement for trust which says that we will continuously earn the support of others, through character, ability and strength.

To make this work with a staff of close to 20,000 we choose not to have a massive rulebook, but rather to rely on a small number of policies. We also expect our managers to manage, not just administer actions according to a prescribed set of rules.

We recognize that occasionally a situation will need to be reviewed to see if it meets the meaning of integrity. The Dispute Resolution Process (DRP) allows for any issue, decision or action to be reviewed and/or appealed. The process also encourages supervisors to contact one of our compliance coordinators so that intended actions can be considered impartially before decisions are made.

Where possible we encourage employees to resolve disputes at the work site. But if that’s not possible they know to get in touch with one of our compliance coordinators. They will initiate an unbiased review by a panel of employees not employed at the same location as the employee.

More generally, “doing what’s right” is an element of our character and we expect it to define our relationships with our customers, vendors, partners, suppliers and each other.

The sites where we work supply power to thousands of households, or produce products like cement and petrochemicals that are used around the world. These are projects that require the investment of hundreds of millions — and even billions — of dollars. So when companies come to Zachry they are looking for a partner who shares their commitment to building high-quality facilities in a safe, collaborative and cost-effective manner. Our customers know that we are committed to achieving what others cannot, and to respecting the interests of customers, employees, partners, suppliers, investors, and the community.

My first Zachry assignment was at the J.K. Spruce 1 power project in San Antonio in 1989. And when I visited our team constructing the second Spruce unit, I was thrilled to see so many faces of those who built the first unit. That level of dedication plays a key role in the committed nature of our relationships with owners like CPS Energy. You can easily find examples of employee dedication across our sites, from working round-the-clock outages to cleaning up after the devastation of hurricanes to executing complex heavy lifts.

When I am out visiting job sites, I ask our employees why they work for Zachry, and one of the main responses I hear is that we treat people right. And I don’t hear that only from our employees. It also comes from our subcontractors, our vendors and our customers. That shows that the values we emphasize and the culture we create are appreciated, and those values help drive our success.

Commitment weaves its way through everything we do, and it remains a key component of what Zachry does and who Zachry is.

As a company, Zachry is defined by its vision, its values, and its people. Here, we’ll list our seven values:

• Safety. To always think of safety first in all that we do and to accept no compromises for our employees’ and customers’ safety.
• Commitment. To be highly visible in our complete dedication to the success of our employees, our customers and our company. To move with a sense of urgency and purpose.
• Trust. To continuously earn the support of others through our behavior and our organizational reliance on character, ability and strength.
• Integrity. To always do what is right, maintain confidentiality and respect, and deal fairly with others.
• Service. To leave no stone unturned in responding to the needs of our stakeholders, including the communities where we live and work.
• Economy. To protect the resources of our customers and their companies as if they were our own and to always pursue a reasonable return.
• Skill. To do it right the first time, using our vast collective knowledge and experience.

These values are non-negotiable, and we hope through these blog posts that you’ll see how we challenge ourselves to live them every day.

He also insisted on something that made a dramatic visual statement — clean equipment. As Senior Vice President Eddie Kreusal said at the time (this was the late 40s), “Other contractors didn’t do it, but we washed our equipment once a week. It was always clean and painted to comply with the boss’s motto that a clean job is a safe job.”

Close to 65 years later Carl Richardson, vp safety, health & environmental, reinforced the point. “At Zachry safety is a core business value and integral to our company… to put safety first in all that we do and accept no compromises.”

He went on to say, “This means doing what is right to protect our employees and not just merely complying with government safety standards.” This in turn means creating a culture where everyone feels responsible for their co-workers’ safety as well as their own — going beyond the call of duty for the safety of others.

But through all of this turbulence something constant and timeless has guided the company. It started with Pat Zachry’s philosophy, and has ultimately been captured in this Vision Statement:

These 25 words have tremendous power, and they reach into every aspect of the company:

• Principle-based. This comes first, reflecting the importance we place on integrity, and on being an employer, business partner and citizen who can be trusted.
• Best in people. This emphasizes our conviction that our employees are the foundation of our success, and the source of our ability to manage the complexity of modern industrial facilities.
• Special business experience. This stresses our collaborative approach, both internally and with suppliers, customers, partners and the wider community.
• Seeking always to make a difference. This represents our determination to be a positive force in our industry, and in the communities where we operate.

They also gave rise to our seven values — Safety, Commitment, Trust, Integrity, Service, Economy, and Skill — which we’ll cover in upcoming posts.