When safety fails, it’s rarely due to indifference. More often, it’s because no one knows exactly where safety lives.

Is it buried in a binder? Posted on a wall? Hidden in a vendor contract from three years ago?

For most property teams, safety is a stated priority but a shared — and often scattered — responsibility. That makes it fragile. Moving from a reactive model to a resilient culture starts by making safety visible, repeatable, and real across every square foot of the portfolio.

Reaction is immediate – resilience is intentional

The difference between safety as a response plan and sustaining a culture of resilience is more than semantics. Responsive safety solves problems at a single site whereas a safety culture of resilience solves them across the portfolio before they even start. What separates high-performing organizations isn’t how fast they respond to safety incidents. It’s how deliberately they build systems, train people, and foster partnerships to avoid those incidents entirely.

Safety that doesn’t scale isn’t safety at all

Most safety conversations start after an incident: someone trips, a chemical is misused, a contractor gets injured. The investigation kicks in, forms are filled out, a root cause is identified, and a new rule is added to the binder. But unless those lessons inform how other sites operate, the organization remains stuck in reactive mode.

“We make a mistake when we treat safety as a one-time fix,” said Barry Poston, Corporate Director of HSEQ at Velociti Services. “Resilience is built through consistency — not through Band-Aids.”

That consistency must go beyond paper. It must be evident in how teams are trained, how vendors are held accountable, and how decisions are made when no one from leadership is present.

The real safety test happens after 9 P.M.

According to Poston, one of the most overlooked aspects of portfolio safety is the gap between what’s written and what’s lived.

“Every company has rules. But culture is what kicks in after 9 p.m., when a shift is understaffed and someone must decide whether to take a shortcut or follow the protocol,” he said.

In resilient organizations, safety is sustained not by oversight alone, but by people who are equipped and empowered to act with intention. That kind of culture requires aligned expectations between internal teams and vendor partners, standardized tools, and a shared definition of what safe operations look like — regardless of property type or shift time.

“If your people are thinking through hazards, identifying risks, and speaking up when something feels off, you’ve already changed the culture,” Poston said.

Designing systems that learn, not just report

Scaling safety across a diverse portfolio introduces real complexity. Different buildings may rely on different contractors, staffing models, or inspection tools. Inconsistency creates blind spots — and those blind spots can lead to incidents.

According to Poston, the path to resilience lies in systematizing how safety is measured, monitored, and improved.

“We’ve had OSHA review our program multiple times,” he said. “What they consistently tell us is that the level of detail and documentation we provide is above what they usually see. That’s not because we’re trying to impress them. It’s because our systems were built to learn, not just report.”

Without a structure for capturing and distributing insight, every site ends up starting from zero. Resilient organizations invest in tools and systems that create both alignment and accountability across their portfolios, including:

• Shared technology platforms for inspections, assessments and hazard tracking
• Standardized onboarding and training for employees and vendor partners
• Clear, real-time communication channels between field teams and leadership
• Auditing mechanisms that focus on trends, not just one-off violations

Safety culture doesn’t stop at the property line

In large, multi-site portfolios, safety performance often hinges not only on internal standards but also on the capabilities of external partners. While corporate policies may be well defined, the reality on-site is shaped by the frontline behaviors of vendors and the systems, or lack thereof, that support them.

“Most clients assume their vendors have it covered,” said Barry. “But a lot of smaller contractors don’t have safety departments or even written programs. That puts everyone at risk.”

To close this gap, Poston led the development of a streamlined contractor safety program designed specifically for smaller service partners.

The initiative includes a foundational safety manual tailored to typical site conditions, a formal sign-off process to establish accountability, and a standing invitation for open dialogue with his team.

“We want our vendors to succeed,” he explained. “And that means giving them tools they can actually use, not just penalties when they fall short.”

This approach does not lower expectations. Instead, it raises the minimum standard in a way that smaller partners can realistically reach without compromising the integrity of the broader program.

“Culture isn’t something you enforce with a policy,” Poston said. “It’s something you foster by making sure people feel safe to ask questions, speak up and improve. That’s where real accountability begins.”

Safety leadership begins with showing up

Resilient safety cultures are sustained through systems, procedures and relationships grounded in trust and presence, particularly with frontline staff.

“I’ve had employees call me directly with concerns they didn’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone else,” said Barry. “Sometimes it’s about PPE. Sometimes it’s about equipment. And sometimes it’s something entirely personal. But they reach out because they know I’ll listen.”

That level of trust must be earned through consistent action. Early in one contract, just three days after launch, a team member passed away while on the job.

“It turned out to be a personal medical emergency, not something caused by the work itself, but I was on the next flight out,” Poston recalled.

“I stayed on-site for a week. We supported the team, met with OSHA, and documented every detail. Not because it was required, but because it was the right thing to do.”

For Poston, that experience underscored a deeper truth. Trust cannot be built in the aftermath of an incident; it grows from how leaders show up before, during, and after one. “That’s the level of presence our teams have come to expect,” he said.

Ultimately, that kind of leadership communicates something no policy can: safety is not an administrative requirement, but a shared human responsibility.

Embedding safety as a core leadership responsibility

Shifting from a reactive safety posture to a truly resilient culture requires more than operational tweaks. It demands a fundamental reframing of how safety is understood and led across the organization. Rather than existing as a checkbox on a service contract or compliance document, safety must be recognized as a core leadership responsibility, embedded into both strategy and daily decision-making.

To cultivate that kind of culture, Poston identifies five essential areas of focus:

• Clearly define and embed safety expectations within RFPs and scopes of work to establish standards from the outset.
• Standardize tools, training, and protocols across all regions and vendor partners to reduce variability and eliminate confusion.
• Leverage technology to increase transparency, track performance, and identify leading indicators before incidents occur.
• Support smaller vendors with coaching, resources, and access to subject matter expertise in addition to holding them accountable.
• Lead by example by modeling transparency, responsiveness, and ownership at every level of the organization.

“The best safety programs aren’t the ones that sound good in a presentation,” Poston said. “They’re the ones that work in real life, on real sites, with real people.”

Where Safety lives, Resilience Follows

The future of safety in commercial real estate will not be defined by longer checklists or thicker manuals. Its foundation will rest on shared accountability, intelligent systems, and leaders who view safety as a living culture — one that shows up not only in policies, but in everyday decisions and actions across the portfolio.

“You don’t build resilience by responding faster,” Poston said. “You build it by caring earlier.”

When safety has a clear and intentional presence in your operations, it becomes more than a requirement. It becomes repeatable, visible, and real — not just in documentation, but in practice. And that is how resilient cultures are built: through leadership that ensures safety is not only defined but demonstrated.

That work begins now — by identifying where safety lives within your organization today and making the effort to make it unmistakable everywhere you operate.

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