Moss Construction Builds a Proactive Safety Culture With AlertMedia
SafetyKeeps office and field-based workers at over 60 locations safe and informed during any emergency.
EfficiencyAllows safety communications to be targeted and precise while minimizing the administrative workload required.
TrustHelps Moss care for the health, safety, and well-being of employees and their families—a core value for the company.
AccuracyEnsures accurate employee contact data by easily integrating with Moss’ existing systems, including its HRIS.
- IndustryReal Estate & Construction
- Locations7 offices, 60 active sites
- Employees1,200
- ProductsEmergency Communication Software, Global Threat Intelligence
- Primary UsesEmergency, Business Continuity, Operations, IT Outages, Inclement Weather, HR
Communicating With a Dispersed Workforce When Seconds Count
Founded in 2004, Moss Construction has grown from a small family-owned business into a national, multi-billion dollar construction firm. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Moss has offices and construction sites across Hawaii, California, Texas, and Florida. Moss’ portfolio spans a diverse range of construction projects, including high-rise residential, mixed-use developments, hospitality, education, justice, solar energy, and sports.
Before finding AlertMedia, Moss relied on email to communicate with employees about critical events and severe weather like hurricanes. As the organization grew, however, so did the range of potential threats. To keep employees informed during rapidly evolving events, Moss turned to AlertMedia’s multichannel emergency communication software. With AlertMedia, Moss now can ensure timely, accurate, and reliable emergency communication with its distributed workforce. Before the forecasted landfall of a Category 4 hurricane in Hawaii, for example, AlertMedia helped Moss rapidly identify several employees who were ill-prepared for the storm and usher them to a safe location. By using AlertMedia to deliver clear, effective, and proactive emergency communication, Moss can maintain the trust, safety, and well-being of its people through any critical event.
Evolving Beyond Email-Only Communication To Keep Workers Safe
In the years since Moss Construction was founded as a small, two-employee family business in South Florida, it has rapidly grown into a large, distributed organization with facilities across the U.S. With more than 1,200 employees nationally and approximately 60 active construction projects at any given time, communicating critical information to its growing workforce was a challenge. The company also needed a better way to reach its sizable percentage of employees that work outdoors and are exposed to the elements and other threats.
When an active shooter incident occurred at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport—where Moss happened to have 250 workers on a job site—the company knew email-only communication wasn’t enough.
While Moss was eventually able to reach employees and none were harmed, the event was the catalyst that changed the way Moss approached emergency communication moving forward. “When we had hundreds of workers in close proximity to an active shooter event, we knew we needed something more than email to keep employees safe,” says Scott Gerard, Vice President of Environmental, Health & Safety at Moss Construction. “Emailing people during unexpected and rapidly evolving events doesn’t work. You simply can’t get information to them or from them fast enough.”
After this incident, Moss tried an emergency communication solution from another provider; however, the company soon found the vendor’s solution inflexible and its customer support team less accommodating than they had hoped. After re-evaluating the vendor landscape, Moss found a trusted, reliable partner in AlertMedia.
Accurate, Segmented Employee Data Enables Targeted Notifications
Moss selected AlertMedia for its robust emergency communication capabilities and responsive, easy-to-work-with customer support team. Says Gerard, “Relationships are foundational to how we do business and core to our culture. AlertMedia provides a level of support, attention, and collaborative engagement I have not seen with other vendors. AlertMedia has truly become an extension of our team.”
“AlertMedia provides a level of support, attention, and collaborative engagement I have not seen with other vendors.”
With AlertMedia’s multichannel emergency communication software, Moss can keep all of its office and field-based employees up to date during critical events. By sending urgent communications simultaneously across multiple channels—including email, text message, phone call, and mobile app—Moss can ensure the timely delivery of notifications.
One particularly challenging aspect of emergency communication in the construction industry is the continuously changing nature of the workforce. Each of Moss’ construction projects lasts between nine and 24 months before those workers leave or are reassigned to another job site. Moss also has a rotating roster of short-term workers and subcontractors. With AlertMeda’s HR data synchronization and audience segmentation capabilities, Moss can ensure every worker gets the messages they need.
Every job site is given its own group within AlertMedia. When a new employee starts, he or she is assigned to that group. This enables Moss to quickly communicate about site-specific threats only with employees that may be impacted. When an employee is terminated or moves to another job site, their group assignment is updated. By directly syncing with the organization’s HR directory, AlertMedia also automatically updates users so that contact data is always up to date.
“Manually keeping employee data updated in multiple systems would be incredibly time consuming, especially in the construction industry where the workforce is so dynamic,” says Gerard. “AlertMedia enables targeted, reliable communication while minimizing the administrative workload on our team. By syncing with our HR directory and allowing us to easily build location-specific groups, AlertMedia makes it easy to effectively communicate the right information to the right people.”
Quickly Identifying At-Risk Employees in the Face of a Category 4 Hurricane
One of the most illustrative examples of the value AlertMedia has brought to Moss comes from Hurricane Lane, a Category 4 hurricane that threatened Hawaii in 2018. Moss had several construction job sites and solar projects ongoing across Hawaii at the time, with hundreds of workers spread across the islands. Moss needed to ensure its people were prepared and safe throughout the storm.
“Time is of the essence in emergency situations, and AlertMedia allowed us to swiftly assist our people in need of storm-related assistance.”
Because hurricanes are a surprisingly rare occurrence in Hawaii, and many of the homes are not hardened to protect against hurricane-force wind, rain, and debris, Moss arranged a hotel block for employees that lived in houses that weren’t hurricane-resistant. Moss also leveraged AlertMedia to ensure employees were prepared and had the support they needed to weather the storm.
Using AlertMedia, Moss sent out multichannel notifications to employees in the hurricane’s path to keep them informed of the latest storm updates. Moss also set up an event page within AlertMedia to house all storm-related information, including hurricane preparation resources. A few hours before the hurricane was to hit, Moss sent a survey notification to employees to confirm storm readiness. This allowed Moss to rapidly identify four employees that felt they were ill-prepared for the storm. Immediately, the organization was able to connect with and get these employees and their families into a hotel. Adds Gerard, “Time is of the essence in emergency situations, and AlertMedia allowed us to swiftly assist our people in need of storm-related assistance.”
Fortunately Hurricane Lane spared the islands from catastrophic damage, but Gerard credits AlertMedia with how quickly Moss was able to mobilize its preparedness plans. “There’s no way we could have kept our people safe from this Category 4 hurricane without AlertMedia. Email would have taken too long and phone circuits were already faltering. With AlertMedia, we were able to account for and ensure all employees were in a safe location prior to the storm,” says Gerard. “AlertMedia would have been the difference between life and death if Hurricane Lane had hit the Hawaiian Islands as forecasted.”
Honoring Relationships by Caring for Employees Through Emergencies
Moss has used AlertMedia to communicate about a variety of emergent events, from severe weather to hurricanes and IT outages to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, for example, Moss has leveraged an event page to share the latest guidelines and safety protocols. As parts of the country have experienced regional outbreaks, Moss has been able to target notifications to employees in those areas.
To further enhance safety efforts, the organization also recently added AlertMedia’s global threat intelligence solution. This allows Moss to proactively monitor for and react faster to nearby threats that may impact its people and business. With threat intelligence, Gerard and his team can rapidly identify emerging incidents as they occur and automatically send location-based alerts to workers that may be in harm’s way. “Our employees in Florida aren’t necessarily impacted by the same threats as our employees in Colorado. Being able to automatically track, identify, and push out relevant notifications to only those workers that may be affected by any given threat is critical,” says Gerard. “AlertMedia’s threat intelligence solution allows us to feasibly monitor all of our worksites around the country for potential threats and reduce the noise of unnecessary notifications, keeping our people safer and more productive.”
One of the core values that guide Moss’ company culture is to “Honor Relationships.” This means caring about the health, safety, and well-being of team members and their families. Using AlertMedia is one way that Moss can live by this core value and execute on its commitment to prioritizing people and relationships. Says Gerard, “Safety is more than a set of rules and procedures. It’s about caring for your people 24/7. And that’s what AlertMedia allows us to achieve.”
