Coming from the airline industry, where lack of attention to customer safety could result in hundreds of deaths at a time, Andy Studdert, chairman and CEO of Deerfield, Ill.-based NES Rentals, has some strong views about the importance of safety and has recently been awarded for it. He was honored by the International Powered Access Federation as Safety Champion of the Year in April and in February the National Safety Council recognized Studdert on its annual list of “CEOs Who Get It” for incorporating safety as a core value, cultivating safety leadership at all levels within an organization. RER's Michael Roth recently spoke with Studdert about NES' safety program as well as his thoughts on the economy and the future of the rental industry.

RER: You've received two prestigious safety awards on behalf of NES. Tell me about your safety programs at NES and how this emphasis developed?

Studdert: Safety awards are a very important reflection on what we have done here at NES over the past five years to turn us into a world-class operator. And when you're a world-class operator the first thing you do is make sure your people and your customers are safe.

You told me a while back you were putting more emphasis on safety and now you've done it and been recognized for it. Tell me about what you did to put safety into the forefront.

First of all, the CEO and the entire management team have to set a tone at the top. That manifests itself in talking about it in every forum that you have. If I walk into a branch and there is something that is unsafe, I call it out not in a mean way but right there. The officers and all the people visiting that branch help that branch manager see what his facility looks like. When you have an accident, you have an immediate review by safety professionals and management.

We've established a very professional safety and environmental group inside the company and they perform annual safety and environmental audits of the branch and if the branch manager gets below a passing score, he's put on a program where he must remediate that or it has a significant impact on his compensation. So we've tied it in both from a cultural and a compensation standpoint, and we've carried it out to our customers as well.

There's a misconception in many industries and ours is included that it costs money to be safe. Actually a safe company is an efficient company, both in the short term and the long term and it's really a dangerous mindset to have the thought that safety costs you more, but it's the exact opposite.

All you have to do is look at how it affects insurance premiums and the extra expense is right there.

That's right. And if you think about another example of that, many would argue that doing annual inspections and keeping current on service bulletins for the manufacturers costs you money, actually we would say we are current on all of our service bulletins and all of our annual inspections and that makes our fleet more reliable and safer and our customer looks at us as a high-quality provider. And in the long run it's a more efficient fleet.

NES rents a lot to the industrial marketplace and many of those customers demand documentation of your safety record, don't they?

Yes, they want to look at our safety record and they want to look at our culture. They want to know that our senior management team believes in safety. They want to see our drivers show up and go through a structured process to load and unload the equipment. They want to make sure that the safety equipment is on the individual equipment, fire extinguishers are current, annual inspections are current, everything is up to snuff.

Does some of your interest in this come from your background in the airline industry where obviously a lack of safety can result in hundreds of deaths at the same time?

It would be hard for me to say I didn't understand the importance of safety having moved 300,000 people a day at what was, at that time, the world's largest airline. A large number of our management team also came out of the airline business so safety is second nature. It's like doing the dishes. If you don't do the dishes how can you say you're keeping your house up?

As far as internal practices, do you have meetings at each branch, and are there other safety procedures?

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