BuiltWorlds named chief safety officer Shaun Carvalho to its 2023 Mavericks 50 List, recognizing him as one of 50 global leaders who’s a trendsetter, innovative thinker, and catalyst for change. Read more about Shaun’s industry leadership below and in the Mavericks 50 List here.

Establishing a Culture of Safety and Care

Partnering with CEO Les Hiscoe, Shaun has established safety as a business imperative, taking a top-down and bottom-up approach to driving engagement and integrating safety into regular company- and department-wide touchpoints. An early advocate of Total Worker Health, Shaun has been leading the charge in operationalizing and integrating mindfulness and mental health into Shawmut’s safety program, a critical essential in today’s workplace. Shaun partnered with chief people & administration officer Marianne Monte to launch Shawmut’s Mental Health & Wellness Leadership Group, which consists of more than 50 people, across functions, dedicated to identifying programs, initiatives, and paths to address the mental health crisis in the industry.

Harnessing the Power of Technology to Prevent and Predict Risk

Shaun and his safety team are continuously vetting and piloting technologies and programs to establish the most effective combinations that will drive risk prevention, and ultimately, prediction. Shawmut’s recent enterprise-wide deployment of HammerTech, which digitally tracks subcontractor certificates, orientation, safety trainings and events, and pre-task planning meetings, allows the safety team to feed the data through Shawmut’s predictive analytics tools and safety dashboard to identify leading indicators of risk, with the ultimate goal of creating enhanced reliability of incident prediction.

Addressing the Opioid Crisis

To proactively respond to the opioid crisis facing construction in 2018, Shaun mobilized a cross-functional Opioid Task Force to provide resources for not only Shawmut, but its entire network, partnering with the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center to have access to the most up-to-date and valuable information. Shaun led a partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield to pilot an opioid toolkit program, and to-date, all of Shawmut’s field and office services staff have undergone substance use disorder training, which includes the administration of Narcan, which is supplied to all Shawmut jobsites.

Driving the Industry Forward Through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

A member of Shawmut’s Diversity Leadership Council, Shaun helps actively drive Shawmut’s strategic framework to progress toward workplace equity and cultivating diversity of people and thought. An initiative Shaun led was the launch of enhanced Toolbox Talks that focus on safety from a psychological, inclusive behavior, and general well-being standpoint. The Culture of Care Toolbox Talks have the specific goal of making jobsites more inclusive, with topics including mental health awareness (PTSD, suicide prevention), leading with empathy, and the effects of racism and sexism.