CII Safety Excellence Techniques
The CII annual benchmarking survey results indicate that safety performance has plateaued in recent years. This trend raises important questions: What new safety practices could drive further improvement? And should the current list of CII Zero Accidents Techniques (ZATs) be revised?
To address these concerns, CII’s Research Team 412 (RT-412) was tasked with conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the existing ZATs. Their goal was to validate whether these techniques still represent best practices and to identify any additional safety strategies that merit inclusion.
RT-412 successfully developed a refreshed set of best practices, now termed Safety Excellence Techniques (SETs). The team identified sixteen SETs, grouped into five key categories:
- Planning
- Knowledge and Training
- Involvement
- Monitoring
- Human Performance
To support the effective adoption of these techniques, RT-412 created two practical tools, bundled as Implementation Resource 412 (IR-412):
- SET Implementation Guide – A resource for developing and applying SETs effectively.
- SET Assessment Tool – A framework for evaluating the extent and quality of SET implementation on projects.
The research findings were clear: organizations that implement a high number of SETs—and do so consistently and with high quality—achieve significantly better safety outcomes on their projects.
