For those working inside data centers, safety challenges are nothing new. You’re dealing with high-voltage systems, heavy equipment, fast schedules, and crews that can number in the hundreds. In that setting, even a small oversight can ripple out into serious consequences.

What separates teams that thrive isn’t just compliance with the rulebook. It’s a culture where safety is woven into every choice, from the earliest design decision to the routine tasks of daily operations.

This guide brings together insights from three industry leaders: Andrew Boyea of NTT Global Data Centers, Mark McKeon of Rowan Digital Infrastructure, and Adam Board of T5 Data Centers.

Each offers a distinct perspective on what it takes to advance safety in this environment. You’ll find lessons on building a people-first culture, partnering effectively with contractors, and using technology and data as tools for continuous improvement.

Safety Isn’t a Policy, It’s a Partnership

Boots-on-the-Ground: A Partnership Approach to Safety

Andrew Boyea, Environmental Health and Safety Engineer at NTT Global Data Centers, believes that true safety is built in the field through “real conversations, mutual respect, and the willingness to listen.” His hands-on, people-first philosophy is rooted in the simple principle that safety isn’t a policy, it’s a partnership.

In practice, this means being out in the field and actively engaging with work crews. Boyea stresses that trust and respect are earned by “showing up, being there when they have to stay late or come in early, and asking why they’re doing things the way they are–not just telling them to do it differently.” By consistently showing up and listening, Boyea has helped NTT build a people-first safety culture where workers are treated as true partners in safety.

Connecting the Dots: Scaling Safety with Data

As NTT expanded from regional projects to a global footprint, one major challenge was scaling its safety program while staying connected to on-the-ground realities. To address this, the company adopted a centralized safety management platform (Highwire) to “connect the dots” and maintain oversight across all projects in one unified system. With this platform in place, Boyea’s team can track subcontractor performance, spot gaps in safety documentation, and streamline how information is shared.

“It saves us a lot of time… We can see what programs are in place, what’s missing, and what contractors say they have but don’t,” Boyea says, highlighting that having everything in one place leads to smarter, faster decisions.

Beyond saving time, the platform also allows NTT to monitor safety conditions throughout a project’s lifecycle–from underground construction to final commissioning–and use that data to drive decisions. Boyea sees data as “the ever-growing component of safety” and emphasizes that harnessing it is key to proactive risk management.

Preparing the Next Generation and Embracing Transparency

NTT also recognizes that a strong safety culture is sustained by investing in people. With many veteran workers nearing retirement, Boyea’s team works to capture their knowledge and pass it on to newer tradespeople. They even incorporate questions about workforce development into contractor vetting to ensure that new hires will be properly trained and mentored in safety practices.

Equally important, Boyea advocates for industry-wide transparency about safety challenges and lessons learned. “The more we talk about what’s gone wrong and how we fixed it, the better we all get. And the safer our people are,” he says.

He sees safety not as a competitive advantage to guard but as a shared responsibility across the industry. By encouraging companies to openly share incidents and solutions instead of hiding them, NTT aims to raise the bar on safety across the data center industry so that everyone benefits.

Rethinking Risk & Sharing Safety Success

Meeting the Safety Challenges of Mega-Projects

After years of hands-on experience in construction, Mark McKeon transitioned into safety leadership and now serves as Senior Director of Safety at Rowan Digital Infrastructure. He brings a passion for proactive risk management to his role. As data center projects grow larger and more complex, McKeon notes a significant shift: “We’ve moved from building 50‑megawatt facilities to data centers that now range from 150 to 300 megawatts.” This jump in scale, he explains, “introduces a whole new set of safety challenges, especially when it comes to power and excavation.”

The sheer magnitude of Rowan’s modern projects–with enormous precast concrete panels, heavy cranes, and extensive underground utilities–requires rethinking traditional safety approaches. McKeon emphasizes presence in the field as the starting point for keeping these big jobs safe. “My biggest focus is spending time with the crews, understanding what their exposures are, and getting more involved with what they’re doing,” he says.

By engaging directly with workers on-site, McKeon and his team gain first-hand insights that influence everything from the choice of personal protective equipment (PPE) to how tasks are engineered. If a standard method isn’t sufficiently safe, they will change the task or find better protective gear. “If doing it safer means it costs more, then that’s what we do–because safety isn’t negotiable,” McKeon affirms.

This unwavering commitment is backed by Rowan’s leadership. The executive team (including the COO and managing partners) is “heavily engaged in the success of our safety program,” he notes. They hold weekly conversations on safety and support investments in better equipment, training, and personnel. In short, Rowan’s safety culture is driven from the top down as well as from the bottom up.

Safety as a Shared Responsibility

Another key aspect of Rowan’s approach is involving the entire project ecosystem in safety. McKeon stresses that safety is a shared responsibility among all stakeholders–general contractors, subcontractors, and even industry peers. In practice, his team engages trade partners early, even before a project breaks ground, to set safety expectations and integrate plans from day one.

Rowan has also established safety forums to exchange lessons learned across companies. These sessions include not only Rowan employees but also GCs, subcontractors, and sometimes even competitors. The goal is to break down silos so that best practices and hazard information circulate freely among everyone involved.

McKeon underscores the importance of this openness: “If we’re not sharing, we’re not providing the best opportunity for our workers to stay safe,” he says. Open communication across companies, he believes, can ultimately save lives on-site.

McKeon extends this philosophy to his view that safety knowledge is not proprietary. He argues that safety information must be shared freely: “If we say that our safety documents and practices are confidential, we’re missing the bigger picture. We’re missing the opportunity to improve the industry.”

In an industry where workforces are fluid and workers move between projects, treating safety programs like trade secrets is counterproductive. By freely sharing what works (and what doesn’t), Rowan aims to elevate safety standards across all job sites. The company recognizes that “how the company performs is only as good as what your contractors do,” emphasizing that everyone’s safety performance is interconnected.

Embracing Technology and Wellness

Rowan also leverages technology and innovative practices to advance safety. When McKeon joined the company in 2024, he found the contractor prequalification process slow and manual, strained by a growing list of subcontractors. Implementing Highwire’s platform quickly streamlined this process.

“Highwire has really supported the effort in getting contractors prequalified faster and doing a more in-depth review,” McKeon notes. This efficiency gives the safety team time back and provides deeper insight, allowing for thorough analysis of each contractor and quicker development of risk mitigation plans.

Beyond prequalification, McKeon’s team has sharpened its focus on preventing serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). They track high-risk activities and use data insights to adjust practices before accidents occur.

On the worker wellness front, McKeon introduced dynamic warm-up programs to replace the old-school calisthenics, commonly referred to as “stretch-and-flex”, that crews used to do. He believes construction workers should be treated like athletes, so he instituted movement routines that better prepare workers’ bodies for the physical demands of the job. By proactively addressing ergonomic risks in this way, Rowan helps reduce muscle strains, prevent injuries, and keep workers healthier on the job.

All of these efforts feed into one overarching goal: to make Rowan’s projects places where workers want to work because of the strong safety culture. “When a union worker sees they’re going to a Rowan project, I want them to be enthusiastic because they know what they’re coming into,” McKeon says. “I also want them to take these best practices and share them with other projects that they go to.”

In this way, Rowan’s safety influence extends beyond its own sites. Workers carry forward the culture and practices to future jobs, multiplying the impact of Rowan’s safety success across the industry.

Maintaining a Culture of Care & Continuous Improvement

Safety Leadership and Shared Responsibility

T5 Data Centers has thrived for nearly two decades, and safety remains at the heart of its operations. The company has expanded rapidly while preserving what Senior Vice President of EHS Adam Board, CSP, CHST, calls a “magnetic culture of excellence.” He credits this to T5’s CEO and founders, who lead by example and stay actively engaged in safety. This leadership from the top has helped maintain a genuine culture of care even as the company grows.

However, T5 sees safety not as a top-down mandate, but as a mission shared by all employees and partners. To keep everyone on the same page, Board works closely with trade contractors of all experience levels–some with mature safety programs and others new to the industry. He makes sure every partner understands and embraces T5’s safety expectations. His approach is simple: “If one trade partner fails or struggles, we struggle as well. We win together, or we lose together.”

By involving trade partners early, setting clear expectations, and holding regular check-ins, T5 fosters collective responsibility and mutual success, making safety a true team effort.

From Blame to Learning: Fostering Open Communication

Another hallmark of T5’s safety culture is shifting from blaming individuals to learning from mistakes. Board acknowledges that early in his career, he viewed safety as a policing function, focused on finding out who was at fault for errors. Over time, he realized that mentality had to change. “People mess up. They’re human. The real question is, how do we help them learn from it?” he says, reflecting on his evolved perspective.

Today, instead of punishing mistakes, T5 emphasizes support, coaching, and continuous learning when incidents or near-misses occur.

One creative program Board introduced to encourage open dialogue is “Discussion for Donuts.” Each week, workers from all trades are invited to share safety concerns and ideas in an informal setting over coffee and donuts. “It’s crazy what you can get people to talk about when you give them donuts and coffee,” Board notes, emphasizing that the best feedback often comes from boots-on-the-ground employees.

These casual sessions make it comfortable for workers to voice concerns and suggest improvements, often uncovering hazards or inefficiencies that might be overlooked. This bottom-up feedback loop builds trust and ensures that frontline team members feel heard, reinforcing the idea that safety at T5 is everyone’s job, not just management’s.

Harnessing Technology and Embracing Leading Indicators

T5 also harnesses technology and data to improve its safety performance. Board has used many safety management platforms but finds Highwire’s system especially user-friendly for field teams. Everyone from project executives to foremen can navigate the platform with ease. “It's just super easy for people to use and put in inspections,” he explains.

By capturing all safety observations and inspection data digitally, Board’s team can analyze contractor safety performance. Highwire’s contractor dashboards compile each contractor’s safety history–including OSHA recordables, safety program information, and incidents on T5 projects–into one centralized view. This comprehensive record-keeping allows the team to spot patterns and make data-driven decisions instead of relying on gut instinct.

“We get to look at all of that in a holistic review to make calculated decisions based on the risk of that profile,” Board explains.

Having this end-to-end visibility from prequalification through completion has proven invaluable, helping T5 track safety trends over time and eliminate paper-based systems. The payoff is better oversight of subcontractors and the ability to proactively address risks.

Looking ahead, Board also advocates changing how safety success is measured. The construction industry has long relied on lagging indicators like the Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) to gauge performance, but T5 is shifting focus toward proactive leading indicators.

“TRIR blinds us to the other things and takes our energy away from… what we should be focused on,” Board argues, noting that while TRIR won’t disappear overnight, it should “take a back seat” going forward.

He hopes the industry will place less emphasis on tallying past incidents and more on day-to-day actions that keep workers safe. By concentrating on proactive measures—such as reporting observations, participating in training, and mitigating hazards—organizations can nurture a culture of continuous improvement.

Key Data Center Safety Tips & Takeaways

1. Treat safety as a partnership, not just a policy. Foster real conversations, mutual respect, and active listening with crews on the front lines.
2. Be present and engaged. Spend time in the field with crews to understand their challenges and show that safety is a shared priority.
3. Involve everyone early. Include contractors and workers in safety planning before a project starts, so all stakeholders share responsibility from day one.
4. Share lessons learned. Be transparent about safety close calls and fixes (even with other companies) because if you’re not sharing, you’re missing opportunities to keep people safe.
5. Embrace a no-blame culture. When mistakes happen, focus on learning how to prevent them next time instead of looking for someone to blame.
6. Encourage worker feedback. Create regular, informal sessions (even a coffee-and-donuts chat) where crew members can openly discuss what’s working and what’s not, helping uncover issues management might not see.
7. Never compromise on safety. Give teams the right tools, training, and time to do tasks safely, even if it demands extra cost or effort, because protecting people is non-negotiable.
8. Prioritize worker well-being. Treat your team like athletes by using warm-ups, stretching, and ergonomic practices that help prevent injuries before they happen.
9. Secure leadership buy-in. Get executives and managers actively involved in safety efforts, showing that safety is valued at the top and modeling a culture of care throughout the organization.
10. Use proactive metrics. Look beyond injury counts and track leading indicators of safety (not just lagging ones) so you can spot risks early and continuously improve.