ENR Southeast recently announced the winners of this year's 'Best Projects' awards, which you can find here. This year's judges recognized 44 projects for outstanding construction and design. We're certainly happy to be able to recognize these "Best Projects," of course. But another that we take special pride in presenting is our annual Excellence in Safety Award.

ENR Southeast—and the entire ENR family of publications—views the Excellence in Safety award as one of the most important that we present each year. As our Best Projects contestants should know, the topic of safety has always been one of the criteria considered when judges decide which submitted projects deserve this recognition. Additionally, safety is the only criteria that we single out for its own special award, which we started presenting in 2012.

For this year's Excellence in Safety judging, ENR Southeast enlisted the help of a pair of South Florida safety experts to serve as judges: David Lockhart, director of loss control with Poole & Kent Co. of Florida, Miami; and George Guffey, safety director with John Moriarty & Associates Florida, Hollywood.

This year, contestants submitted more than 60 projects for consideration for the annual safety award. (Contestants can designate any submitted project for separate consideration for the safety award.) Of that number, 15 were named finalists. And from there, the judges chose this year's Excellence in Safety Award winner.


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The University of North Carolina Marsico Hall project, entered by Choate Construction Co., was named this year's winner of the Excellence in Safety Award. The award is part of ENR Southeast's annual Best Projects awards program. (Photo courtesy Choate Construction Co.)

This imporant award goes to the University of North Carolina Marsico Hall project in Chapel Hill, N.C. The project, submitted by Choate Construction Co., also won an Award of Merit in the Higher Education/Research category, as previously announced.

Our safety judges were impressed with the project's safety record, which included a rate of 0.0 for both OSHA recordable incidents, and lost-time accidents. They were also impressed with project team's partnership with the North Carolina Dept. of Labor and its Extended Consultative Review Program.

ENR Southeast will have much more information about this project's safety record and achievements in our upcoming November print edition.