Evan Hanes

Relentless Ally

 A Safety-Minded Superintendent 

In his nearly 15-year career with Balfour Beatty, General Superintendent Evan Hanes has proven time and again the critical importance of safety leadership and communication consistency. On a broad range of projects – from massive data centers to community-anchoring parks, Evan has never lost sight of our core values as Relentless Allies.

It’s about people. Every safety initiative, every operational improvement, every trade partner interaction, every collaborative client meeting – it’s always about the people involved, understanding what they value, believing in collective improvement and prioritizing the safety of all.

Evan is the kind of superintendent required for the complexities of today’s projects, where material success as an end-goal is just as important as the path we take to reach it.

Safe to Start

Evan truly embodies Balfour Beatty’s Zero Harm® values with his safety leadership.

“Safety as our ‘cost of doing business’ is simple and natural for me,” Evan says. “If I’m coming to work and expecting to return home healthy and whole, then my expectation for our teammates, trade laborers and visitors to do and want the same.”

It all comes back to people. Effective superintendents lead with empathy—understanding the needs of every person on a jobsite—and nowhere does that responsibility matter more than in how we plan for and execute safety.

Seeing the entire project from a bird’s eye view, considering every layer of construction activities, safe routes to navigate a project and more all come naturally to him, but won’t necessarily come as naturally to every trade present on any given day.

“That’s where clear, consistent communication – every day – makes all the difference,” Evan adds. “Every day starts with a morning huddle where we communicate expectations to the team, identify critical hazards for the day and how we can reduce risk.”

“Where are you working today? What are your risks?”

“Who will be working near you? What are their risks?”

“Are you safe to start work today?”

Every opportunity Evan and fellow project leaders have to prompt these crucial conversations is never wasted, and proactive, 10-minute conversations can save lives.

Fatal Five Leadership

Balfour Beatty recently identified live traffic as a fifth fatal construction risk, and, true to his safety leadership mindset, Evan has taken this hazard recognition framework and run with it. In many ways, it’s just further license to implement clear safety processes around risks he was already considering.

Currently serving on the team for The Strand, a luxury multifamily residence tower in Raleigh, North Carolina, Evan made live traffic a first-priority safety consideration. Perhaps more than any other safety hazard besides utility strikes, live traffic requires early and ongoing engagement. The Strand necessitated consideration of both risks combined.

“This project required a lot of up-front utility work, around and underneath three of the surrounding streets, all fairly busy every day,” Evan recalls. “The key to safe work was to plan as early as possible and promote deep team collaboration.”

At The Strand, that meant making sitework partner Fred Smith Company part of the traffic control plan, breaking out each street and addressing critical questions with a fitting urgency. Lives depend on the answers.

“’How are we going to get pedestrians around us? How will we route traffic around our workers? Where are our flaggers going to be, and for how long?’ The questions go on, but we have to get these right,” Evan emphasizes. “It’s not easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”

After presenting a traffic safety plan to city public safety officials, Evan adds that ongoing coordination only becomes more important. Pre-meetings, daily collaboration and adhering to the traffic plan schedules to which our team committed all keep everybody on track, and predictable traffic changes keep everybody safer.

“Trucks arriving to and leaving from a jobsite can be an overlooked aspect of live traffic risk, but they can impact our team and adjacent traffic all the same,” Evan says. “We cut through all that with clear and collaborative delivery schedules. I know a cement truck is supposed to arrive at 1:00 p.m., so by that time, I’m already looking to see that we are safe to start, with a flagger in place.”

Schedules create consistency. Consistency creates reliability. Reliability creates trust in the safety leadership of Balfour Beatty leaders like Evan.

Piloting Parks Projects

Consistency, reliability and trust are just as important when it comes to other project logistics. And on projects like the award-winning Downtown Cary Park, leaders still find a way to make operational decisions all about the people.

“Municipal construction, especially parks, can feel so much more human than any other work we do,” Evan says. “You’re not just building an office that people will use for eight hours each day. You’re building a real community center for activity, play, birthday parties. It brings a community together.”

With that in mind, Evan sets out to coordinate parks projects like Cary Park with the client’s values and the end users in mind.

“Every aspect of the Downtown Cary Park required extensive and intensive up-front coordination, of soil engineering, water and utility raceways, unique building designs, everything,” Evan says. “Not because it was necessarily complex, but because it was all in service of our client’s mission to create a vibrant, natural-feeling community hub and one of the best city parks in the nation.”

To achieve that sense of a naturally flowing landscape, the Balfour Beatty team performed deep and extensive sitework. Every inch of the park not covered by pavement or buildings required up to 11 different types of engineered topsoil – all on top of 8 inches of sand – to create a beautiful landscape that will stand the test of time while complementing and sustaining the final landscaping.

Beneath the park, critical storm, sewer, electrical and water lines support daily operations, key amenities and its central pond feature. Coordination with key trade partners and designers was critical to ensuring safe digging practices.

It’s All About People

To hear Evan say it, he doesn’t do anything special as a superintendent.

“I’m just doing what is right by our client and serves our end users,” Evan says. “It should be normal in the construction industry and it’s just second nature to me.”

But that’s precisely why this mindset, shared by Balfour Beatty leaders around the U.S., is special in the industry. When leaders like Evan take the time and personal investment to understand a client’s needs and translate that to proactive solutions, intentional communication and genuine care for people, the results can be magical – award-winning parks, luxury high-rises and – most importantly – projects where everyone goes home safely at the end of the day.