Garrett Burke
Chief Operating Officer
ConstructSecure, Inc.
Instructor
Executive and Continuing Professional Education
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Biography
Garrett is a Program Director and Instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health where he co-founded the program Safety in Design and Construction: A Lifecycle Approach. This program was developed using "Design for Safety" theories, which recommends that safety considerations be initiated early in the construction lifecycle, rather than at the construction phase of a project. Implementing this proactive approach results in a decrease in accidents and injuries.
As the Chief Operating Officer of ConstructSecure Inc., Garrett ensures that the company maintains its focus of achieving an objective assessment of construction contractors safety performance. In addition, he ensures that ConstructSecure provides its portfolio of contractors with the educational opportunities to integrate safety into their day to day business practices.
Garrett was previously the Associate Director of Harvard University’s EH&S Department. During his 14-year tenure, Garrett’s progressive approach to construction and occupational safety has resulted in major improvements and advancements in these disciplines. His constant focus on safety integration into routine business decisions has helped shape the way people think about safety at the University. The validity of his work is evidentiary by the fact that Harvard’s incident rate is 100% lower then the national rate for colleges and universities. He founded the University’s Construction Safety Group (CSG) in January 2007. The group is responsible for ensuring that safety and environmental management that is integral to the University’s capital construction process. The group’s rapid growth is a direct result of the impressive return on investment experience on projects that utilize CSG services. Examples of this return on investment are reductions in project delays, missed permit deadlines, regulatory agency inspections, incident rates and significant reduction in project costs.
Prior to working at Harvard, Garrett spent five years working on Boston’s Central Artery /Tunnel (CA/T) Project as a construction safety officer. Garrett was a vital part of the CA/T team that developed and refined the contract specifications that required contractors to perform work to measurable safety guidelines. Garrett is the recipient of the Construction Industry Institutes’ Volpe Eagan Award for outstanding contribution to construction safety.