SemiWiki.com - Podcast EP289: An Overview of How Highwire Helps to Deliver Advanced Fabs with Less Cost, Time and Risk with David Tibbetts

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Dan is joined by David Tibbetts, Chief Safety Officer at Highwire. David is a Certified Safety Professional with 20+ years of occupational safety experience in both general industry and construction settings. He is currently supporting Highwire’s hiring partners utilizing the Highwire suite of software solutions … Read More

Hello, my name is Daniel Nenny, founder of SemiWiki, the open forum for semiconductor professionals. Welcome to the Semiconductor Insiders podcast series. My guest today is David Tibbets, Chief Safety Officer at Highwire. David is a certified safety professional with 20 plus years of occupational safety experience in both general industry and construction settings. He is currently supporting Highwire's hiring partners utilizing the Highwire suite of software solutions to identify, manage, and mitigate risks presented by contracting partners on construction projects and in existing operational facilities. Welcome to the podcast, David. Thank you, Daniel.

I appreciate you having me on. So what is Highwire? Can you give me the elevator pitch about your company? Yeah, sure. So Highwire is a platform that helps our clients manage risks associated with the contractors that they hire to support their capital projects or even to support operation of their existing facilities.

And our asset owners include you know three of the biggest semiconductor manufacturers in the world but also asset owners in data centers, pharmaceuticals, and tech and even you know construction managers, general contractors, and specialty trade contractors. Our clients are really companies that hire a lot of contractors and subcontractors to support their projects. Yeah, you know, I find it interesting because we're in this kind of mode of onshore and semiconductor manufacturing. And I'm sure you guys have been busy with this, you know, in Arizona and Texas and all

over the world. So, can you tell us how does Highwire make fab construction sites safer? Sure. So, as I mentioned, Highwire helps our clients manage contractors. If you are building a large fab, and these are in many ways, a lot of them, these are mega projects, right? And so that means that you rely on a number of contractors, hundreds of contractors to deliver these incredibly complex projects. And so if you think about it, when you hire

contractors, you're taking on a certain amount of risk. And that risk can either increase or decrease depending on the contractors that you hire and how sophisticated they are from a safety perspective. Specifically, we'll talk about it through that lens. And so in the early stages, as our clients are soliciting bids and making decisions, we help them identify the subset of contractors that present the most risk

so that they can make an informed decision and have directed conversations with those contractors should they choose to award work to them. Essentially putting plans in place to help make sure that that contractor is successful when they're working on the client's project. So it starts with that idea of pre-qualification. Understanding who they're hiring, what their risks are, and what the path forward is should they choose to work with a contractor that you know presents some risk factors. Right. Can you tell me a little bit about what you do as a chief safety officer? Sure. So you know one of the biggest parts of my role is working with those clients to make sure

that they are using the software effectively. We understand what their needs are, what their specific use case is, taking feedback from clients to help continue moving the product forward. I work very closely with our product and engineering teams to define that path forward. And it's all driven kind of by our vision

of contractor success. And that means helping to make contractors better over time. So when I work closely with those with those asset owners with those general contractors partly it's about kind of onboarding and implementation and training but what I really love about it is I get to work with my peers right other safety professionals some of the leading safety professionals that you know I have a ton of respect for, working with them, supporting them, making sure that they're getting value from Highwire and what we're trying to deliver and that ultimately it's helping them deliver their projects safely. Right. So

you know from the outside looking in as semiconductor professionals we see delays in fab construction. That's what we see, but I'm sure there's a lot more going on inside of that. So, what are some of the unique challenges associated with fabs, building fabs that can increase safety risks? Yeah, I think I would talk to maybe

a few core industry challenges first that are really cut across what I would call advanced manufacturing construction projects. And then I'll talk a little bit about the semiconductor industry specifically. So first, I think the complexity of the semiconductor fabs is incredible. And there's a lot of high risk work that has to happen,

whether that's work at heights, specific types of welding, managing hazardous materials, the sheer number and volume of workers and labor hours that occur. So incredible complexity, aggressive schedules. Over the course of two years, you might see anywhere from 11 million to 20 million labor hours, an incredible amount of work and a high number of workers on site at any point in time, all working around each other to help meet that schedule. One of the maybe challenges that's continuing to emerge, you've probably heard a lot about

is just the availability of skilled labor as well. You know, supplying the skilled labor that's needed to have thousands of workers on site, delivering very specialized work. I've heard from one of our clients in the semiconductor industry that just getting enough electricians on site

is a challenge. And it has also led to maybe workers moving from one trade to another. Someone who might have been hanging drywall a year ago has now moved over and is learning the electrical trade. So you've got some newer workers on site learning their trade to some extent. And it's really important in that complex environment

and that high risk environment to make sure that those new workers are supported, that they have the skills that they need, and that they're able to recognize hazards and that they're partnered up with some more experienced workers. So those are a few of the challenges that are kind of core to construction today but are also very relevant to the semiconductor industry. And in advance of our call, Daniel, I actually, I asked the same question to one of our clients who was boots on the ground building these fabs and I'd like to share what he said

because I think it's really relevant. He said, building a semiconductor fab is like taking the largest petrochemical facility, gas facility, biopharmaceutical facility and shoving them into a high tech environment with multiple general contractors, subcontractors, and specialty vendors all working alongside the owner. And he said he truly believes that if you can build semiconductor fabs and work in that environment,

anything else is pretty much easier. So I think that the complexity and the the nature of the work is just incredibly challenging from a safety perspective. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. So what is the value proposition of Highwire? You know, why should the owners of fabs care about subcontractor risk? Because, you know, that's the job of general contractors, you would think, right? Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to the origin story of Highwire to some extent. So Highwire was founded at Harvard University, right? Harvard University is an asset owner,

just like the owners of these fabs, right? And I think that there has to be a recognition that when you're an asset owner and you decide to build something, you are taking on risk, right? The general contractor is taking on risk, sure, but you as the asset owner, you've built a certain reputation, you wanna uphold that.

You don't want anything to go bad on your project. You don't want somebody to get seriously injured or hurt. That damages your reputation, the impact to human life is significant, and you want to try to avoid those things. So you're taking on risk when you decide to do construction. And yes, Harvard, just like an asset owner building a fab, hires general contractors, and general contractors are expected to manage that risk to some extent, right? But if an accident happens on a Harvard project or on any

owner's project, there are ramifications for that owner, just like there are, you know, poor outcomes for any worker who was injured, for example, right? When you are operating an owner controlled insurance program, you're taking on a little bit more risk. Your stake is a little bit higher as well, right? There are serious and significant insurance savings that are on the table if your project performs well. If your project performs poorly, you may not realize those savings.

And when I say it performs poorly, I'm talking about a high number of incidents occur, the cost of the claims associated with those incidents is high, that starts to eat into the potential insurance savings. So you want your projects to perform well for a couple of reasons. One, you don't want any serious injuries or at worst fatalities to occur on your project. You want to protect your reputation. You want your project to be delivered on time

to your point about delays, right? Any delay, you know, prevents us from manufacturing chips, getting that plant online and starting to generate revenue. So there are a lot of things that stake from an owner's perspective. The other thing is when you think about, isn't that the general contractor's job?

I'll talk to the Harvard origin story as well, we had a number of general contractors working across our campuses and they were all evaluating contractors differently or pre-qualifying contractors differently. Some of them might've been doing it well, some of them maybe not doing it as well. But the problem was that as the owner,

we didn't have great visibility into how they were doing it as well. But the problem was that as the owner, we didn't have great visibility into how they were doing it. We couldn't set a consistent expectation or criteria, and we couldn't hold them accountable to do it in a consistent and meaningful way. So we decided to take ownership. Highwire was founded at that time, and we said, hey, if you are going to bid and work

on any project at Harvard, you need to provide us with this information. We're going to pre-qualify contractors in a consistent way so we can identify at-risk contractors, not to disqualify them or eliminate them from consideration, but to say, hey, this contractor is available, they're capable of doing the work, their bid is competitive. There are a lot of reasons why we should and we need to work with this contractor, but they do present some risks from a safety perspective. By understanding those, we could work collaboratively with our general contractor and with those

trade contractors to make sure that plans were in place that ultimately drove success on the project. And what we hope, I mentioned Highwire's vision of contractor success, what we hope and what we believe is that those engagements between the asset owner, the general contractor, and the trade contractor that deliver a successful outcome on that specific project also help that contractor to become a better, safer company or business over time. So those are some of the reasons why it's important that asset owners or manufacturer manufacturers of fabs care about subcontractor risk and to some extent take ownership of it,

right, and put a process in place like I mentioned.. Yeah, that sounds great. You know, the thing we experience is fabs are delayed. And whenever I do home remodels or home build on my assets, there's always delay, and there's always cost overruns. So I get how important this is. So one other question is, how are you seeing some of your fab clients improving project and safety outcomes through better contract management? I mean, do you have some examples?

I do, yeah. So we're lucky enough at Highwire to work with three of the biggest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, I think I mentioned that earlier. And that's been really exciting to be part of such an important industry. And what I would say for all three of them, and they're all at kind of different points in their journey as it relates to

contractor management and kind of how sophisticated they are, but I think what they all recognize is that they need to play an important role in contractor management as the asset owner. They can't just leave it, you know, the stakes are too high. They can't just leave it to their general contractors, right? And what they all share in common is that they recognize that pre-qualifying contractors is just the start. It doesn't start and end there, meaning that, hey, we pre-qualified this contractor,

we determined that we were comfortable bringing them on site, and so we're just gonna let them start doing their work, and're not going to do much more. All of those clients recognize that prequalification is just the start and that they need to continuously monitor and manage risk throughout the course of construction. So I would lay it out like this. They use prequalification to make an informed decision at contract award. When they identify that a contractor has some risk factors, they engage their general contractor

in that contractor and they make sure that a focused corrective action plan is in place for that project. They then monitor the contractor's performance against that plan. Are they doing the things that they said they were going to do? If they aren't, or if there are some risks that are emerging, they make adjustments and they take action during the course of that project. And then I think what's important to think about is that they are aggregating a lot of data throughout the course of that project, right? As they continuously monitor performance, identify trends, identify risks, they're aggregating a lot of data.

And so what's important is that they can use that data to drive improvement from project to project and even year over year, right? The more data you collect, the more informed decision you can make on the next project, and the more focused approach you can have to mitigating risk. And so what I've seen is that in particular,

one of our clients that has really demonstrated exceptional performance over time, they've reduced their number of incidents significantly, and they are operating an owner controlled insurance program, right? Where they have the ability to realize significant insurance savings by basically owning the insurance for the entire project. Because of that exceptional performance, they've realized tens of millions of dollars of savings on insurance alone. And in part, it is because of the approach that they have to

managing contractors, right, throughout the course of their relationship. So that is kind of what I've seen across our client base in the semiconductor industry. And we've had some really, really great results with those clients. So final question, David, what is next for fab construction safety? You know, and for example, I know you guys are involved with building these data centers. You know, this is the next big wave

for the semiconductors where, you know, we're building fabs, but now we're building data centers to put all our chips in. So, you know, what's next? Yeah, I think there's a major shift that's happening in construction safety in general and it applies to every industry. We have quite a few clients in the data center world. Obviously, we have the clients in semiconductor, in pharmaceutical, and the big shift that I'm talking about is really moving away from using total recordable incident rate as the primary measure of success. How frequently are injuries happening across our projects? That has been kind of the primary measure of success in the world of construction safety

for quite a number of years. And while it has certainly helped reduce all injuries, the frequency of all injuries. What has been realized over the course of the last five years, especially, and momentum is continuing to grow, is that in the world of construction safety, we haven't impacted fatality rates at the same level. They are not decreasing the same way that total recordable incident rate is. And in the last 10 to 15 years, fatality rates in construction

have pretty much been flat. And even have spiked a little bit over the course of the last couple years. So what's happening really, this kind of big shift that is really exciting to me, in fact, we have a working group with some of our clients focused on injuries or events that had the potential to result in a serious injury or

fatality. So identifying the subset of events, whether those are injuries that result in, you know, first aid, injuries that result in days away from work, or even exposures that occur on job sites that while they didn't result in a serious injury or fatality, they had the potential to. So this big shift is moving towards identifying those events and starting to learn from them. And the hope is that we can continue to drive those types of exposures down and ultimately start to impact fatality rates and construction over the course of the next year, two years, three years, right?

So it's kind of a really important shift and there are a lot of conversations happening in the industry which is great and there's going to be a lot of benefit to it. So in the course of my career it's one of the things that I've probably been most excited about. So that's what I would really point to. I think it's one of the things that I've probably been most excited about. So that's what I would really point to. I think it's an important next step for fabs and for any really complex construction project is making that shift. Great. Yeah, you know, it's about being proactive, right, versus reactive, you know, make sure things don't happen rather than respond to them after they happen, right? Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. Well, thank you for the conversation, David. Very informational. I learned a lot and I appreciate it. Yeah, great. Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate you having me on. That concludes our podcast.

Thank you all for listening and have a great day.