As crews from N.B. West Contracting Co. worked on a rural road with no shoulders last year, the paving machine operator sat extended out from his machine to get a better view of the work. When a dump truck unexpectedly passed from behind, its mirror struck the paving operator’s seat.
Luckily, there was no major injury. But because any injury is too much, the company explored ways to avoid future mishaps, leading to a new invention with patent pending and a 2024 Safety Innovation Award from the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), presented at NAPA’s 2025 annual meeting.
West Contracting, a third-generation, family-owned business based in Pacific, Missouri, specializes in asphalt paving and concrete construction. Their idea to protect paving operators from future injuries began with discussions in the company’s safety committee, comprised of 12 representatives from senior leadership, fleet management, union job stewards, field workers, and maintenance.
“We all got our heads together on what can we do to prevent this?” said Nick Brewer, Shop Manager.
“Since we don’t have control over how drivers drive or who passes the paver, we started talking about engineering controls,” said Tim Swaringam, Director of Safety and Risk Management. “Everybody’s human, and humans are going to make mistakes. Whenever something happens that could potentially hurt somebody, we’d like to have a barrier in place.”
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Brewer and Swaringam took the lead, coming up with the idea of safety cages — protective guards made of metal tubing that provide extra protection for operators when they extend their seat beyond the paving machine.
When they brought the concept to the safety committee, “Everybody was on board and told us to run with it,” Swaringam said. “Then [Brewer] really took control over the design, getting parts made, and then getting them installed.”
“Manufacturers always provided what we call a handrail so the operator can’t fall off the side of the machine,” Brewer explained. “But there was never really any protection we could find that went directly from the back around the torso of the operator. That was our focus area to provide some additional protection.”
Because West Contracting owns a variety of equipment brands, “I wanted to build something that was easy to install on our entire fleet,” Brewer said. “That was something that took a little bit of thought, but I sketched something up dimensionally and sent it to the fabrication shop I use that has a tubing vendor.”
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By July 2024, just three months after the incident on the rural road, Brewer had a design that looked like it would work. He welded the metal tubing for the safety cage to the existing bars on the sides of the seat frame of one paver for testing.
“We got buy-in from different operators, and everybody felt more secure and safer,” Brewer said. “We had to make sure the design wasn’t interfering with doing their work. We kept asking, and there were no complaints and everybody was good with them.”
From there, Brewer set to work equipping their full fleet. By the time crews begin paving operations this spring, they’ll have the safety innovation on the operator’s platform of all six pavers West Contracting owns.
In addition to the metal bars, they also added a reflective triangle to indicate a slow-moving vehicle.
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“There are markings on these machines from the manufacturer, but they’re within the perimeter of the machine,” Brewer said. “There was nothing there when you extend the seat base out.”
Swaringam added, “We do nighttime work, and the seats are black and the base the seat sits on is black. The only reflective element is the operator’s vest, which is blocked by the back of the seat.”
Now the reflective triangles on the safety cages add another visual as the seat extends beyond the machine.
In a social media post celebrating the NAPA award, Chris West, President of West Contracting, said, “This is a really neat achievement! It reminds me that ANYONE in our industry, even with a simple idea or concept, can result in forward-thinking innovations that help make our industry safer for all.”
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Swaringam added, “I hope to say in 10 years that we haven’t had an incident like this happen again — that nobody has been jolted around or gotten injured, and the cages have proven to be a good engineering control.”
Photos courtesy of Elm Production and Marketing.
