The Chief Risk Officer’s Role at Jaynes

By Matt Sanchez

Chief Risk Officer and General Counsel

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Integrating risk management into all areas of company management and operations is a growing trend nationwide. This evolving trend requires companies to eliminate the siloed ways of thinking that previously limited risk management adoption beyond the basic finance functions of companies. Since the pandemic, the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) role has broadened to deal with expanded risk categories like cybersecurity, supply chain and logistics, employee safety, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and more. The goal is to increase overall risk awareness and improve vital parts of corporate risk mitigation decision-making to sustain company success.

In the KPMG Global Construction Survey, the authors found an emerging trend of installing the CRO position into corporate leadership in the construction industry. Expanding corporate capabilities to analyze and mitigate project-specific risks, as well as more traditional Enterprise-wide risks, is the objective. The creation of the CRO position has been common in the largest commercial construction firms, but fairly uncommon for mid-market firms the size of Jaynes. I think you’ll see the CRO position implemented in mid-market firms more and more, as identification of growing risks increases.

EXPANDING THE SCOPE OF RISK MANAGEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION

At Jaynes, we’ve long used an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) model to guide our risk management strategy. ERM as a concept has been around for quite some time. Still, recent trends bring new focus to operational risk— in commercial construction, everything from Subcontractor selection and management, project delays, contract compliance, supply chain disruption, project quality control, to employee safety. The strategy is no longer simply focused on financial or legal risk. Today it’s bigger and broader, and requires buy-in from more functional areas within a company. At Jaynes, one of my key functions is to tie site-level safety and project risks into our broader corporate risk mitigation strategy.

My mission is to ensure that risk management and safety here are inseparable. I work closely with our Operations and Safety departments to assess project logistics, Subcontractor partnerships, and even emerging technologies to anticipate and mitigate risks before they affect the safety of our people and the success of our projects. My team looks at leading and lagging indicators to be as proactive as possible about safety trends on site. That could mean improving pre-task planning, refining how we vet Subcontractors, adopting new technologies, and ensuring our project teams have the necessary resources to succeed.

Key efforts at risk mitigation and employee safety at Jaynes include being proactive and not simply responding to incidents;  promoting collaboration between my office and Operations, Safety, and Field Management; instilling the concept that safety needs to be a part of a broader risk strategy and not simply compliance and enforcement; and about how we focus on our people and culture.

Ultimately, I think it’s a CRO’s responsibility to help create a company culture where safety is not just compliance but a core value. Our effectiveness in bringing awareness and managing risk at every level helps bring our people home at the end of the day – and that’s something very important to me personally.

RISK MISCONCEPTIONS IN COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTION TODAY

While the commercial construction industry has become more complex, there is a misconception that risk management and safety strategies must also be complex. The two topics are intertwined because embracing safety in what we do is a form of risk management.

Successful risk management, including safety, requires reducing complex and multi-layered concepts to simple, understandable concepts that people can incorporate into their daily work. Some of the best risk management principles are not new.

The challenge is effectively communicating those principles and making them understandable and easy to implement in everyday scenarios. Compelling storytelling about safety concepts is more important in our training and education today. Asking questions before embarking on a task can make a huge difference in managing risk. Taking the brief extra time to think through an activity before you do it, asking oneself questions like: “how can I get hurt doing this activity,” “what’s the right way to handle this material to avoid injuring me or someone else today,” “Is this a team lift activity,” or “how do I prevent my work today from damaging the already completed portion of our work” allows someone to gain clarity, have a plan, and appreciate the risks before carrying out the task.

That habit of forethought can be one of the best tools to avoid harm, and it stems from simply asking questions and thinking through the task critically before starting it. We try to capture these understandable concepts and tell those stories in our safety training and culture of mentorship.

100% EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP AND ITS EFFECT ON RISK AND CULTURE AT JAYNES

One of our visions at Jaynes is to see the communities we call home thrive long-term. We can directly impact that vision to ensure our company continues to be successful and well-positioned to build up our communities through meaningful public and private projects, year in and year out.  We cannot continue our success, and we cannot live this vision, without proper alignment on safety at every level of our organization, because a safe construction company is a successful construction company. They are intertwined, and employee ownership is a game-changer for this idea.

100% Employee Ownership allows us to hold each other more accountable when it comes to living out safety culture and behavior, on our project sites, in our shops, offices, and even while we are on the road. It raises the stakes on why we want every person to take personal responsibility and own their part when it comes to safety as an absolute priority. We want our employees to remain injury-free and focused on gaining experience and advancing their long-term careers with Jaynes. Healthy, capable employees are a major asset to Jaynes and improve our chances of success over the long term, for us as owners, and for our communities.

LARGE PROJECTS AND RISK DEFINITION

While there are many ways to define risk, I define risk in our industry as the probability of an unwanted or unexpected outcome that impacts our plans and goals. So much care and thought go into planning, estimating, and executing a commercial construction project. And for a project to be successful, many things must go “as planned.” For that to happen, our teams and Subcontractor trade partners must manage and reduce the chances of unwanted or unexpected outcomes.

These unwanted and unexpected events during a project can carry significant and costly consequences if not handled in one way or another. One may not think of safety in this context, but it’s a critical area of risk management for our projects. Project teams must use the safety protocols and tools available to them, and make the safe execution of tasks a part of daily dialogue with every crew on site to avoid unwanted injuries and unexpected safety exposures, because to us, successful safety on our projects is an expectation.

As CRO, I help blend project site safety, Subcontractor risk, and everyday project risks into a coordinated approach that Owners, project partners, regulators, and insurers increasingly want to see.

For more details on safety at Jaynes, check out the blog on Jaynes’ recent win of the prestigious 2025 Associated General Contractors of America Construction Safety Excellence Award.