Meet Amme Standring of Charter Mechanical

Meet Amme Standring, the Director of Safety at Charter Mechanical. With over a decade of experience at Charter since joining in 2006, she has played a vital role in fostering its remarkable growth from a team of 40 to more than 700 employees today. During this expansion, Charter Mechanical has cultivated relationships with over 100 trade partners, a testament to their commitment to excellence in the field.

Charter Mechanical was founded on a culture of safety, where employees focus on taking care of each other and the company’s customers. When the opportunity to join the company arose, Standring was excited to bring her own safety expertise to a company that shared her passion for delivering quality work safely.

Having previously utilized Highwire as a contractor to meet the requirements of owners and general contractors in the Pacific Northwest, Standring recognized an opportunity to leverage the platform internally. She spearheaded an initiative utilizing Highwire to assess the risk of Charter Mechanical’s own subcontractors.

“We enjoyed using Highwire to communicate with the owners and builders who hired Charter Mechanical because it was an efficient and easy way to share complete information. I knew we could benefit from the same process with our subs.”

As the overseer of Charter Mechanical’s safety program, Standring understands the limitations of traditional prequalification processes. While they serve a purpose, they often fall short in providing a comprehensive understanding of subcontractor risk.

“Before I used Highwire, I’d look through a lot of safety assessment data, but it only told me whether a contractor met our criteria. I could not ever focus on the information that would help me understand if they would be high risk or effective on a specific scope of work.”

Highwire has allowed Charter Mechanical’s safety team to evaluate their subcontractors’ risk and maturity. When reviewing a prospective subcontractor for a job, Standring says she pays particular attention to the severity of injuries and lost time incident rate trends.

“If I see that a subcontractor has a high frequency of lost time injuries, I’m wondering what they are doing to their programs to fix or resolve the issues that led to those injuries in order to prevent future recurrences,” she says. “And if there are a high number of days away from work per lost time injury, for example, that tells me that maybe their program isn’t as evolved, and the company is not as mature in taking care of their workers through the use of a return to work program.”

Charter Mechanical’s overarching mission is to “take exceptional care of your people and customers,” a principle Standring actively reinforces through the evolving partnership with Highwire. She takes pride in nurturing a culture where safety isn’t just a priority but an integral part of every operation.

With Amme Standring at the helm of safety initiatives, Charter Mechanical continues to set industry standards, ensuring the well-being of its workforce while delivering unparalleled service to its clients.