With costs of behavior-based safety consultants running upwards of $100,000 per project, many of you might consider designing and implementing your own program to save money. A number of safety and health practitioners have attended seminars and workshops featuring behavioral consultants, read their books, and watched their videos in order to paste together their own programs.

According to experts in behavioral safety, you'll certainly save money this way, but time is another matter. Be prepared to spend a lot of your own time and energy learning behavioral principles, identifying critical behaviors to be observed, designing observation checklists and protocol, training employees on how to observe and give feedback, tabulating and charting observation data, and using the data to determine what workplace influences (production deadlines, poorly maintained equipment, and so on) are shaping those risky behaviors.