In Memoriam: Jimmie Wayne Hinze

I have many fond memories of Jimmie and Maxine—starting with when I first met them. I think it was $\sim 18\mathrm{years}$ ago (1995) when I attended the kick-off meeting for CIB W-99 in Amsterdam—Rick Coble chaired the meeting and I remember taking minutes. Up to that point, I had read a lot of Jimmie’s safety research. One that I remember in particular was related to the influence of supervisors on jobsite safety performance. At that time I was working with Jeff Russell and Stu Anderson on what is now an ASCE paper titled, “Strategies for Achieving Excellence in Construction Safety Performance.” Jimmie’s research is only included 9 times in the bibliography (out of 17 references). I remember having lunch with Jimmie and Maxine in a small cozy restaurant in Amsterdam and thinking to myself—I am having lunch with a giant in the field of construction safety. It was a very moving experience for me. Since then, I have always enjoyed attending meetings and conferences and seeing both Jimmie and Maxine—it seems like they were joined at the hip.

Jimmie has provided an inspiration to me to continue working on construction safety research. I have really enjoyed having Jimmie as a colleague and I feel very privileged to have gotten to know him. Jimmie will always be in my thoughts and prayers.

A gracious gentleman. I met Jimmie as a fellow grad student at Stanford in 1973. We were both part of the safety research program launched by Clark Oglesby, Hank Parker, and Nancy Samelson.

Jimmie regaled me with stories about his childhood, growing up on a chicken farm in the small German-American community of Round Top, Texas. His family was exceptionally proud when he completed graduate study at the University of Texas, Austin and Stanford University.

As an office mate and friend, Jimmie was one of the most graceful and kind people I ever met. When my wife, Kathleen, and I had our first child, Jimmie presented us with a framed drawing that he had made of exceptionally cute animal characters.

Jimmie made the pursuit of improved construction safety a lifetime mission through his research, teaching, and industry outreach.

His character, life, and career have made the world a better and safer place for everyone who knew him, and many construction workers who never had the chance.

We celebrate Jimmie’s life and grieve, with his family and many friends, his too-early passing.

I first met Jimmie Hinze in the year 2000, at the ASCE 6th Construction Congress, in Orlando. His reputation had certainly preceded him, as I had heard of him and his work with construction safety, and his textbooks for years. My experiences in dealing with him over the next seven years were always very positive. Later, when I joined the Rinker School faculty in 2007 as an untenured associate professor, I requested that Jimmie be one of my mentors. He was so assigned, and we forged a very close relationship in the next six years. He was always there when I had a question or a problem and he almost always had a really good solution. Even if he hadn’t been my official mentor, he would have been my mentor because to watch him was to learn what a professor at a research university should be. He was a tireless worker that always held the needs of his students and fellow faculty members as a top priority. He was always willing to teach more classes than he had to, to do more research than he had to, to help others more than he had to. But the thing that stood out the most to me about Jimmie is that, as one of the very best-known and revered names in construction academia, as a recipient of the most prestigious career achievement award in the construction academic world (Purifoy Award), and his standing as one of two two-time winners of the Construction Industry Institute’s Researcher of the Year award, the author of several textbooks and hundreds of other publications, Jimmie was an extremely humble man and an extremely kind man. Those two character qualities are in short supply in the world today, and even more so within university faculties. The Rinker School, the University of Florida, and all of construction academia have lost a role model, a mentor, and a friend.

Jimmie Hinze began his first safety research project for CII in 1986, just three years after the institute was founded. Through the years, he led many CII research projects and taught CII workshops, working tirelessly to improve the health and safety of our industry. In his most recently completed CII project, he served as the principal investigator on Research Team (RT) 284, a team studying safety leading indicators. Presenting its findings on this cutting-edge safety topic, RT 284 was a huge success at the 2012 CII Annual Conference—not least because of Jimmie’s role in the plenary presentation. In it, he played Dr. Sicherheit, a mad-for-safety scientist who was being broadcast from a space station to weigh in on the importance of leading indicators for improved safety. This good-humored performance reflected Jimmie’s standing as the industry’s preeminent expert on safety; up on the giant screen, the audience saw a kind, larger-than-life figure conveying the message of safety, a topic that had clearly been his life’s work—so much so, that his name translated to “Dr. Safety” in English.

Jimmie upheld his commitment to safety to the end. Last year, even as he was in the midst of his battle with cancer, he volunteered for the chair position of the CII Academic Committee, making a commitment to produce CII teaching modules for university engineering programs. And less than three weeks before his death (and only days after receiving a bad prognosis), he wrote to CII to say that he planned to finish his work on Research Team 301, a team investigating near-misses. While Jimmie will not be there to present this team’s findings at next year’s annual conference, we will all feel his presence there. Indeed, perhaps the most important legacy of his career was his capacity to inspire dedication in the people he worked with to do the crucial work of researching and teaching safety. Since his death, his Academic Committee colleagues have stepped forward to accelerate the teaching module project, while his RT 301 team members are rallying to finish the study.

Jimmie helped us learn that, beyond simply being the right thing to do, instituting a safety program is good business and—most importantly—the goal of having zero accidents can be achieved! His message reflected his intelligence as an engineer and his fundamental decency as a human being. In losing Jimmie, we have not only lost one of the most effective safety leaders the industry has ever seen, we have also lost a great friend.

Having joined the Construction Industry Institute’s staff in 2007, my association with Dr. Hinze has been relatively short. However, Jimmie has been a friend of CII for many years—and has researched numerous safety topics, developed educational materials, and conducted safety workshops and webinars—all of which have made a tremendous contribution to CII and the industry we serve.

Dr. Hinze’s research efforts for CII included Beyond Zero: Utilizing Safety Leading Indicators, Design for Safety, Making Zero Accidents a Reality, Owners’ Role in Safety, Target Safety, and Real-time Pro-active Safety. Throughout his legacy of safety research, we have recognized Jimmie’s innovative insight and the high praise from his teammates, all of whom have enthusiastically expressed their appreciation of and admiration for his expertise, research prowess, generosity, positive influence, and dedication to mission. Jimmie was awarded Researcher of the Year by CII in 2003 and again in 2013 for his dedication and impact on the industry. Only one other academic has been awarded this distinction twice.

In 2007, Dr. Hinze helped charter and establish CII’s Safety Community of Practice, our first community and one of the most active today. Jimmie served as an academic advisor to this group, always searching for ways to eliminate hazards and improve safety performance.

I will remember Jimmie not only as a renowned CII researcher, but as a colleague, and a friend. Jimmie brought out the best in all of us…and we will truly miss him.

I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to work with Jimmie on a CII project during my first few years in academia. From him I learned how to be patient, careful, and reflective. His mentorship will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the rest of my personal and professional life, and I will be forever grateful. He was the best kind of person: funny, smart, professional, giving, thoughtful, devoted, and caring. He will be missed but fondly remembered.