Getting the right team on site. The holy grail for contracting businesses in a world of self-employed contractors whose first interest always has to be themselves and their families. It ain't easy and I don't have a silver bullet answer.
When you have the right team on site you know it. Mostly because you don't have to pull your hair out every day dealing with another "you had to be there" explanation.
One team always sticks with me. A great bunch of guys all working on a relatively long term onshore rope access contract at Hunterston B. (We get to all the glamorous places, right?) It could have been just another job away from home on a grim industrial site. But it wasn't.
The guys developed a game based on The Weakest Link game show. Any error, no matter how minor and it did get down to the tiniest of issues, was recorded and whoever had made the biggest blunder "won" the weakest link prize for the week.
I'm pretty sure that there was a booby prize - you had to wear a certain hi-vis vest all week until the next "winner" relieved you of it. Perhaps now that would be frowned upon as shaming a person or some other such thing....but the fact is that this was all played out with enormous good will and humour. The week that the client rep won was priceless. Total banter!
This all came from the guys and entertained site and office folk for months. I just sat on the sidelines and marvelled at how with the right people a team could gel so closely towards the shared goals of safety and productivity with a big dollop of banter.
(The picture is of a different team who were equally excellent, thanks to Bill for the photo.)