SLIPPERY ROCK — No one really expects the safety director at a construction site to be the one who gets injured.

But in 2004, Rich McElhaney did.

“I got caught in the line of fire,” McElhaney told people who attended an American Society of Safety Engineers’ conference Wednesday at Slippery Rock University.

He spoke about the high cost to businesses of accidents and the need to promote safety in the workplace.

McElhaney’s injury happened while working in New Jersey on a project.

Concrete segments poured for the project during the day expanded larger than they should overnight. That could have been a $230,000 mistake.

Engineers suggested that workers cut a few inches off the segments using high pressure water, which would cost $30,000.

During a training session in Camden, N.J., McElhaney was about 12 feet away from the person using the high pressure device. The worker ended up swinging the device and its water knock helmets off other workers but it hit McElhaney on his upper legs. The high pressure water cut into the femoral arteries in both his legs.

McElhaney fell to the ground in pain, bleeding, while other workers called 911.

While lying on the ground, he went to reach for his wallet because he wanted to look at pictures of his children.

“That was what I wanted to look at. The last thing before I die,” McElhaney said.

Paramedics showed up within four minutes.

He was in the hospital for three months. He needed 30 units of blood during that time, and spent three weeks in an induced coma.

Today, he walks OK, but he has trouble feeling his legs. He no longer can ski, and when he plays sports with his children, he is relegated to less active roles.

He also experienced lingering psychological effects. He said it took five psychologists for him to get over it.

McElhaney, who is an SRU graduate, had $1.6 million in medical bills. However, there also were $6.4 million in indirect costs, such as the cost to stop the project and the cost to replace McElhaney on the job.

“$8 million to put me back together,” McElhaney said.

He noted the project was supposed to have a $10 million profit.

All of his pain could have been prevented if a job safety analysis, called a JSA, was done for that part of the project. However, McElhaney said there was not time for one.

“We were in a hurry,” McElhaney said.

He said a JSA is the best way to define and analyze job hazards.

“Step by step, what are we doing?” said McElhaney, who is the safety director at Fenner Dunlop Americas of Pittsburgh.

He said it is best for companies to pay a little more money now for a JSA rather than to pay a lot more later after a serious accident, saying that doing the right thing is more important than doing the easy thing.

McElhaney said the top companies for safety take actions to promote that safety such as having safety preplanning, holding daily safety hubs, having weekly or monthly inspection programs and having incentives for good safety performance.

He said taking actions like those caused injuries at his company to fall from 41 in 2009 to 10 in 2011, and they also caused claims to fall 92 percent.

The conference, which was attended by 250 people, also focused on topics such as sustainability, emergency response for unconventional gas wells, risk management, career development and the digitization of safety.

Both students and professionals attended the one-day conference.