The Naylor Love chief executive, less than a month away from departing the role, travelled from Dunedin to Auckland this week to address the death of a contractor at a Mount Wellington construction site on Sunday.
An investigation into the death by WorkSafe was ongoing, a spokesman said yesterday.
Mr Herd said since news of the death broke, he had been burdened with feelings of responsibility, helplessness and anger that he "couldn’t have done more".
"You feel like you failed because health and safety is something that I’ve really worked very hard at in the industry, not just at Naylor Love," he said.
"To have somebody killed on your watch four weeks before you retire, it’s pretty hard."
Now, he is calling for a greater focus on health and safety in New Zealand’s construction industry.
Mr Herd, who also sits on the board of Construction Health and Safety New Zealand, said ensuring the safety of contractors was a top priority of his.
At the tail-end of an 11-year career, the death weighed heavily on him as one of his biggest regrets.
"Without a doubt, that would be my biggest regret as I sit here now."
The construction industry had been a cutthroat sector to work in, from the very beginning, he said.
The industry had low barriers to entry and basically anyone could set up a construction company, which was the "fundamental problem" contractors faced.
Standards needed to be raised with a bench-marking scheme for contractors, to ensure full transparency on financial strength and environmental, training and health and safety records, Mr Herd said.
Now that times had got tough in the industry, clients had begun to select competing subcontractors based heavily on the lowest price margin they could offer — "that’s the worst thing that can happen."
