NS499 Unit 3 Needs Assessment for Crew Lunches Example

What the Company Already Knew: A Unit 3 Needs Assessment of Packed Lunches, Gas Station Meals and Hot Cabs on a Home Builder's Job Sites

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NS499: Bachelor's Capstone in Nutrition

Unit 3 Needs Assessment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Mabry Homes, its records, its questionnaire results and the store audit are composite; the vehicle heat study, food safety guidance and store measure cited are real.

Purpose and Questions

This assessment asks three questions about the 94 field employees on Mabry Homes' framing and trim crews. How do crew members get their on-duty meals from May through September? What happens to food that is packed at home? What do the stores near the job sites offer in place of a packed lunch? The answers decide whether the program proposed in Unit 2 targets the right problem.

Existing Records

Three sources already existed. The first is the summer schedule. Crews start at 6:00 a.m., take a fifteen-minute break at about 8:30 and lunch at about 10:30, and leave at 2:30 p.m. Each crew has a company pickup, and most workers also drive their own vehicles to the lot.

The second is the safety office's first-aid log. Last summer it recorded nine visits for nausea or stomach upset among field employees. The log does not record a cause, and some of those visits were probably heat strain, so this figure cannot show that food made anyone sick. It does show that stomach complaints were common enough to note.

The third is the company's heat illness program. Every crew truck carries a 10-gallon water cooler refilled with ice each morning, and superintendents enforce water breaks. Hydration is therefore already addressed, and this assessment leaves it aside.

Questionnaire Method

An eight-item questionnaire in English and Spanish went out on paper during each subdivision's Monday safety briefing and was collected in a sealed box over two weeks. It carried no names and no questions that could identify a worker. The instructor and the safety manager approved it before use. It asked where breakfast and lunch came from on a typical workday, whether the worker owned and used a cooler with ice, where a packed lunch was kept, and what made packing a lunch hard.

Questionnaire Findings

Fifty-eight of 94 crew members answered, a response of 62 percent. Thirty-eight, or 66 percent, bought breakfast or lunch at a gas station on most workdays. Twenty-seven, or 47 percent, packed a lunch from home on at least three days a week. Of those 27, only 8 kept it in a cooler with ice; the rest left it in a bag on the cab floor, on the dashboard or in the truck bed.

Asked what made packing a lunch hard, more respondents chose "it gets hot or spoils by lunch" than chose cost, time or not knowing what to pack.

Written comments added detail. Several workers wrote that they had stopped packing meat or mayonnaise after a lunch "turned." Others said a cooler took up room in a cab shared by three people.

Packers and Buyers Compared

The questionnaire also allowed a rough comparison between the two groups. Workers who bought both meals at a gas station were more likely to describe their breakfast as a pastry, a breakfast taco or an energy drink, and more likely to report buying a second energy drink at the 8:30 break. Workers who packed a lunch more often described sandwiches, rice and beans, leftovers or tortillas with meat, which are exactly the moist, protein-rich foods that support bacterial growth when warm. The comparison suggests the two groups need different help. Buyers need a quicker way to choose at the counter. Packers need a way to keep good food safe. A program that only taught healthier choices would leave the packers' risk untouched, and one that only issued coolers would do nothing for the two thirds who buy.

Eleven respondents who never packed a lunch wrote that they would if the food stayed cold, which suggests the kit could also move some buyers into the packing group.

Cab Temperature Readings

On two clear June days, with the safety manager's approval, I placed an appliance thermometer with a minimum and maximum reading in three crew pickups parked on the lots with windows closed. Outside air reached 91 and 94 degrees Fahrenheit by 10:30 a.m. Inside, the cabs read between 118 and 127 degrees at that time. These readings fit published measurements showing that closed vehicles warm about 40 degrees above outside air on sunny days, mostly within the first half hour (McLaren et al., 2005). By the federal rule, perishable food that sits above 90 degrees has an hour before it must go back in the cold (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025). A lunch on the cab floor passes that limit by about 7:00 a.m.

Store Audit

The seven gas stations within ten minutes of the three subdivisions were audited once in June, at the hour crews shop, using a short checklist adapted from a published measure of food store environments (Glanz et al., 2007). Fresh whole fruit was available at two of the seven. Refrigerated sandwiches or wraps were stocked at five. Every store sold bottled water, and every store had a hot case or roller grill. Prices were recorded for twelve common items. The pattern matches research finding limited healthy food in small stores, especially single-aisle ones (Laska et al., 2010).

Summary of Needs

1. Storage. Most packed lunches are kept at temperatures that make perishable food unsafe within hours.

2. Choice at the store. Two thirds of crew members rely on gas stations, where fresh options are limited but refrigerated items exist at most stores.

3. Space. A cooler must fit a shared cab.

Strengths to Build On

The crews already gather every Monday for a paid toolbox talk, already carry ice for water each morning, and nearly half already pack a lunch. The program can add a cold lunch to habits that exist rather than create new ones.

Limitations

The questionnaire reached 62 percent of the population and was answered by workers present at toolbox talks, who may differ from those absent. Cab readings came from three trucks on two days. The store audit was done once. The first-aid log cannot attribute any visit to food.

Implications for the Program

The findings support the Unit 2 focus on keeping packed lunches cold. They also argue for a gas station component, because two thirds of the crews eat there. Bilingual materials are required, since a third of the questionnaires came back in Spanish. The cooler should be compact, and the materials should show where to put it in a cab, out of direct sun.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). Preventing food poisoning. https://www.cdc.gov/food-safety/prevention/index.html

Glanz, K., Sallis, J. F., Saelens, B. E., & Frank, L. D. (2007). Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S): Development and evaluation. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32(4), 282-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2006.12.019

Laska, M. N., Borradaile, K. E., Tester, J., Foster, G. D., & Gittelsohn, J. (2010). Healthy food availability in small urban food stores: A comparison of four US cities. Public Health Nutrition, 13(7), 1031-1035. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980009992771

McLaren, C., Null, J., & Quinn, J. (2005). Heat stress from enclosed vehicles: Moderate ambient temperatures cause significant temperature rise in enclosed vehicles. Pediatrics, 116(1), e109-e112. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2004-2368