PORTLAND – Cianbro Corp. President Peter Vigue recalls the painful numbers for providing health care for his employees: From a low of $2.4 million eight years ago, they were predicted to hit $20 million.

“My first reaction was, ‘How on God’s green Earth are we going to pay for this?”‘ Vigue said.

The answer was to change Cianbro employees’ lifestyles – encourage healthful eating, exercise and other individual behaviors while discouraging activities such as smoking and excessive drinking.

Cianbro’s wellness program goes well beyond many similar corporate initiatives.

There’s a smoking ban at all work sites, inside buildings and outside, reflecting the lengths some employers are willing to go to restrict high-risk behavior to keep health care costs down.

It’s part of a nationwide trend. Roughly 6 percent of all U.S. employers require a no-smoking pledge, anywhere – at home, at work, etc., according to the National Workrights Institute.

In Massachusetts, for instance, state law prohibits firefighters and police officers from smoking, and a Fall River officer was fired earlier this year for smoking while off-duty.

When Vigue was studying the Cianbro report, he found the root causes of health problems at Cianbro came from three areas: tobacco use, obesity and a lack of exercise or healthful eating.

When Cianbro designed its program, the company focused on ways to modify workers’ behavior in these areas.

“When you get into it, it starts to be personal for all of us. We’re not a young company, our average age is 41. We’re more prone to the diseases that tend to show up after 40,” said Rita Bubar, human resources manager.

There was a bit of uproar over the smoking policy at first, Bubar admits. But the company would like to go even further.

“What we would like to see is people give up tobacco in total,” said Bubar. “The only thing we control is the workplace.”

Charlie Sanborn, an ironworker for Cianbro since 1986, said he was skeptical when the program first was announced.

But Sanborn said he has dropped 38 pounds thanks to the program. “I’ve dropped a lot of weight, I feel good,” he said. “Then, they told me I had to quit smoking.”

While Cianbro hasn’t banned smoking, Cianbro’s policies make it difficult for smokers to keep up the habit when they can’t smoke on the job. Sanborn did quit smoking, with plenty of aid from Cianbro’s program.

Sanborn said some people still sneak a smoke but at great risk. If anyone is caught smoking on a job site, it’s a 30-day unpaid suspension. Then, you have to reapply for your job.

Cianbro estimates it has helped 150 people quit smoking, and 56 still are active in a cessation program.

The company’s Healthy LifeStyle initiative started as a pilot program five years ago. In 2002 it became a critical part of Cianbro’s attempts to lower health care costs, which had quadrupled from the mid- to late 1990s. From 2002 to 2003, the company’s health insurance costs are on track to be flat – amazing in times when they seem to do nothing but climb.

Vigue said it’s up to companies to do their best to lower health care costs because it doesn’t appear that the government is prepared to do so.

“The issues are not going to be resolved by government. They are going to be resolved by us as individuals, as companies, as leaders, and it starts with us changing our behavior,” he said.