The Top Safety Priorities On A Construction Site
Construction can be one of the most lucrative industries to get involved in, and if you’re good at getting projects to their conclusion on time and under budget, you can certainly make a name and a fortune for yourself. The flip side of this is that as an industry it can bring along some high risks to go along with those high rewards. It is important in any industry to ensure your safety measures are up to muster. In the construction industry, however, it is still more important - as oversights can cost colossal amounts of money and potentially much worse in terms of human life.
This is why it is essential to have your priorities lined up, and no construction project should even be begun without plans in place to ensure that the following are observed…
Secure the perimeter so you always know who is on site
Accidents happen on a building site. Even the safest site will have one or two mishaps, but the correct safety and security protocol will be the difference between someone dropping a hammer on the ground and someone driving a truck into a barrel of bubbling tar. It’s essential to know who is where - and at what time - in the event that an accident of greater severity happens. The perimeter of the site should always be secured by fences and gates, and any point of access should be monitored by human and electronic surveillance. Every worker should sign in and out, and the site rota should record who is working in which area. Should an accident happen, this makes it easier to account for everyone.
Structure a workflow that ensures a clear working site
The less cluttered a construction site is, the safer it is. Therefore, planning out the workflow for a site should take account of what equipment should be in place when - and more importantly, when it can be removed. It’s easier to operate, maintain and remove cranes, pulleys and bulldozers if there are fewer stacks of breezeblocks, cement mixers and iron poles around, so it’s a good idea to figure out how you can have the leanest building area possible at every step along the way,
Ensure that equipment and storage are ironed out ahead of time
If you plan to hit the ground running on Day One of a project, then it is important to plan for every member of the crew to be ready to work from the first minute. This means having the right high-visibility jackets and gilets, the correct hard hats and goggles, adequate and even surplus PPE and anything else your site may need. You should also have provision for all of this to be stored away at the end of a working day - so if you start a day with 30 hard hats you also end the day with 30 hard hats. If part of a job can’t go ahead because workers are insufficiently protected, it can lead all too easily to rushing as a means of catching up - and this, in and of itself, is unsafe.
Ensure The Safety of Your Workers
Commercial builders have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their workers. One of the most important ways to do this is to provide and require the use of proper safety equipment. This equipment includes hard hats, gloves, safety glasses, and earplugs. It also has more specialised items such as scaffolding and fall protection systems. Using this equipment, workers can protect themselves from potential hazards on the job site. In addition, commercial builders can reduce their liability in the event of an accident. A commercial builder can create a safer work environment for their employees by investing in safety equipment.