In the construction industry, it only takes seconds for a normal workday to turn into something catastrophic. For example, in 2022, improper fall protection systems were the number one cause of workplace injuries. There’s no shortage of regulations in place to help protect workers, but they’re only effective if people understand and adhere to them.
As a safety professional, you’re tasked with the responsibility of making sure all safety processes are followed. Effective safety leaders set the tone by prioritizing safety in all construction operations. Something else to keep in mind, is that a big portion of your safety obligation is not settling for a “band-aid” fix every time an incident occurs. Instead, focus on preventing workplace hazards consistently and proactively.
By doing so, your company avoids critical financial hits, lengthy legal cases, increased insurance premiums, and increased incident rates. Long term, this helps improve overall frontline safety behavior, all while promoting a strong culture of safety across the entire organization.
The good news is preventing a construction accident doesn’t have to be complicated. Yes, it takes time and commitment to build a strong safety culture, but we’ve put together a few tips to help you get started.
1. Provide Adequate Safety Training
It’s crucial to provide adequate safety training to all personnel at the site. Your company should have well-documented safety policies that include emergency protocols, safety procedures, and the name/location of a first aid responder. These policies should be shared with all new employees, subcontractors, and site visitors. It’s also important to document an acknowledgement from everyone on site that they have read and understood your policies, along with answering any additional questions they might have.
A key element of a robust safety program is regular, proactive safety training, not just one-time sessions following an incident. By promoting regular safety training for workers and supervisors, you help teams maintain awareness, while reinforcing best practices every time. Establishing a culture of accountability puts safety first, and it lets your frontline teams know you have their best interest in mind when it comes to helping them stay safe in hazardous working conditions.
Another good tip is to provide hands-on training that demonstrates your expectations. This may need to be extensive in some cases. For instance, if the work conducted at the site is complex or involves unique risks, your training sessions may be longer than normal.
2. Create an Incident Management Plan
Despite an organization’s best efforts, there’s always the possibility that serious incidents can strike at any job site or facility. Construction projects often involve a high degree of complexity, which leads to many risks that could potentially impact a project’s success. This is why contingency planning is critical to guarantee that projects are completed on time, safely, within budget, and with the desired quality.
A contingency plan, or incident management plan, should provide step-by-step details on how to handle the most common incident situations. Without plans like these in place, even experienced workers can become overwhelmed by the situation.
It’s recommended to hold occasional practice runs of emergency procedures as part of your regular training and safety meetings (see below). If an accident occurs, workers will remember their training and act accordingly. Otherwise, whether they can take the appropriate action is left up to chance. And, unfortunately, people don’t often make good decisions when they’re in a reactive state and panicking.
3. Conduct Pre-task Planning
Pre-task planning in construction is a proactive approach that involves systematically planning and analyzing a task before it begins. This process helps with identifying potential hazards, implementing safety measures, and ensures that all aspects of the task are understood by frontline teams. The top goals are to enhance safety, improve efficiency, and quality in construction projects.
Here are some ways pre-task planning helps accomplish safety goals for frontline workers:
- Identification of hazards: before any task begins, potential risks are identified. This step is crucial in foreseeing situations that could lead to accidents or injuries. For instance, working at heights involves risks like falls; pre-task planning helps identify these risks and plan accordingly.
- Safety measures implementation: once hazards are identified, appropriate safety measures are put in place. For example, when identifying the risk of falling objects at a construction site, the plan might include using hard hats and establishing exclusion zones.
- Training and communication: pre-task planning involves briefing workers about the specific tasks, associated risks, and safety measures. This states every team member is aware of their roles and the safety protocols they must follow.
- Resource allocation: helps in the efficient allocation of resources such as safety equipment, manpower, and time. This organized approach leads to fewer last-minute rushes, which can compromise safety.
- Emergency preparedness: part of pre-task planning is preparing for emergencies. This involves establishing protocols for accidents, which could include first aid procedures or evacuation plans.
4. Use Equipment Properly
Improper use of equipment can render it ineffective and almost useless. In some situations, it could even lead to job site injuries. Your team should only use tools and equipment for their intended purpose, and in the way they were designed to be used.
Providing workers with proper personal protective equipment (PPE), such as hard hats, safety harnesses, high-viz gear, respirators, etc., plays a big role in safety. Workers need their wearable equipment and PPE to fit properly so that it doesn’t restrict or interfere with their movement, and that it performs as intended.
For example, let’s assume your job site contains harmful materials that have inhalation risks. To protect against them, workers wear gas masks while on the site. If the gas mask doesn’t fit, they could still be at risk of exposure to the harmful materials and experiencing health issues.
Situations like these can quickly evolve into something more serious if left unchecked. Keep in mind too that using tools and equipment incorrectly has risks beyond just safety, like impacting productivity overall quality of work.
It sounds obvious, but tools and equipment simply won’t maintain themselves. You’ll need to establish a comprehensive maintenance and inspection schedule to ensure everything is accounted for and in good working order.
This typically involves creating a checklist that records multiple attributes of tools, vehicles, heavy equipment, and safety gear. Condition, functionality, age, etc., are all important to consider.
If a tool or piece of equipment doesn’t meet your standards, it should be repaired or replaced. Some companies make the mistake of trying to squeeze the most longevity out of their equipment.
They often do this to save money on replacement costs. However, this can easily lead to a catastrophe.
It could also cost you more money in the long run. Consider a scenario where a specialty contractor wants to save $10,000 by not replacing some old tools and equipment.
They’re left in service and lead to multiple workers becoming seriously injured. The company then finds itself dealing with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. Even large organizations can have difficulty overcoming legal issues like these.
5. Keep the Site Tidy
Cleanliness and organization go a long way toward maintaining a safe job site. Loose materials, debris, snow, water, unattended tools and more could result in injury.
Each year slips, trips, and falls related to housekeeping on a job site are among the most common recordable incidents. In some scenarios, a disorganized work site could conceal even more serious hazards.
Imagine walking through a job site and stepping on a tarp that covers a large hole. An easily preventable scenario like this can lead to serious injury.
Or what if you come across an area where workers must pass through regularly, and it has materials, tools, benches, and trash in the way? Keeping access routes clear makes walkways easy to pass through without the hassle of stepping on or running into things.
Another key part of accident prevention that people overlook is lighting. Do what you can to make sure the site is safely illuminated, and not just at night. Early mornings, afternoons, and isolated interior spaces can also be prone to visibility issues.
If you’re conducting an inspection and have trouble seeing what you need to see, then chances are that your teams are having the same issue.
6. Have Regular Safety Meetings
Holding regular safety meetings is an extremely important part of any good safety program. Not only does it help your frontline workers stay informed and up to date on safety, it also gives the frontline the opportunity to express their questions, concerns, and feedback about current safety measures. This can be invaluable as it helps safety pros gain insight into the safety concerns your team has.
You should also be open to suggestions they make if they’re practical. How often you hold these meetings is up to you. Some companies hold them monthly, but you may need to hold them more often for particularly complex or dangerous projects.
This is also true for projects where job duties regularly change, or you have high employee turnover. Regular meetings can foster communication between management and employees and improve their relationships.
Choosing topics is also important. Some organizations have 4 or 5 subjects that they rotate through over the course of a year, while others only hold meetings after an incident has already occurred. The most effective way to choose topics is to analyze trends from audits and inspections so that you can talk about specific behaviors before they start becoming near misses and incidents.
7. Be Careful Around Heights
Heights come with more risk than just an inattentive worker falling to the ground. Dropping tools or equipment can cause these objects to become deadly weapons as they fall, causing serious injuries to people below.
Screens, canopies, guardrails, and scaffolding are common protective measures. However, they only work if installed correctly.
They also need to be properly maintained. Conduct regular inspections of these precautions to help guarantee they are functioning as intended.
And as mentioned previously, it’s important that harnesses and other PPE are fitted correctly to ensure they will prevent a fall from heights.
Another good tip is to put signage or other clear markings at ground-level to indicate that there are potential falling hazards above.
8. Understand OSHA Regulations
Yes, there are mixed feelings about the role of OSHA, but the fact is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and many other regulatory bodies, has a set of guidelines that you’ll need to adhere to at all times. Breaching these comes with consequences. Not just the potential for accidents and recordable incidents, but costly fees and loss of productivity as well.
OSHA citations can also earn you a negative reputation in your region. If word gets out that a company doesn’t emphasize job site safety, it can adversely impact its ability to secure contracts. In some situations, this can be impossible to fully recover from.
But there is another side to the OSHA coin. If you don’t have your own set of safety rules and procedures, OSHA can be a good place to start.
Beyond creating standards and regulations, OSHA maintains a robust library of safety meeting topics and trainings that can be used to build a basic safety program. This can be especially beneficial for smaller companies who don’t have the time or resources to develop their own custom safety rules.
Preventing Construction Site Accidents Doesn’t Have to be Complicated
Every good construction company prioritizes a safe and productive work environment. The tips in this guide were chosen to help you create a basic, yet effective construction accident prevention strategy. Not only can it help you keep your frontline teams incident-free on the job, it can also protect you from legal issues, regulatory fines, and loss of productivity.
Safety Mojo proudly offers software that helps make construction sites safer than ever. Our application is easy to deploy, integrate and navigate, and it can even function offline. You can learn more about the benefits when you schedule a demo.
