Health & Safety

Building can present a great number of possible risks both in construction and operation. There are many duties placed on those commissioning, designing, constructing and operating buildings to control those risks.

Working on a construction site is one a dangerous occupation. According to recent findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction-related fatalities accounted for around 21.4% of all worker fatalities in 2015. With nearly, 6.5 million people working at over 250, 000 construction sites across the US on any given day, it’s easy to see why enforcing preventative construction site safety procedures is critical.

Some of the potential hazards that construction workers face every day include:

• Falls from heights.
• Scaffold collapse.
• Electrocution and arc blast/flash.
• Trench collapse.
• Repetitive motion injuries.
• Failure to use the required PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
• Electrocution
• Falls
• Caught-between or caught-in
• Struck-by

Every employer is required by law to ensure the safety and health of their workers, regardless of the industry or their occupation. Construction workers are particularly exposed to high-risk environments that pose dangers which need to be addressed. If you’re a construction site manager or project manager, it’s your responsibility to take the right safety measures to safeguard the work site from unnecessary dangers or hazards.

Here are the top construction site safety procedures VCON has in place for construction sites:

Do a thorough work-site evolution

Regularly analyze your work site to identify any potential hazards and come up with an effective way or plan to eliminate them. Be aware of the main potential hazards in construction sites:

Provide proper training

Training is a key part of ensuring workplace safety in all industries. Many project managers assume that all workers are aware of the construction site safety procedures of a working site. Failing to provide training to workers, whether working only for a few days or months to come, is one of the contributing factors to rising cases of injuries and fatalities in construction sites.

Provide workers with personal protective equipment

As part of construction site safety procedures, all construction workers should be provided with the proper personal protective equipment and clothing. If you’re a worker and don’t have the right protective clothing or gear, you have the right to demand them from the people in charge or your employer. Here are some of the PPE requirements for construction sites.

Ensure proper material handling and storage

All personnel working at a construction site should be aware of the proper material handling and storage procedures. For manual material handling, the expected lifting techniques should be made clear to avoid injuries. For handling of mechanical materials, operators need to be aware of the weight lifting capacity of equipment like cranes and forklifts to avoid potential accidents.