Construction safety week: 5 steps for ensuring a safe worksite

01 May 2023

Construction sites are known to be dangerous places, with a wide range of potential hazards that can cause serious injury or even death. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the construction industry accounts for 20% of all worker fatalities in the US.

In conjunction with construction safety week, we offer today 5 pragmatic steps to improve construction site safety and protect your employees.

1. Provide onsite and offsite safety training

Training is critical in ensuring that everyone understands the safety protocols and their importance. In the sessions, encourage workers to prioritize safety in all aspects of their work. One way to capture their attention and make an impact is by utilizing cold, hard data.

For example: ​​​​60% of manual handling accidents in construction occur within the employee’s first year on the job – something to emphasize to new workers.

The training should cover the specific onsite hazards, best practices, as well as the proper use of equipment.

2. Safety-certified equipment

Employers should ensure workers’ easy access to the appropriate safety equipment and provide training on its proper use – effective training is a significant predictor of the equipment’s utilization rate.

This equipment includes, of course, onsite essentials such as hard hats, safety glasses and gloves, but also covers harnesses, nets and guardrails.

Falls remain the leading cause of work-related deaths in construction, accounting for 36% of the total number of industry fatalities, thus it’s critical to ensure the proper installation of personal fall arrest systems to mitigate accidents and keep employees safe.

3. Establishing a safety culture

Belief systems trickle down from the top, which means it’s imperative that management sets a strong example for the rest of the organization to follow – this also lets employees know that there’s accountability at all levels.

Leadership must clearly define and uniformly enforce safety systems, as well as create goals and metrics around evaluating their effectiveness.

By establishing a proactive safety culture, that is, by conducting regular site audits and putting into place clear action plans – rather than reacting to problems as they arise – management demonstrates commitment to employee wellbeing. This leads to an environment where employees feel valued and supported.

4. Empowering and involving employees

When an open line of dialogue is encouraged between employees and management, it instills a sense of trust. It enables everyone to feel comfortable calling attention to hazards and offering suggestions on where to make improvements.

This emphasizes the need to install proper protocols – reiterated through training – on how to recognize and report potential dangers. It’s also crucial to ensure that employees don’t fear retribution in reporting safety issues.

5. Deploy cutting-edge technology

By deploying leading technologies, such as Engineering Grade Augmented Reality (AR), you boost safety by increasing build efficiency:

Less work means = less activity = less risk.

The proactive validation capabilities of the Atom™, XYZ’s Engineering Grade AR™ headset, optimize workflows, enabling accelerated construction. This reduces pressure on site teams to meet tight deadlines, eliminating rushed work and errors – exhausted teams are more prone to making dangerous mistakes, compromising performance and safety.

Further, higher quality builds make for inherently safer assets from the beginning of the construction process, giving your employees the best possible working conditions.

Unpredictability characterizes construction sites and circumstances rapidly shift. Improving construction site safety requires a multi-faceted approach. Through the proper application of training, protocols and equipment, by encouraging an open dialogue onsite and utilizing cutting-edge tech, you establish safety as a core value.

By implementing these practical steps, we can minimize risks and ensure a safe worksite for all. Remember, safety should always be a top priority, not just during Construction Safety Week but every day on the job. Work safely, everyone.

For more information about how the Atom can benefit your next project, please visit https://www.xyzreality.com, or get in touch with one of our experts today.