The standard safety rules mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have become part of the lexicon on construction sites – wear a hardhat; be sure to utilize fall protection. Workers in the construction industry know the rules and they follow them like they’re second nature. However, over the last few years there has been an evolution in the way we think about safety, with the emphasis maturing from the basic OSHA rules to developing site-specific safety programs.
A site-specific safety program is a proactive approach to on-the-job safety. It’s rooted in the idea that you should consider what you’re going to do, from start to finish, before you do it. You need to evaluate the safety of each operation to be performed on a project and its potential hazards. Then, based on the findings, determine whether a safety plan specific to that activity on that site should be drafted.
This is the future of safety on a job site. Currently, safety plans often are created only after a problem occurs. It’s reactive thinking instead of proactive thinking. With a site-specific safety plan mapped out ahead of time, potential problems can be anticipated and avoided.
Creating a Plan
It may seem like a lot of work, but consider a scenario that could occur without thinking ahead and creating a specific plan:
There’s an existing trench on your job and because of its slope and the occupied building adjacent to it, you need a trench box. Your first priority is to protect people from falling into the trench, so you close off the door nearest the trench and re-route pedestrian traffic. That was a good move, but the barricaded door violates fire emergency codes and creates an unsafe environment for your workers and the building’s occupants. In the midst of this, your crew is digging and hits an oil tank that was identified in the site plans but not marked for excavation. Finally, a truck delivering construction materials to the site hits the overhead electrical wires because no one took the time to consider the deliveries and the height of their cargo. A mess that could have been avoided with preplanning has been created for no reason.
Of course, that is an extreme example. But if even one of those events occurred, you would need to stop the job and fix the problem. The benefit of planning ahead and drafting a specific safety plan for each job is the opportunity to identify potential problems before they occur, ultimately saving time and money. Planning ahead also creates a safer environment overall for all occupants of the site – workers, visitors and employees.
So what’s the process? How much work goes into creating one of these plans? At Erland Construction, a Burlington-based company, a resource manual has been compiled and organized by CSI code. It includes safety checklists for all subcontractor trades. Erland called upon its knowledge of subcontractor trades onsite, identifying which questions to ask for each. It was a collaborative effort so nothing was overlooked. Erland relied heavily on its in-house safety committee, comprising a diverse group of employees knowledgeable in the processes, procedures and safety of construction sites, when creating the resource manual and checklists. The committee includes management, support staff and field technicians, so each member provided a valuable and varied perspective.
Once your checklists are developed, it’s important that your project managers and superintendents buy into the process. It requires a lot of work from them but their cooperation and follow-through is crucial to the success of a site-specific program. They are the people who are going to meet with the subcontractors and ensure that the rules mandated by the site-specific safety plan are being followed.
The process in the field begins with a superintendent, project manager and the foreman for each trade meeting before a project begins to complete the trade-specific checklist of safety questions. If many potential safety hazards are identified, you will need to consider drawing up a specific safety plan to head them off.
Everyone is responsible for safety on a job site. The onus is on the subcontractors to follow the safety rules mandated by OSHA and provide a safe work environment. But the general contractor ultimately is responsible for overall safety and for ensuring that everyone onsite is working in the safest manner possible. Alan Scott, Erland’s safety director, said, “Erland is about making our subcontractor community safer than they were before they came onto our job.”
It is with that idea in mind that we feel it’s important to include the subcontractors from the beginning and get them directly involved in the process of creating a Site-Specific Safety Plan. They are the experts in their fields and they are the people who are going to be following these rules, so it makes sense that they be the authors of their own plans. Subcontractors must understand the conditions under which they will be working and take responsibility for creating a safe environment. The general contractor must assist and keep people on track, but each worker has to be aware of potential hazards and the steps required in avoiding them.
Don’t we have enough to do just to get a job up and running? Creating checklists and manuals and getting cooperation from all the parties involved is a lot of work. Is it really worth all the effort? The answer is yes, because it creates a culture of safety on every level. It establishes accountability for everyone involved, because after a site-specific safety plan is drawn up, everyone is responsible for following through on it. Of course, this isn’t a perfect science and there still will be unforeseen issues that arise, but by taking a proactive approach, hazardous situations and costly remedies will be avoided.
