Preventing Injuries In Construction
Safety is tantamount when working with construction equipment. While the use of construction equipment can make your job easier and more efficient, it needs to be used with care. If you’re a foreman responsible for your crew, it’s important that you take every possible precaution to keep yourself, your workers and anyone else in the area safe. Injuries from misuse of equipment are common when workers are not properly educated on how each machine operates or if they aren’t vigilant and careful to watch for obstacles around them.
RECO Equipment, with 18 locations throughout the Midwest and eastern United States, is your local construction equipment dealer, so we’ve provided this guide to preventing injuries in construction work to help you keep your employees safe and protect your bottom line!
Train Frequently
As the manager, it’s your responsibility to teach each employee how to use each piece of construction equipment. While reading owner’s manuals or paging through a presentation is all well and good, it’s simply not enough to cement the information in everyone’s mind. Hands-on training is the most effective way to teach people how to use machines safely. Employees will better retain information that they received while actively using this equipment, and seasoned professionals can watch the new hires use equipment to give them pointers and amend errors in use before they become ingrained.
Trainings should include how the equipment is switched on and off, including any emergency killswitches or other safety features; how to enter and exit a machine; what the machine’s main features are and how it should be used.
Conduct refresher courses every few months to update employees on changes and remind them of proper usage and safety. Every single employee on a site needs to have the necessary knowledge to operate the machines they use in the course of their work.
Equip Employees With Safety Gear
Work on a construction site requires you to wear some heavy-duty gear to keep yourself protected. Every employee needs to be properly outfitted for work on the site. Some common pieces of safety gear include goggles, hard hats, gloves, steel-toed boots and protective outerwear. Boots should have good traction and fit well without any dangling laces that could get caught in machinery. Fluorescent safety vests in blaze orange can help employees to see each other, particularly in dusty, foggy or dim working conditions.
Establish A Safe Working Environment
As foreman, you’re also responsible for providing your workers with a safe working environment that minimizes the risk of injury as much as possible. Slips and falls are commonplace when management neglects the integrity of the workspace. Remove all debris and tools from walkways and common spaces so no one trips. Keep floors clean and mark any puddles or slippery, wet areas with the appropriate signage.
To prevent falls from heavy equipment or high walkways, make sure that guardrails are installed and secured and add canopy structures or screens. Inspect these safety measures on a regular basis and test them for strength.
A final cause of injury is insufficient lighting. If you have laborers working in dim or dark conditions, you’ll need to use artificial floodlights or other means of lighting to keep the workspace bright and clear.
We hope we’ve helped you to learn how you can keep yourself and your employees safe on the construction site when working with heavy machinery. In search of quality construction equipment? Visit one of our many dealerships throughout the eastern United States to check out what we’ve got for sale! RECO Equipment serves the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.