Does your company have a set of rules for employees that may not be broken?
Establishing core safety principles for your company— golden rules and procedures every employee must follow with no exceptions — can decrease accidents and injuries by keeping workers focused on the most important safety measures related to their work.
An Pham
Creating a solid safety culture is the secret sauce
Research shows that accountability at all levels and demonstrated management commitment to safety are among the most important features of a strong safety culture. Developing a list of core safety principles, reminding employees about those principles daily and correcting or disciplining any violators is an excellent way to incorporate both. No one needs to get hurt crossing the street — or doing their job.
Instituting a site-specific safety plan
Construction can be dangerous, but every project is potentially dangerous in different ways. That’s why creating a site-specific safety plan before breaking ground is critical to mitigating risks and keeping workers safe.
A jobsite safety plan spells out your strategy for identifying, controlling and eliminating hazards, as well as who’s in charge of doing what as far as safety is concerned.
A site-specific safety plan (SSSP) is a document that spells out the potential hazards of a particular jobsite and exactly how the company will mitigate them, as well as the safety-related policies and procedures workers are expected to follow. These plans are designed to protect everyone from employees to subcontractors to site visitors to the general public.
An SSSP is created before a project starts, but it should be updated to address new hazards that emerge as the project advances. The goal of every SSSP is to eliminate accidents and injuries.
OSHA does not require a written comprehensive jobsite safety plan, but some states do, so check local regulations. OSHA does require employers to provide proper safety training and implement control measures to mitigate risks, so taking the time to create a site-specific safety plan is in your company’s best interests.
The general contractor is responsible for creating, executing and updating the SSSP. The duty typically falls to the company’s safety manager or a designated competent person. A backup competent person should be appointed in case the primary person needs to leave the site.
If the project includes multiple tiers of contractors and subcontractors, it’s important to craft an SSSP that addresses the full scope of work. All tiers should comply with the plan.
Safety program performance
If you don’t know where your program is failing, you can’t improve it. Your company may have most of the elements of a great safety program in place, including commitment and support from management, regular site-specific safety meetings and ongoing access to safety training. But as with so many things in business, you can’t improve your safety program if you don’t measure its effectiveness.
In its 2019 Safety Performance Report, ABC reported that a twice-yearly review of safety program performance that evaluates whether the program is producing expected results and identifies opportunities for improvement can lead to a 59% reduction in a company’s TRIR (total recordable incident rate) and a 60% reduction in its DART (days away, restricted or transferred) score.
Before you can review your safety pro- gram’s performance, you need to establish metrics to track. These include lagging indicators such as incident rates and leading indicators such as the number of walkarounds management conducts, the length of time it takes to respond to reports, how fast corrections are made after a hazard has been identified and the number of workers who have completed required safety training or who make suggestions for improving safety.
Branch manager reveals secrets behind safety record
What is the secret sauce that has helped keep the United Rentals branch in Warrensburg, Missouri, accident and injury free for 20 years and counting? It’s safety culture.
Ken Bahr, branch general manager, explained, “Everyone here is a safety hero. We all look out for each other.” In fact, Bahr said he’s empowered all his employees to become safety heroes. “This job is dangerous. You have to make sure you’re doing the right thing before you start loading a piece of equipment; you must check all your bases.”
An Pham
Creating a solid safety culture is the secret sauce
For Bahr, who became general manager in 2006, the memory of an accident that occurred two decades ago is still fresh. It drives his mission to prioritize safety every day. In an industry driven by uptime and efficiency, Bahr said taking a few extra moments to look before you act makes all the difference, a fact he’s drilled into his team.
The safety culture has buy-in at all levels. “Everybody walks around here, saying, ‘We’re not going to have an accident,’” Bahr said.
At a recent event honoring the branch’s safety record, he noted that 20 years accident-free comes out to just under 500,000 working hours with no injuries. “It was all I could do not to cry,” Bahr said. “I’m so proud of our people.”
A safety culture is about prioritizing the safety and well-being of employees above all else, said Bahr. But the benefits trickle down to the business side.
“Our big corporate customers see our safety rating,” Bahr said. “It’s a big deal to them. They don’t want to do business with a company that has a bad safety record, nor should they.”
Bahr and his employees make an effort to pass along safety messages and advice to all the customers who walk through the doors. “You need to drive the safety culture home every day,” Bahr said. “Walk and talk safety, and just do your work, safely, every day.”
United Academy: Cultivating safety leaders
As North America’s largest provider of commercial and industrial rental equipment, United Rentals is also an industry leader in jobsite safety and compliance. We train thousands of workers each year in jobsite and operator safety, OSHA certifications and more, with a robust list of courses delivered by a team of professional trainers or online.
United Academy classroom and blended learning training can be completed onsite at your location or one of our hundreds of participating locations throughout U.S. and Canada. Courses are also available online, providing convenient 24/7 access to training when and where you need it, without conflicting with the workday. In addition to English, many courses are available in Spanish and French.
You can save time and money by storing and maintaining training records and certifications through United Academy and easily access student training profiles using our wallet card and mobile app or a computer. Manage training taken through United Academy as well as outside the Academy for yourself or your team, verify worker certifications and ensure that when work gets done at your jobsite it gets done the right way — the safe way.
Equipment knowledge
If the glove doesn’t fit, it may be more hazard than help. Here are three indisputable facts about personal protective equipment (PPE):
- To function as intended, PPE needs to fit properly
- Most PPE is designed for men
- Women’s bodies typically differ from men’s in shape and size
Women constitute only about 9% of the construction workforce, and women in field jobs are even fewer and further between. But as companies focus on recruiting more workers to the industry, including more women, they need to ensure they’re doing everything possible to keep all workers safe.
It’s generally the employer’s responsibility to provide appropriate PPE, but not all PPE is appropriate for all bodies.
Creating a solid safety culture is the secret sauce
Equipment such as gloves and hard hats from standard manufacturers are often too large or otherwise not proportioned well for women, and that’s a problem. Oversized gloves can reduce dexterity and cause safety issues if glove fingers bunch up. Safety boots that are too big or too wide, as is often the case for women, can turn into tripping hazards. Safety glasses that are too wide can allow debris into the eye. A fall arrest harness that doesn’t fit properly can increase the risk of suspension trauma, also known as “harness hang syndrome,” according to an article published in Safety+Health magazine.
Ill-fitting PPE may fail women for another reason: If it interferes with their ability to do their job, they may not wear it. Trying to alter the equipment to make it fit can render it ineffective.
Some progress is being made. The Center for Construction Research and Training, has compiled a list of PPE brands and products made to fit women. Online store Safety Girl has steel-toe boots, safety glasses and other items designed with women in mind.
At United Rentals we place a high value on our safety culture, and have taken great strides to implement it into every aspect of our company. Creating a solid safety culture is our secret sauce.
For more information, visit unitedrentals.com or call (203) 622-3131.
