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Construction workers don’t always recognize all the hazards present on the job, and when they do, not everyone tells them the same.
During pre-job safety meetings, construction workers identify only 45% of the hazards they face, according to the Construction Safety Research Alliance. Meanwhile, the Construction Safety Week executive team found that when tradespeople can recognize hazards, the specific terminology varies greatly from job to job.
So, the executive team has made a proposal to solve it: standardize the language.
The Safety Week executive team proposed to unite the construction industry to adopt and recognize the terms “high hazard”, “high energy” and “STCKY”, or things that can kill you. The three classifications of the biggest workplace hazards differ slightly, but still serve as the most consistent identifiers or precursors to serious injuries and fatalities, also called SIFs.
The Safety Week executive team found that the factors that cause SIFs differ from those that cause more minor injuries. The group therefore called on all stages of industry to adopt the same framework of safety terminology to better protect workers from the most life-threatening hazards.
Adam Jelen, CEO of Gilbane Building Co. and chairman of the Construction Safety Week executive committee, told Construction Dive that the organization sought to simplify workplace language and reduce gaps in worker recognition on the job.
the language of security
Most of the vocabulary is not new. OSHA’s Focus Four have been well documented as the leading causes of death and injury in construction. Tempe, Ariz.-based Sundt Construction, meanwhile, is on probation STCKY program won a national innovation award from the Associated General Contractors of America.
But the Security Week team’s proposal aims to go a little deeper by bringing all the language under one roof and delineating the nuance between them. For example, a flowchart in the resource bulletin shows the “Wheel of Energy,” which identifies various types of hazards at the site, including gravity, motion, and sound. Another STCKY wheel describes similar risks such as working at height, movements and work environment.
Courtesy of Construction Safety Week
Classification aims to create an instant side-by-side view for teams to identify any hazards on site or in advance.
Planning ahead for safety
In practice, many major players in construction have had some version of identifying workplace hazards most likely to cause SIF. Increasingly, this is done early.
For years, safety planning began in the preconstruction phase, said Hal Wheatley, director of corporate safety for Tulsa, Okla.-based Manhattan Construction. Now, it has moved to the research phase of the project.
“Generally, we know, OK, we’re going to have a job here, we’re going to visit the site and identify the scope of work. We’re going to do steel construction, we’re going to have excavation. We start the conversation months in advance,” Wheatley told Construction Dive. “It’s much easier to mitigate a hazard before the process than, say, if you try to mitigate it the day before you start work.”
Steve Spaulding, senior vice president and environmental health and safety manager at Turner Construction, says the New York City builder looks at original work plans and identifies behaviors that can create the right or wrong safety environment.
“What we’re really trying to look at are the behaviors that allow life-threatening injuries in the workplace, or any kind of controllable hazard that would prevent an injury,” Spaulding said.
Both Spaulding and Wheatley said they often try to find ways to avoid even having risks present by changing programming work or building prevention into the design process.
Sometimes, however, dangers are unavoidable. When this is the case, companies work on the problem. For example, with a hazard like working at height, Turner makes sure employees know that the environment itself represents a high energy hazard, one of the most likely to cause a SIF. It’s a matter of education that goes far beyond providing the right safety gear and making sure it’s worn, Spaulding said.
“What we see a lot of times is that the planning says, ‘Hey, you’re a fall hazard, make sure you’re strapped in.'” And we want to make sure that planning is, ‘What’s the anchor point?'” he said. “It’s not that you’re tethered, it’s that you’re tethered to the correct anchor point.”
Safety ownership through leadership
The Security Week executive team is filled with C-suite executives from major contractors looking to lead from the front.
Jesse Torres, Granite Construction’s director of corporate compliance safety and part of the Safety Week technical committee, said his company’s top executives take responsibility for safety. They identify potential STCKYs and SIFs early on and incorporate this into project planning to mitigate concern before boots hit the job site.
“It comes from the leadership of each organization. It comes through engineering, pre-construction services, before it even gets to the specialty trade, with the front-line supervisor,” Torres said. “Because at this point it should be removed or engineered. It’s the last checkpoint.”
At the same time, Shaun Carvalho, director of safety at Boston-based Shawmut Design and Construction, said the approach should not be completely top-down. Shawmut works to incorporate craft workers and the physical presence of the workplace into the planning process to inform them of hazards and contribute to safety management.
“If they’re part of the task of executing the task, the operation, they need to be part of creating that plan,” Carvalho said.
