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Dive Brief:
- A Maryland contractor has partnered with a nonprofit organization and North Carolina State University to better understand improved protection for construction workers’ heads, according to a statement shared with Construction Dive.
- Forest Hill-based Comer Construction, which performs subdivision work for commercial and residential construction, will participate in a pilot program to evaluate the practical considerations, effectiveness and feasibility of implementing Type II helmets on active jobsites. The selection comes from a grant to NC State from the Job-Site Safety Institute, a nonprofit organization.
- The goal of the program is to better understand how to transition from traditional helmets to Type II safety helmets, which stakeholders say protect workers’ heads more effectively.
Diving knowledge:
JSI was founded in 2014 by the leadership of Builders Mutual Insurance, headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. The initiative grew out of wanting to ensure companies have all the tools they need to keep workers safe, said Jodi Vedelli, director of strategy at Builders Mutual.
“People still get injured on the job,” Vedelli told Construction Dive. “There was a sense of, ‘What else can we do?’
Since its founding, JSI has awarded $1.13 million in research and education grants to partners addressing safety challenges in the construction industry.
The grant to NC State is actually an extension of previous funding for construction personal protective equipment research, said Alex Albert, an associate professor in the university’s department of civil, construction and environmental engineering. This study looked at construction workers’ general awareness of the differences between various PPE hats.
“The finding was that workers were largely unaware of the distinction between Type I and Type II hard hats,” said Albert.
Type II helmets come with a chin strap and are designed to protect a worker from falls or blows that contact the top or sides of the head. Type I helmets, on the other hand, do not have a strap and protect only the top of the head. Search from Virginia Tech has indicated Type II helmets can better protect workers from serious injury.
Approximately 200 construction workers die from traumatic brain injuries in the US each year, according to the release.
In the North Carolina State study, workers were on board with making the switch to Type II once they understood how it could keep more parts of their brains safe, Albert found.
Still, they had concerns, namely the cost. Businesses and workers can typically buy traditional helmets at their local hardware store for about $15, said Erik Anderson, vice president of Winston-Salem, N.C., residential renovation firm Anderson Moore Kitchen & Bath. Type II helmets often cost more than $100, he said.
Susie Comer, president of Comer Construction, acknowledged that the adoption of Type II helmets involved a higher cost than using traditional helmets, but she thought it was worth it.
“That was a success,” Comer said, but after considering the increased safety benefits, it was “almost a no-brainer.”
Vedelli said the nonprofit’s goal is to reach out to smaller companies with fewer resources for security practices.
The use of safety equipment has varied among industry sectors over time, Anderson said. But that is starting to change.
“In the commercial world, helmets have been accepted,” said Anderson, also JSI’s board chairman. “I wish it was like that in residential.”
Ideally, this partnership will achieve a bridge, said Albert.
“We hope to create a true industry example of what it takes to transition from hard helmets to Type II safety helmets,” he said.
