How to Improve Construction Job Site Safety: 5 Effective Ways
It is important to create a consolidated safety culture in a construction company. Business owners should learn to prioritize employees and always practice what they preach for site safety.
In recent years, working on a construction site has become one of the riskiest jobs in the world. 1 in 5 workplace fatalities in the private sector has been reported from construction sites: the highest across all industries.
We know that contractors often encounter immense pressure related to project deadlines and keeping the budget under control every day. Unfortunately, construction site safety is often taking a back seat.
And so, the government has intervened to balance out things for construction companies. It is now essential for contractors to comply with government site safety regulations for business longevity, forcing construction companies to be strict with their safety policies.
If you are still wondering how to establish a site safety culture in your construction business, dig into these four ways to do so effectively:
1. Add Safety to your Company Values
When you put safety in your company's core values, employees will have complete faith in your business and ethics. This indicates that employee safety is above costs, deadlines, and productivity for your business.
Moreover, you need to understand that accidents are highly responsible for project delays, causing cost overruns.
So, when you have a safety culture for the job site, incident rates will decrease, and job efficiency will increase. Also, you can reduce insurance costs with a solid safety record.
2. Training, Training & Training
Training your workers to maintain a safety culture on the job site is the easiest way to prioritize your employees. This indicates to your laborers that you are dedicated to keeping them safe and healthy.
However, keep in mind that training shouldn't be an one-off event. Safety training needs to be a constant effort to reinforce best practices.
Such training programs will help your workers and staff retain what they've been instructed, keeping safety in their mind.
Ensure that you offer training as a part of the onboarding process for new workers. It will help them start the job in the right direction and develop safe habits.
3. Ensure all are Answerable
Not just your safety managers, but anyone who enters the job site should be equally responsible for site safety. Workers must know that unsafe practices will put not only them in danger but also those around them.
So, ensure that safety rules are well-defined and explained to everyone on the site as well as the consequences if they do not abide by the rules.
Also, it would be best to empower employees to communicate and document unsafe conditions or associates failing to heed safety protocols.
Everyone on the site should be able to discuss all kinds of roadblocks to the manager to fix safety issues immediately.
4. Leverage Construction Management Software for Job Site Safety
Accidents can happen in a blink of an eye. Construction management software, like ProjectPro, can warn everyone in your organization of potential events.
ProjectPro is a robust platform that can help you send messages to the entire crew, subcontractors, or clients about possible safety risks.
Take this further and ask crew members to keep top-level management informed about broken equipment or areas that need inspection through daily logs.
On ProjectPro, you can create a documented history of your company's approach to job site safety. Hence, ProjectPro can now become an asset to your safety culture by providing comprehensive documentation and reporting features.
5. Go for Daily Inspection on the Site
Construction companies should hire someone to inspect job sites before and after each workday. That person will address all safety concerns, like faulty equipment, risky tasks, and strategies for surviving harsh weather conditions.
Job Sites should also be inspected daily to determine potential perils and monitor workers, ensuring they work safely.
The person should conduct brief safety meetings before work begins each day to review what tasks are scheduled and what needs to be performed. Ensure to identify any crises or issues and accept the good practices followed from day one.
Bottom Line
It doesn't matter whether your company already has a good or bad safety culture, but there's always room for improvement.
Having a well-established safety culture is about putting safety first and ensuring your crew and workers operate in a safe environment.