Incase you didn't know, Turner Construction is one of the largest construction companies, working solely in commercial construction.
In 2011, Turner Construction noticed they had a sizable problem with work-place injuries. They began daily safety meetings and wearing PPE - but the incidents continued. The company found that nearly 75% of their workplace incidents involved a ladder. Employees were getting hurt climbing and carrying ladders, and numerous other risky behaviors, like "walking" a ladder.
The company needed a solution, so they introduced the "Ladders Last Program"
The Ladders Last program focuses on making ladders the last option for working at heights. A fall from a ladder can result in a serious injury, or even death. Although using fall protection can help reduce the chance or severity of an injury - it can’t eliminate it completely. The best way to avoid a ladder injury is to not use a ladder at all. Work is just one part of employees’ lives. The program makes sure they get to enjoy the rest: their family, friends, and the people they have relationships with.
Since 2011, Turner has seen a massive impacts to their productivity, resulting in quick turn around on their landmark construction sites, like the 65 sport stadiums and arenas, and countless high-rises around the country.
Now I leave this question with you, have you analyzed every access solution before reaching for a ladder?
Watch the full podcast here: http://worksafe.libsyn.com/ep-31-ladders-last
It is important to keep your office clean and disinfected, especially during the spread of cold, flu and virus outbreaks. Ensuring your employees are safe is key to a healthy work environment.
We’ve put together some steps to a clean and disinfected office, facility or workplace.
Step 1: Personal Responsibility
Encourage employees to wash hands regularly and keep their work stations clean.
Step 2: Identify high traffic areas
Identify areas that are used and touched often by various workers such as, desks, tables, countertops, doorknobs, phones, keyboards, light switches and handles etc.
Step 3: Clean Office, Facility etc.
Use soap and water to properly clean high traffic areas. Be sure to read any and all instructions for cleaning agents you use. It is best to wear disposable gloves and adhere to any other instructions from the manufacturer.
Step 4: Disinfect Office, Facility etc.
Once your work areas are cleaned you will want to ensure they are disinfected.
Cleaning removes the germs from surfaces, but it doesn’t necessarily kill the germs. That is where disinfecting comes in, it uses chemicals to kill the germs on various surfaces.
Be sure to wear the proper protection before using disinfectant ie. gloves, face masks, also make sure you are in a ventilated area.
It is important when choosing a disinfectant that you read and adhere to the instructions provided.
Spray the surface and let the disinfectant dry, check your disinfectant’s instructions as times vary for effectiveness.
Step 4: Disinfect Soft Surfaces in Offices etc.
Soft surface areas such as carpet and drapes etc. should be cleaned with appropriate solutions as directed, in most cases soap and water will work. Drapes and other items that can be laundered should be washed in accordance with their labels on the warmest water setting possible and dried immediately and completely.
Disinfectant Options
There are disinfectants that can be used on hard and soft surfaces. These allow quick and easy coverage on office spaces or facilities without having to switch methods throughout the disinfecting process.
SafeSmart Access carries Ramsol disinfectant spray that can be used on both hard and soft surfaces. The disinfectant uses a chemical known by the EPA to be effective against SARS-COV-2, the cause of COVID-19* virus. Here’s the EPA registration number *47371-131-559.
Once an area is clean the spray can be used to disinfect areas both large and small. Place the spray gun 8-12 inches away from the surface then begin to cover the area. The spray gun releases a fine mist of disinfectant to cover (not soak) surfaces. The solution is to be left on surfaces for 10 minutes to ensure effectiveness. You can choose to let area air-dry after 10 minutes or you can wipe the surface down with a wet cloth. When using on floors it is not necessary to rinse after they are sprayed unless surface is waxed or polished.
The Ramsol disinfectant spray comes in 22L pressurized canisters that can over up to 10,000 square feet. They require no external power source, which makes it easy to use outside, in warehouses or any place that doesn’t have a power source in an accessible area.
Many companies have taken advantage of this disinfectant in their offices, facilities, warehouses and jobsites. This is a quick and effective way to ensure large workspaces are disinfected and employees are protected. If you are interested in disinfecting your offices, facilities, warehouses or any workspace click here for more info or contact SafeSmart Access at sales@safesmartaccess.com.
Sources:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cleaning and Disinfecting Your Facility
April 2020
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/disinfecting-building-facility.html
Accessed 23 April 2020
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cleaning & Disinfecting Schools
July 2018
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/school/cleaning.htm
Accessed 23 April 2020
]]>In the US—particularly in the Northeast—wintery conditions are setting in for what looks like a long chilly season. Already in November, heavy snow has fallen and caused whiteouts in places like northern New England, and upstate New York. Many roads have been blocked, and some school children have enjoyed a day or two at home due to inaccessibility.
But in construction, the work must go on whenever possible. After all, time is money; any break in the weather is seized for the continuation of work. If you are building in inclement weather, you must treat your working zone a lot differently than you normally would the rest of the year around. Believe it or not, a lot of companies will almost ignore the conditions and plow ahead regardless, putting the welfare of their workers in jeopardy.
The Numbers
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, slips, trip and falls caused 229,190 non-fatal workplace injuries and 699 fatal work injuries in 2013. These numbers are collated from across the whole country, where there are drastically different climates and seasonal extremes. So cold weather is not always a factor. But add to the already alarming fair weather dangers the presence of ice and snow, and you have a recipe for disaster, especially when working at height.
The Workers’ Part
To be compliant with OSHA regulations, construction workers are encouraged to wear insulated and water-resistant boots with heavy duty rubber treads, be attached to safety lines and to walk in short steps and a slower pace. But this can only do so much. Consider how many times the environment changes on a worksite – pits get wider and deeper, tripping hazards change locations almost hourly, and in multi-level developments, temporary stairs are moved around and placed at different angles.
The Employers’ Part
The infrastructure for safe access and egress is the responsibility of the employer, no matter what the weather is like.
A common temporary solution for height access between floors on the construction site is a wooden grid-like stair set that looks more like a very wide ladder. This is fine, but even in good weather, it can be a very dangerous solution – the ‘stiles’ are pitched at a very awkward angle that provide virtually no grip and dig into the arch of the feet, and fall protection consists of only one handrail on one side.
Getting Real About Snow Safety
This is where USA-based height access provider SafeSmart Access have stepped in. Consider their portable stairs, for example. For any floor-to-floor height, their designers can create easy and safe access for workers, with a highly-reduced danger of falls built in. The robust tread plates feature a coarse grip pattern, and the plates themselves are self-levelling, which means that if the stair needs adjusting to a more acute or obtuse angle, the platform for the foot is always safely straight.
SafeSmart Access’ Ben Wooten has noticed an earlier uplift in interest in this product compared to previous years, due to the early frosty conditions. And wherever he goes, contractors are saying ‘of course’.
“I think the early cold snap has made a lot of construction companies think twice about makeshift stairs,” says Ben. “And I think they see a solution like ours as a potential way of increasing productivity. Not just with injury prevention, but also with the ability to safely carry equipment up and down our stairs.”
SafeSmart’s portable stairs are also made to be tightly anchored to the ground, with a wide enough baseplate on the bottom of the feet to accommodate significant fastening, as well as a versatile fixing point at the top. This is something that alleviates even the most remote possibility of slippage on ice.
- SafeSmart Access’ representatives are available for pre-sale onsite safety audits right across America, including the shivering states at the top.
]]>American Electric Power (AEP) have commissioned a MIchigan height access equipment provider to increase safety at a local facility.
AEP serve nearly 5.4 million customers in 11 states, so maintaining a constant and reliable supply is crucial for domestic use and industrial productivity. This consistency also relies on maintaining a safe environment in which AEP’s technicians work. During recent scheduled activities, workers at the New York facility found that the shape of most machines—tall, yet protruding out at the bottom—meant that standard ladders or platform steps meant leaning unsafely over the edge.
In addition to offering free safety training resources to their customers—electrical safety for contractors, call 811 before you dig and more—AEP also offer a program for internal staff and technicians. With falls being US industries’ leading cause of injury and deaths, OSHA recently reviewed their ‘Walking-Working Surfaces and Personal Fall Protection Systems Final Rule’, which became effective from January 17, 2017. This update has seen many infrastructure companies and factories reassessing their work environments. And AEP were no exception.
The AEP Team Production Supervisor needed a customized structure that could be easily manoeuvred by hand, that was compliant with OSHA regulations. SafeSmart Access, based in New Jersey, were used to designing customized steps and stairs, however a standard-range product met the criteria immediately – the Cantilever Platform.
With several step-count configurations, of which AEP chose the seven-step, the cantilever was developed for machinery service workshops. With a 225kg (496 lbs) weight rating, robust castors and a heavy-duty welded aluminum construction, the cantilever now gets AEP workers up close to the machinery without risking a fall or the likelihood of tipping normally associated with standard products.
And as it turned out, the platforms fit the infrastructure at AEP perfectly. SafeSmart’s Ben Wootten says the customer is now considering the units for several more locations in the AEP network.
“In the end, AEP bought several of these,” said Ben. “It has allowed the company to increase low height access safety and efficiency to the platform’s capacity for holding tools. No more up-down-up-down when changing tools. And it’s all OSHA-compliant.”
]]>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an initiative by the United States Department of Labor, are launching “Safe+Sound Week”, to run from June 12 to 18, 2017.
The event’s intention is to raise awareness of the importance of workplace safety – not just a matter of compliance, but also for creating a heightened degree of worker safety and in turn productivity.
While the focus is on many industries, from the point of view of working at height, one point of emphasis is likely to be on the types of accidents that occur in the construction industry. For example, in 2015, 364 out of 937 total construction-related deaths were the result of a fall.
To decrease these accidents, management teams are being encouraged to lead the way for safety, through putting safety at the center of their operations. And workers themselves will be put at the center of the consultative cycle, as they are the people who will most likely be able to identify dangers first-hand, with suggestions for how to eliminate such dangers.
Companies can sign up to take part; they will receive information from OSHA during the event week that outlines ways the business can improve their safety, in a very specialized way, according to the unique dangers presented by each worksite.
And relevant associations have already signed up as event partners, including the Scaffold and Access Industry Association (SAIA).
SafeSmart Access are also in the business of identifying dangers in the workplace, and solving them through the supply of compliant high quality scaffolding and customized work platform solutions.
Safety Stand-Down, May 8 to 12, 2017.
The event invites employers to voluntarily halt proceedings for a short time, to talk to employees about safety when working at height. The main objective is to identify potential fall dangers in their work areas, and to reduce the amount of falls that cause injury or death, due to unnecessarily lax practices.
Upon competition, businesses can download an OSHA-approved Certificate of Participation, and bolster their credibility via social media, using the hashtag #StandDown4Safety.
For more details, go to OSHA’s dedicated page for the event. Or to enquire about ways to make your workplace safer sooner rather than later, get in touch with your nearest SafeSmart Access branch.
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