Are You Keeping Your Worksite Safe?
How To Keep Your Worksite Safe?
There are few things more important during the process of any construction job than making sure that everyone involved, including both you and your employees, are able to work in the safest environment possible. Health and safety procedures can often feel like they’re not that important or that they are getting in the way of you and your staff getting the project completed in time, but the truth is that they are one of the most important parts of any project. This is true for any business but when you’re working in construction and engineering, it becomes something that you simply cannot afford to ignore, no matter what.
This is what makes it all the more shocking how often health and safety end up being ignored in many sites and during all kinds of construction projects. Not only does this prevent a project from being able to run as smoothly as possible but it also puts both you and your workers in serious danger. With that in mind, here are just some of the elements of health and safety during your project for Keeping Your Worksite Safe:
Site assessments
When you’re looking to make sure that your project is as safe as possible, the first thing you should pay attention to is the site itself. If not carefully assessed and managed, a construction site can be an extremely hazardous environment for your workers. Between the heavy machinery and the various potentially dangerous tasks involved, you simply cannot afford not to make sure that every element of your site is as safe as possible. From railings in elevated areas to protect workers from falling to outdoor stair treads that help to ensure safety in any weather conditions, starting your health and safety procedures with the environment in which your employees will be working is one of the best possible things that you can do. That way, you can start to focus on the other areas of health and safety with the confidence that the foundations are in place.
Staff training
The reality of keeping your site safe is that you can have all of the right equipment and procedures in place possible but many of them aren’t going to be worth all that much if you can’t rely on your employees to actually keep themselves safe while they work. You want to make sure that your employees are protected but you also need to give them the skills to protect themselves. The only way that you’re going to be able to do that is by making sure that you are providing them with the health and safety training that they need. By providing them with the tools to keep themselves and each other safe you massively reduce the potential risk to any of your employees. Never assume that you no longer have to worry about health and safety just because you’ve put the effort into reducing the environmental hazards to your employees. Health and safety is everyone’s responsibility and it’s essential that your employees are fully aware of that.
Emergency procedures
If there is one thing that can end up causing more problems when it comes to the safety of your workers and your site, it’s allowing yourself to fall into a false sense of security. No matter what standards you have in place, there’s always a chance that something could end up going wrong. Because of that, you need to be sure that you have emergency procedures to protect yourself and your employees in the event of a disaster. Things like testing for emergency and exit lights as well as being sure that all of your employees know what to do and where to go in the event of a dangerous accident or emergency are essential if you want to be sure that you and your employees are as safe as possible no matter what occurs.
Leading by example
When people talk about the fact that “health and safety is everyone’s responsibility” they often make the mistake of thinking that it only applies to those working on the site and not those overseeing the project. However, that’s simply not the case. If you want to make sure that your construction project is as safe as possible, you need to be willing to hold yourself to the same standard as your employees. If you’re not taking health and safety seriously, how can you expect your employees to do the same? Whether it’s refreshing your own awareness and knowledge of how to keep your site safe or making it clear to your employees that you should be held to the same standard as them, leading by example can make it far easier for you to create the kind of safety culture and secure environment that is best for both your business and everyone in it.
Ongoing inspections
One of the most common mistakes to make is to assume that safety is something you only really need to consider at the start of a project. However, you should never take the safety of your site for granted. Conducting regular inspections can make a huge difference as it allows you to make sure that you’re shoring up any issues that might have come up and will ensure that none of your employees is developing some bad habits that, if left unchecked, run the risks of causing problems for them and the people they work with. This will require an investment of your time but the truth is that the issues that doing this can prevent would be a far bigger waste of everyone’s time.
Worksite Safe – Conclusion
The reality of running any kind of worksite is that the people involved in the project should always be your number one priority. This goes for all businesses but is even more important in construction where the people performing the actual labor on site are the ones keeping the whole thing running. If you’re not making the effort to keep your workers and worksite safe then not only are you letting them down but you’re putting your entire project at risk from the very beginning.