Typically, when we talk about construction inspection, we discuss how it verifies contractor work and work quality, something less often addressed is how construction inspectors promote a safe working environment on construction sites.
In part one of this five-part blog series on safety, we’re going to be discussing all the ways QES helps keep your team and organization safe.
First, why is safety on a construction site so important? According to Justin Gibbons, QES’s Vice President of Construction Inspection, every party on a construction site has a vested interest in maintaining safety. Besides OSHA and needing to keep a site up and running, employees want to be able to go home to their families at the end of the day, and contractors want the same.
Additionally, in paving, most construction happens on live-sites, next to still-running traffic, and the last thing anyone wants is to bring harm to an innocent bystander. “People are living their lives, and we are already interfering with that by doing construction. We don’t want to cause people more disruption than is absolutely necessary,” said Gibbons.
Four Key Steps to Safety
In order to keep both your team and ours safe, we need to take consistent measures, and repeat them often. Here are the top four safety measures we implement to ensure our team continuously operates with a safety mindset:
- COVID-19 precautions
During the ongoing pandemic, we have undertaken additional safety measures as recommended by the CDC, state and local jurisdictions to ensure the safety of our workers and anyone they come into contact with. Our inspectors perform check-ins every day to verify they are healthy and fit for work including consistent testing and symptom monitoring.
2. Pre-operation safety meetings
Each project has different responsibilities and takes place on a new job site. We hold pre-operation meetings with contractors, clients, and our own teams to discuss the specific safety operations for each project. This includes items such as traffic safety measures and introductions to all of the safety marshals.
3. Project inspection, approved safety plan
While on the job, our construction inspectors keep track of a pre-approved safety plan. This plan has been agreed upon between the contractor and the client, and usually it consists of standard OSHA requirements, though it can have more project specific needs.
4. Weekly safety meetings
For our own team, our construction inspectors hold weekly safety meetings. Each of these meetings covers a different topic, to give our inspectors a refresher on safety information. These topics are usually job and circumstance specific, such as covering the dangers of heat in the summer, and wildlife safety when completing jobs in heavily forested areas.
Stay tuned for the rest of our safety series, where we go more in-depth into QES’s safety measures:
- Preventing Infection on the Job Site: Safety During the Covid-19 Pandemic
- How Safety Meetings Save Lives
- I Love it When a (Safety) Plan Comes Together
- Conducting Safe Surveys on Active Roads: Safety Measures for Data Collection