For the construction industry, safety should always be the number one priority. However, with constant pressure to meet deadlines, the push-and-pull of staffing and supply issues, plus other challenges, there can be times when that maxim is overlooked.
Fortunately, there are many proven examples of changes in working safety culture. With a series of processes to reduce accidents and engrain a safety-first culture among the most pragmatic of workforces.
Step 1: Safety Starts at the Top
A business does nothing without firm commitment from the top. Executive buy-in into safety culture is vital to get any improvement project started, beyond nodding agreement. Any leaders ambivalent about safety should not be in charge of a construction or related organisation.
Along with their agreement, leaders should provide a budget for training, delivering best practices and resources to improve safety at every point across the company’s construction footprint. They should also demonstrate a leadership-first approach to safety, and not tolerate managers or workers known to ignore safety rules or cut corners.
Leadership should create a safety team with members from across the construction company or across all building contractors to lead on establishing safety policies. They should use existing best practices to create procedures that everyone must learn and follow.
Step 2: Ensure Safety From Bottom to Top
Anyone should be able to halt a construction job or process if they witness unsafe behavior, and have their concerns listened to and see the problem resolved. Workers who do not demonstrate a safe attitude should be removed from the site, given training and put on notice to improve.
Similarly, site managers, construction leaders and other roles should have safety knowledge instilled as part of their onboarding, written into their contracts and as part of their daily routine.
Anyone across the company should be able to contribute ideas to safety, using suggestion boxes, or more modern methods like idea management software that ensures ideas are visible and can be acted upon and not ignored.
Step 3: Provide Ongoing Training
With the basis of safety established, each worker should have time in their schedule set aside for new safety lessons, reminder sessions, and given the chance to voice their concerns. These sessions should include members from all levels of the business to demonstrate the unified approach, and so that senior leaders can gain a roots-level understanding of operating practices.
Rather than have workers sitting in front of a whiteboard, sessions should be interactive, using videos, animations, interactive games and other ways to drive home the need for safety. Documents should be multi-lingual to support non-English workers, and tests must be used to prove that workers understand the training.
Step 4: Enforce Site Monitoring and Evaluation
Construction projects are fluid hives of activity with changes to risk and safety on a daily basis. As such, each site must be monitored constantly, and any changes to safety notified to all workers. Based on that information, regular audits should be provided to safety managers and leaders to highlight any growing areas of risk or improvement.
As changes happen, safety training should be updated, and policies adapted to the changing construction landscape.
Step 5: Create Decisive Incident Response Teams
All construction and building sites must follow legislation in their approach to site rules and induction. Apps like the CDM Wizard can help create the basis of safety guidelines and working practices across multiple contractors. However, as is the nature of construction, there will be incidents.
Teams need to be ready to respond to investigate the cause, identify issues and learn how to prevent an accident from happening again. From physical to technical and human failures, there are often multiple causes behind any incident, and understanding the entire chain of events is key to accurately reporting and resolving any safety issue.
From heavy stocks of consumables to a noisy environment with powerful tools, machinery and vehicles, there will always be the risk of an accident, but a progressive construction business that minimises the risk and trains staff well will stand out on any construction site, and help the industry learn to function better when it comes to safety.
