Construction companies irrespective of size do their best to adhere to safe work practices on their sites. At a company level, safety measures are implemented across projects and are usually supported and monitored by people on site.
In such a rapidly changing environment, construction sites can become areas where inherent danger can suddenly create situations with the potential to cause harm to workers.
An important element of project management, the coordination of people is also the human element that causes accidents that vary in severity and seriousness. No worker or supervisor wants to intentionally halt the progress of jobs or injure themselves or others.
Many initiatives such as Zero Harm increased awareness regarding worker safety as a preventative way of thinking.
What happens when a worker is injured? Do you respond with confidence or react and hope for the best? Are sites doing everything possible to respond in a coordinated and timely manner?
We cannot ignore the inevitability of having to face scenarios dealing with injured workers.
Why are response times so critical to injured workers? In the event of an accident an injured person may perceive time very differently. Depending on the nature of the injury a worker may be bleeding, panicking, passed out, be concussed or confused.
When the fight or flight response is triggered levels of the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline spike to deal with the sudden threat to safety. These factors can combine along with the stress of an injury to cause physiological issues including heart attacks.
Even one minute of waiting for an injured worker can seem like much longer. Delays can sometimes be deadly.
Critically, a system or method on site that reduces the response time in acknowledging an accident or in assisting an injured worker, can significantly reduce the severity of some injuries and may even save more lives. No one wants to delay getting to or attending to an injured worker.
Two key areas of injury response - receiving a message that an incident has occurred and the time it takes for key personnel to attend is the next vital frontier in worker safety once an injury has occurred.
Here are three critical questions to consider.
- How smart/reliable are your systems?
- Does your injured worker receive two-way feedback that help is on the way?
- How fast are your response times?
Interested in learning more about how your site can improve response times? Contact us today.