Ihab Saad – Safety Program

Music.

Welcome to another lecture on construction safety, and today

we're going to discuss construction safety and health

program. What are the ingredients of that program, what's the

importance of the program, and how to implement it within a

construction organization and work environment.

So any construction company must have a written and documented

safety and health program for several reasons, including ethical

reasons, regulatory reasons, economic reasons and practical

reasons. So we discuss each one of these sets of reasons and see why

does it make sense to have a written safety program

for the ethical factors it is the right thing to do, as we have the

right and the ethical obligation to protect our employees on site,

it reflects the company's commitment to the employee's

health, safety and well being. And companies without such a plan

experience 30% or more, 30% more accidents than those with plans,

as we're going to see later on, or as we have already learned that

having a written safety program and enforcing it can help reduce

the penalties once the company is cited for any safety violations,

and that reduction can be Up to 25% which is not small change

regulatory factors. Federal and state regulations require that the

companies maintain a safe and healthy work environment. Some

federal regulations specifically require a written plan to focus on

specific issues, such as a fall protection plan. You have to have

a clear fault protection plan with proper training for the employees

who might be subject to falls. Emergency action plan in case of

injury or in case of fatality, what should one do? What should

the people on site do? Blood borne pathogens and exposure control

plan, especially with AIDS, HIV and other blood transmitted

diseases if someone gets injured and there's blood on site. How to

protect oneself. Having a comprehensive plan leads to more

than compliance as it helps establish a high quality work

environment. People are going to have the feeling that the company

cares for them, and therefore they're going to perform in a

better way.

For economic factors, accidents and injuries are directly and

they're indirectly, expensive, directly because of the cost of

treatment or the cost of compensation and so on, and

indirectly, because the low morale, the low lost productivity

and the delays that might result from

shutdown of the site during the investigation and for their peers,

a good health and safety plan can save the company a lot of money

related to the following, holding down insurance costs. That's a

direct cost, reducing costly litigation resulting from injuries

or fatalities, God forbid, reducing temporary and permanent

disability claims, increasing employee morale and therefore

productivity, securing a good reputation and track record

leading to more contracts. Definitely, owners are going to be

more interested in contracting with with someone who has a good

safety track record, rather than a shoddy one, reducing the number of

Compliance Inspections and associated citations and penalties

resulting down from we have learned during the lecture on

penalties and citations and inspections, that these can be

very costly. So definitely, that's a very viable economic fact.

Practical factors, the practical reasons for implementing the plan

include forcing the company to put its commitment in writing. So we

claim that we are a safety conscious organization, let's put

that in writing, and let's implement that, forcing the

company to establish policies and set goals for safety and health.

If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. So we have to put some

guidelines and some concrete measures to how to achieve that

safety in order to improve safety performance on site commits in

writing the procedures that must be followed by all employees and

subcontractors, so no one can claim I didn't know,

and facilitates communication of policies, procedures and goals

related to the quality of the work environment. So we are all

speaking the same language

different components of the plan include the safety and health

policy, safety and health goals, roles and responsibilities of the

different personnel, discipline, policy and procedures in case

someone does not abide by the rules, job site inspections,

accident investigations, record keeping, what kind, what kind of

records have to be kept. How often, where are they going to be

post posted training. How often should that training be renewed

and refreshed? Medical Response and first aid in case of any

accidents, what's the closest medical facility? For example,

emergency response and miscellaneous components like

four.

User performing housekeeping on a daily basis, again, to maintain

the site in a neat and clean environment, and having and

displaying a positive attitude towards safety that is shared with

everyone else, the supervisor and the top management as well.

The safety professional responsibility include that's

going to be the safety manager, for example, on site, performing

the safety audits, performing regular job site inspections.

They're going to be specialized in safety, performing hazard

analysis, to try to analyze the situation and the tasks to be

performed, what are the hazards? How to mitigate these hazards, or

how to protect against them, conducting accident investigation

in case of an accident, to know exactly what caused this accident

to happen and try to eliminate that in the future, keeping

records up to date for OSHA inspections,

reporting on safety issues and training employees again, making

sure that everyone who is responsible for a certain task is

well trained to perform this task in a safe

unfortunately, not everyone plays by the rules, so there's got to be

some deviations from time to time, and therefore we have to have

discipline and accountability. These are critical components of

the safety program, as they show the consequences for different

behaviors, especially those resulting from Failure to follow

the regulations. It should explain that all employees at all levels,

everyone are expected to adhere to the rules and regulations. So for

example, it doesn't work when the supervisor does not wear a hard

hat, for example, and telling everyone else to wear a hard hat,

you have, again, as we said before, to lead by example.

Examples of the disciplinary actions include termination of any

employee who fully and flagrantly endangers themselves and other

workers or company property through unsafe behavior you cannot

tolerate that. It can come into stages. So there might be a verbal

warning for the first violation, for non flagrant violations,

that's now non flagrant for the flagrant might be zero tolerance.

A second violation might be a written warning to put it on their

record. And then the third violation, if they insist on doing

the same behavior, suspension without pay. And for the fourth

violation that's a serial Violator is going to be dismissal that's

for non flagrant violations. Some companies might adopt a zero

tolerance policy, resulting in dismissal from the first

violation, like intoxication on site, for example, that should be

a no no. It's a totally unacceptable behavior, and should

result in immediate dismissal at the very first event again. To set

an example,

companies might also add a reward or bonus for showing consistent

adherence to the regulations and to offer a balancing carrot to the

other sticks. So for example, we can say, if we can work this month

with no accidents whatsoever, with no lost time, then we're going to

have a bonus for all the employees.

Now let's talk about the safety program. Some what are the major

elements of an effective one? What is why? Is it important? What's

the effect on insurance and the safety culture? What's the

supervisor's role? How to develop the team participation and how to

enforce the policy and communicate that policy, and how to identify

the different hazards, and in case of any incidents or accidents, how

to analyze them.

Why have a written program? First of all, organization. It helps

organize the safety policy

and consistency, it provides consistency over time, so the

rules apply to everyone.

And completeness of coverage, of coverage again, if we have just

verbal instructions, we might forget something, or something

might be missed, whether the listener doesn't listen to it, or

the one who provides the information just skips it, but

having it put in writing gives a better complete coverage of the

information, and it provides sources and origins of

stipulations. So for example, we can say the OSHA code clause

number so and so refers to this issue and specifies that this has

to be done in such and such manner,

and it facilitates review for improvement. So after again, we

are trying to improve our performance, we have reduced our

accidents by 25% how to how can we reduce them by 50% what additional

measures can we make to reduce the number of accidents or incidents?

Some of the elements of an effective of a written safety

program, include the safety policy, as we mentioned before,

the management responsibilities, supervisor and employee

responsibilities, safety committee or team safety meetings, how often

are they going to be? Who should attend them? Hazard recognition,

incident investigation, elimination of workplace.

Employment, see you in another lecture you.