5 Reasons Why Construction Safety Is a Priority.
Construction companies place the highest priority on safety. However, not all businesses understand how to implement an effective safety protocol, and keeping employees safe is not the only reason for effective safety procedures. When these procedures aren’t in place, you risk losing insurance or even your license. Because of this, we’re sharing five reasons why construction safety is a priority.
1. EMPLOYEE AND VISITOR SAFETY
Construction work is dangerous, regardless of technology, experienced construction management, clear plans and project scope, or how skilled the workforce is. As a result, the top priority is the safety of everyone on the construction site. Your workers will be far less effective if proper security measures are not in place. Nobody wants to work in an unsafe environment without appropriate safeguards. Thus, when setting up your construction site, you must follow all safety guidelines ensuring your employees are adequately protected and have the tools they need to do their job.
Safety must be prioritized because it will boost your workers’ confidence.
2. IMPROVED WORK QUALITY
As we’ve touched on earlier, when safety is not of the utmost importance, staff/subcontractors will not be able to perform to the best of their abilities. Because of this, the quality of their work could suffer. For this reason, you must ensure that all subcontractors are insured, properly licensed, and aware of the dangers they face during construction. Educated, knowledgeable staff are primed for the work ahead, making them more effective. When subcontractors don’t feel safe, they could cut corners and progress too quickly, producing sloppy work. These are not ideal situations because they can affect the schedule and cause setbacks. Your approach to safety heavily influences the quality of your commercial construction project. Projects fare better with a guaranteed safe job site — retaining competent workers by decreasing injuries and layoffs caused by risky working conditions.
3. Minimizes Delays
Delays are almost unavoidable in the construction industry. There are simply too many moving parts and variables to consider, making it nearly impossible to predict whether or not delays will occur. If your employees can work at maximum capacity and efficacy, you can reduce the possibility of setbacks.
If commercial construction safety is a priority, your workers will be much more efficient in their work.
4. ALLOWS YOU TO STAY ON BUDGET
When minimizing delays, you reduce costs associated with sloppy work and have your employees working at total capacity. Aside from apparent expenses like medical bills incurred as a result of an injury, there are also indirect costs that can have a significant impact on business. Costs you can expect when safety is not a priority:
- Delay costs – These costs come as a result of having to stop construction because of injured workers.
- Replacement costs – These would be expenses associated with training new workers that have to replace the injured ones.
- Material costs – This would be the cost of replacing machinery or materials if they were the cause or a potential cause of injury.
According to the report, these indirect expenses are at least 2.7 times higher than the direct expenditures. For example, the unneeded stress of an avoidable job accident often results in chronic stress, possibly causing a loss in performance and an increased risk of injury.
5. COMMUNITY STATUS AND REPUTATION
Nothing will harm your construction company’s reputation more than a work-related death — even minor mishaps can negatively impact business. Even so, your reputation is not the only thing you can suffer if this occurs. Consider the lawsuits and the possibility of losing your license too. You don’t want the general public to think your company is unreliable or uncaring about others’ safety. The last and most important reason — we’ve stressed throughout this article that you must put your workers’ safety first because working in construction is a dangerous business.
HOW TO INCREASE CONSTRUCTION SITE SAFETY
Take steps to increase the safety of your workers. An option is renting a storage unit with additional protective gear in a safe facility. It will be available if any of your workers ever need extra protective equipment. In addition, form a safety committee comprised of personnel from all levels of the company. They should be engaged in assessing and upgrading your company’s safety program, developing work site-specific safety plans throughout each project’s preconstruction phase, and assisting in identifying possible dangers and safety problems. Only by doing this will you be able to claim that your construction site has a solid safety protocol.
Failure to implement safety protocols can jeopardize your reputation in the industry.
CONCLUSION
We conclude our list of 5 reasons why commercial construction safety is a priority. As you can see, there are many reasons a safety plan is essential. Keeping your workers safe does not have to be overwhelming — for help, contact a good construction management team. All you need to do is find the right one for you.