5 Safety Rules For Construction

Safety is of utmost importance in the construction industry, where workers face various hazards on a daily basis. Adhering to strict safety rules and regulations is crucial to protect workers from accidents, injuries, and even fatalities. In this article, we will outline five essential safety rules for construction sites. By implementing these rules and fostering a culture of safety, construction companies can prioritize the well-being of their workers and ensure a safe working environment for all.

Know your rights and exercise them appropriately the first rule of safety really. The dangers presented at construction sites require everyone to do their part and for that to happen everyone has to understand their part.

Worker Rights:

The Right to Work in an free of harassment.

The Right to Refuse unsafe work without fear of disciplinary action.

The Right to Know about the hazards of their work environment

The Right to Participate in all matters keeping your workplace safe and healthy

Understand your responsibilities: If you are in a position of authority know your responsibilities the consequence for negligence usually results in workplace fatalities and the accountability is jail.

The bulk of responsibilities fall to the employer in the workplace from ensuring all hazards associated with the work have been identified, mitigated and controlled, and communicated to the workforce. The employer is responsible for development of how they want the work to be done safely and to provide the equipment necessary. It is also their job to make sure all unsafe acts and conditions are corrected immediately or in a timely manner.

Workers have responsibilities too they have to adhere to the plans and if the plans place people in danger they have to speak up. They have to come to work fit for duty and ready work and if there are limitations or challenges it on the worker to share that with the employer.

We all have a responsibility to speak up when we see something unsafe on the jobsite.

Report unsafe conditions and unsafe acts: hazards happen everyday and we’re responsible to either correct what we can or bring it to the attention of someone who can address the hazard. Unsafe conditions are the warning signs we should be paying attention too.

Unsafe conditions refer things like defective equipment in use, not enough lighting in an area to properly see what one is doing, or areas that don’t have proper access.

Unsafe acts refer to actions an individual makes like choosing not to wear prescribed personal protective equipment (PPE), not completing required daily hazard inspections, or maliciously tampering with PPE or safety equipment.

Training all aspects within the construction industry require some from of training whether it be an orientation, tool and equipment usage, work procedure review, or technical skill acquirement everyone needs to be adequately trained to preform their tasks.

All workers should not commence work on a jobsite they have not received a proper orientation for this outlines the prescribed rules, code of conduct and system of accountability. Subsequently no worker should preform a task they haven’t been properly trained to do; many companies have a competency assessment process new workers have to go through during their first 6 months of their employment.

Make sure you attend all company training. Know when you certification expires so you can recertify before expiry, if you don’t know how to operate or scopes of work ask for training.

Report all injuries and incidents. While the plan is to never hurt anyone or damage equipment plans fail, people get hurt and equipment does get damaged. Injuries and incidents are lagging indicators, meaning after the fact, not necessarily in the moment are their obvious reasons for failure, but there are always lessons to be learned from every failure. It is all of our responsibilities to ensure we have a safe work environment to come back to everyday.

Talk to your supervisor and let them know what happened, help identify if you can suitable corrective actions to prevent reoccurance.