In this article, the next of our guest blogs for #IMM2016, experienced safety professional Ron Parker highlights how an accident has cause and effect not just for the injured party, but various other stakeholders too. This article was originally published on Warriors4Safety.com and is republished with kind permission.
According to OSHA, construction is one of the most hazardous industries. If an accident happens, the mindset of some is that, as bad that it is that someone got hurt, it doesn’t affect them. What they don’t consider is that accidents don’t just affect people who are directly hurt. Indirectly, accidents affect everyone involved, in one way or another. Imagine this scenario...
An accident happens on a work site. At the onset the injury seems worse than it is. Immediately, for a few moments, work on the job site stops to allow the injured to be attended to. This impairs the schedule and causes delay. Thus at this point the entire job is being affected.
Meanwhile, reports of the accident reach the public, and the company’s office is flooded with calls inquiring about the accident. Those calls tie up company phone lines, interrupting everyone’s work, delaying progress, and delaying the company’s ability to correct the problem that caused the accident.
Following the accident some or all of the following will occur for the injured; pain, discomfort, disability, loss of earnings, loss of the ability to continue in his craft, total disability or even death.
Let’s consider family, maybe a wife and children. Do any of the above possibilities affect them? What about a parent or brother or sister? Friends even enter into the equations.
Now, let’s consider the foreman on the job. He is responsible for making sure a certain amount of work is completed by his crew. Anything that injures or delays one of his men, or interrupts the orderly flow of the job, reflects unfavorably on his ability to control and direct the work for which he is responsible. Will an accident affect him?
Suppose we consider the superintendent next. He is responsible for completing an assignment by a designated date at an agreed upon price. Anything that injures a worker or delays the project and interrupts the orderly accomplishment of the job reflects unfavorably on his ability to control and direct the work for which he is responsible. An accident will certainly affect him.
What about the loss suffered by the company? Each accident that occurs on a job reflects their ability to attract skilled workers needed to fulfill a contract. The reputation of the company is hurt by its failure to prevent accidents.
Last, don’t forget the customer, in the form of a delayed contract, additional insurance costs and their ability to get their product to the market.
All of the above is why the construction industry takes safety programs seriously. Safety programs are in place not only for you as an individual, but for everyone involved.
Author
Ronald (Ron) Parker has been a Safety Professional since 1993. One day whilst working in construction he was asked if he wanted to get into safety. Needless to say he jumped at it. He has worked for a company that built board plants and later had the good fortune to work for a company that built hydrant fuel systems for the Air Force. He occasionally worked at Pearl Harbor. He feels his greatest accomplishment was to become a Construction Health and Safety Technician. His is currently semi-retired.
In similar type of program I went through back in 2013 which was under the name of OHSE and the agenda was organizational health and safety. Basically it was about letting people know about the importance and necessity of security measures, how we need to take security measures and why also. All these security implications or SOPs are established for you own health and safety so it is is very important to learn before going in to a big organization like Pell, Dulux Paint Coca Cola and similar type of organizations where taking security measures is a must do concept.