Workplace Safety

1. Check the parking lot and drive areas for potholes, cracks, uneven pavement, concrete heaving or subsidence (sinking) on walkways.

2. Check around curb inlets (stormwater throats). Often the tops do not match the surrounding sidewalks for elevation.

3. Observe the green space, grass and flower beds, for burrows that animals may have dug. Groundhogs can create a terrible trap causing broken legs and sprained ankles with deep holes. Moles and voles too.

4. Look for areas washed by stormwater or sprinkler flow.

5. Are all stairs visible, well lighted and handrails in place?

6. Anywhere people may walk, check for even or level conditions and well-marked stairs.

1. Check transition areas between rooms to assure no dramatic steps down or up.

2. Are all hallways and stairs free and clear of debris or storage items?

3. Check all rugs to assure edges are secured to the floor to avoid trip hazards.

4. Generally, are all footpaths free of trip hazards and clutter? Ample room to walk?

5. Kitchens and shop areas: are all spills cleaned up immediately?

6. Are all stairs visible and handrails in place?

The fundamental reason for fire drills is to organize a plan before disaster strikes.

1. Has everyone escaped the building?
2. Have the fire department or responders been called with all the location information they need?
3. Is someone serving as a signal at the road to wave in the responders?
4. Are there adequate personnel to direct the responders to the site of the fire without getting in the way?
5. Does someone have a list of chemicals and supplies anticipated to be involved or potentially involved in the fire?

Start with the first fundamental: set up a meeting place or places to roll call employees. This task is completed quickly by having each operational group handle their own personnel. Do not count people, roll call.

Have groups of seven to ten people gather and assure all are present. Have one person from each of those groups report to one person. No one need count more than ten people this way, and this process should be complete and specific.

Any visitor to the building should be escorted through the system by the person last with them.

Just get out and account for everyone, then move to step two through five. But have the personnel assigned ahead of time. Panic or stressful situations are a bad time to get organized.

Why not fight the fire with extinguishers?

Absolutely do: trash can fires, small electrical fires, friction fires in machinery. Easily accessible, extinguisher immediately available, small contained fires can be extinguished quickly and effectively. Extinguish the fire and leave the building.

Clear the building anyway. You’ll lose a few minutes of production time, but the live drill will be safety reinforcing and, just in case you’re wrong about the extent of the fire or the chemical release due to the fire, you’ll be safe.

Place fire extinguishers with two thoughts in mind:

1. Easy access and availability to put out fires.
2. Easy access to help fight the way to an exit.

How does the second reason sound compared to getting out before the spread of a fire that looked contained?

Muscle strains and back sprains from utilizing improper lifting techniques decrease in frequency as management trains the workforce.

What happens when a manager, office personnel or even the boss decides to move a heavy object because “this’ll just take a second”. Are they thinking about the safety aspects of the task or getting it done?

These injuries occur frequently because most companies spend money training the production line personnel but not the office employees. Yet, ergonomically speaking, the office employee manipulates their body in more tortuous ways throughout the day. Add weight to that equation and back strains happen.

How can these injuries be avoided?

1. Design workspaces ergonomically and efficiently. Fewer, more comfortable movements create productivity and safety. Start with the office chair fit for the individual and the task.
2. Encourage standing, even pacing, while on the phone. A change in routine, a change in motion, refreshes the body and spirit.
3. Encourage stretching exercises while working. Even a quick five-minute routine will help break the repetition of paperwork hypnosis.
4. Organize the supply room so bending is avoided, especially to lift objects weighing more than twenty pounds. Store supplies between knee height and shoulder height with the most heavy objects at waist height or slightly higher.
5. Organize supplies in small quantities. A ream of paper is easier to lift than a case. One individual can be trained and tasked with filling copiers and printers with paper every day. Designate a hand truck for this operation if needed. If the office is busy enough or uses hat much paper, task the employee to keep machines filled. Production will rise and injuries will decrease.
6. Train your management team to ask for help or at least think about safe lifting when moving “light” office machines and equipment. Often, the bending and back manipulation creates the injury scenario, like a boom over-extended for the lift.

The most important aspect of office safety is awareness. Even if the job will “just take a second”, take ten more seconds to consider the dangers. Injuries lurk in the safest feeling environments.

The latest trend in environmental risk management is vapor intrusion, usually referencing toxic fumes from historical external spills penetrating the building envelope creating unhealthy air conditions.

Unfortunately, the canaries in the office coalmine tend to be people already at-risk for lung related issues, like those with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Vapor intrusion worsens in recycled air environments like homes and offices, or trapped areas like basements. Standard air filtration does not always eliminate chemical molecules, so they accumulate to higher concentrations, or worse, react with other present chemicals to create a more harsh molecule.

How about chemicals brought into an office environment?

Will the rug shampoo react with the linoleum stripper? Will the ink drying agent chemically reduce to a more toxic form?
Read the material safety data sheet (MSDS) alternatively the safety data sheet (SDS) or product safety data sheet (PSDS), to understand the chemicals or vapors potentially released by the product and if they have a injurious pathway to your employees.

Also, read the chemicals which should NOT mix with the product. Make a simple spreadsheet of the main products including cleaners, solvents, inks, bleaches, ammonia products, chemicals used in manufacturing or other processing like dry cleaning.

Most of these sheets are written in understandable language. List the family of chemical and what mixes are to be avoided. Does anything match?

Don’t be fooled by separate spaces or activities. These chemicals, in vapor form, can travel through vents, under and over doors, or through windows. Research each possible toxic material producing combination. Then find a way to change one or both chemicals, avoid possible mixing, or at a minimum, detect the toxic mix when it occurs.

Keep the (National Institute of Health) NIH – WISER (Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders) website handy for quick reference. It is the best tool to quickly determine potential vapor or chemical toxic issues:
www.wiser.nlm.nih.gov/ 

Do you ask for and receive all the certificates of insurance you need?
General contractors collect insurance certificates as a standard operating procedure. Every subcontractor provides a certificate or they don’t walk onto the jobsite. This transaction defines the standard usage of the certificate.

But what about other operations?

Fundamentally, a certificate of insurance is a standard form which offers proof of insurance: workers’ compensation, general liability, automobile liability, or any coverage required by the recipient.

The certificate outlines the coverage, the limits of the insurance policy and the relationship of the recipient to the contractor in terms of extended inclusion or exclusion under the policy.

This process clarifies which entity provides insurance for specific operations and which entities are insured under the policy.
Outsourcing is just another word for subcontracting. Payroll professionals serve a valuable service for many different companies in diverse businesses. If you utilize this service, you should require a certificate of insurance. Why? If an injury occurs while performing your assigned task, and the company is not insured for workers’ compensation, your company automatically fills that gap in their coverage.

An electrician wires a new wall outlet in the office. Get a certificate.

The coffee service provider injures their back stocking your supplies. Protect your company by requiring a certificate prior to entering your premises.

Any entity providing a service to your office must offer proof of workers’ compensation and general liability insurance or their losses become yours.

This standard operating procedure will sound extreme to some risk managers, so listen you owners: the insurance companies are beginning to look for these situations to charge you a premium.

Contractors have been subject to these audit add-ons for years. It’s part of the business. Manufacturers and office risks have not, except for temporary contract labor directly associated with operations.

The insurance companies awakened to the subcontractor economy. Very specialized services outsourced by mainstream business are now a rich source of additional premium, but an equally scary source of job related injuries and liabilities.

Go through your list of suppliers, outsourced service personnel, grounds keepers, window washers, or any temporary or part-time labor providers and ask for certificates of insurance: workers’ compensation and general liability at a minimum.

The top two reasons to properly manage storage and deliveries to a site are: lifting, loading and unloading causes about half a million injuries per year, and sites are too tight and exposed to leave valuable materials lying around outdoors.

The coordination required to reduce material handling pays off in efficiency and safety. Schedule delivery of materials an supplies so they arrive when needed, or slightly before.

Major building components need to arrive so they are placed as they are removed from the truck. Not laid down and revisited in two months. Soaked structural components placed in buildings create environments for microbes, fungus and mildew.

Any heavy materials or supplies difficult to balance on a forklift require storage where needed for construction. This storage can conflict with on-going operations, which suggests not delivering these components until installation day.

Off site storage requires moving material twice not recommended. But supplies can be stored off site if easily loaded and brought by small truck. This solution avoids theft and sloppy storage areas.

Provide and train personal protection equipment for site employees. Steel-toed boots, safety glasses, lifting belts, gloves, and hardhats at a minimum.

Train employees to lift weighty objects correctly, or simply ask for help. Bending and twisting causes hundreds of thousands of injuries per year.

Allow only trained workers to operate forklifts or mobile equipment. Load stability is critical to safe operations. Train all employees regarding the risk of these loads falling, make sure they are all aware.

Lay out storage areas with purpose. Know which items are incompatible for close by storage. The fueling area should not abut the welding area for example.

Do not allow high stacking of pallets or boxes. Falling items can break bones and crush body parts.

Talk to the site supervisors about storage on site and assess how much material can be stored safely, prior to groundbreaking. Plan deliveries for the shortest possible storage time. Try to move items only once on the site, plan accordingly. Reducing the loading, unloading and movement of stored materials will reduce strains, sprains, broken and crushed bones, and back injuries. 

Job sites become messy and trashy fairly quickly, especially when inside work begins in earnest or site conditions are muddy.

Critical needs include:

1. Keep floors clean.
2. Keep trash removed or at least in barrels.
3. Keep stairways and exits clear.
4. Keep storage towards the middle of rooms.

Clean floors reduce the risk of tripping, slipping or falling. Dangerous sharp objects may be among the trash on the floor. Cuts, scrapes and puncture wounds increase on sloppy sites. Trashy work sites are a greater fire hazard too; a carelessly discarded cigarette or hot tool in a trash pile can ignite the jobsite.

Smoking should be banned completely on some sites, and tightly controlled on others with a designated area, plenty of butt pails, and a maintenance schedule to keep it clean.

Plenty of trash barrels scattered throughout the site makes disposal convenient. Designated recycling barrels for plastic, glass, wood scraps (which can be used on site) and metals and copper helps achieve LEEDs points, if desired, and a lunch fund for special events like building completion.

The object of these barrels or any other “straightening up” idea is to keep as little trip hazard on the floors as possible without adding to the cost of labor on site for specialty maintenance workers.

Life and safety rules which become compromised on sites frequently involve doors and fire escape routes. Vitally important to keep hallways clear of debris and stairwells and doors fully operational. Create a zero tolerance policy for leaving anything in a hallway, stairwell, or blocking a door, for any length of time.

Closely associated with hallways and stairwells is the need to store materials in the middle of floors. Work is generally performed on the perimeters of the rooms. A clear path around the room must be maintained for workers to access an exit without climbing over supplies.

Take a few moments during the design phase to regulate debris and housekeeping on the site. Be sure all contractors understand the importance of cleanliness and orderliness. Safety and efficiency improve with proper housekeeping.