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September 23, 2019

3 Ways to Prevent Construction Equipment Accidents

Construction or excavation sites are always prone to the chances of heavy accidents and threat to life. The raw materials and sandbags that are required for the construction process can also become a threat if they fall on somebody for example. But most of all, the heavy equipment and vehicles that are used in the modular construction process reportedly have more chances of hurting people than the sandbags or concrete slabs. Heavy vehicles that work with lifting heavy loads, like huge concrete pieces or steel structures, from one place to another can sometimes go out of control and hurt people at the workplace or can simply cause capital loss of material. Operating heavy equipment requires training or machine learning. But still, accidents can happen with both new trainees or experienced professionals. There are though certain manoeuvres that can help you prevent such accidents at your modular construction site.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that all the employees and equipment operators must be given safety training and tools to make sure that they are alert at the construction zone. Here are some equipment safety tips that will keep both the operators and the workers safe.

1) Check for Blind Spots

Operators inside heavy equipment have a lot of blind spots around them because of which they can only see the work in function but not around. But these blind spots might sometimes capture someone under a part of the equipment without the operator noticing. Unfortunately, the noise from the equipment doesn’t even allow them to hear if someone got into trouble and is screaming. So every operator must check all around the equipment to see if any object or person has come under the operating area before carrying on with the heavy equipment operation. The best solution to blind spots is to post a spotter who can assist the operators' vision and signal when something is about to go wrong.

2) Enforce Proper Communication

Communicating is constantly necessary to prevent mishaps at a modular construction or excavation site. Proper two-way radio communication can improve coordination between the workers that are working alongside heavy equipment or are assistants to the equipment operator. If radio communication is missing, there must be a spotter with complete hand signal training that can assist the operator and warn the workers around as well.

3) Walk-around and Inspect

The heavy equipment on the construction field is used every day with almost the same intensity. You never know which batch of load might have been too much for the components. Which is why everyday inspection of the equipment, before work starts, is necessary for safety measures. Make a checklist for all the components of the equipment. You must include; hydraulics, undercarriages, oil levels, points of stress, etc. All the readings from the inspection must be sent to the maintenance and safety department and should be analyzed before starting the work.

Traditional construction generally has more chances of having on-field accidents as modular construction rarely uses any heavy parts and raw material on the installation sites. The only thing to be taken care of is the lifting equipment that puts the modules in place. Contact Northgate Industries Ltd. for a safe and secure process on your construction site.

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