This is the third in our series of articles on safety issues on a construction site. Today, we focus on the importance of wearing personal protection equipment, or PPE, on site at all times.
On virtually all construction sites, workers are required to wear a hard hat and steel toe boots. This is the bare minimum of safety equipment and any worker would be immediately removed from the site without them. Our co-founder, Daniel Greenhalgh, points out that the most useful part of the boots aren’t the steel toes – they’re the shanks.
“On a weekly basis, somebody, including me, will step directly on a nail and feel it come up right into the shank. It’s an eerie feeling, being so close to a major injury and narrowly avoiding it like that. But that’s the simplest example of why we wear PPE. There’s an injury around the corner at all times on a construction site.”
But at ENM, we believe strongly in going above and beyond the basics of PPE. “On too many sites, workers just don’t bother to wear basic things like protective glasses or gloves. It’s either out of arrogance or laziness, but whatever it is, it’s foolish. I’ve seen people digging metal flex out of their eyeballs or getting their skin peeled off while doing sheet metal work. It can be really gruesome, and people need to be reminded of that.”
ENM employs a full-time safety coordinator, Brodie Parsons, who is an everyday advocate for ensuring all workers are wearing what they need to stay safe. “Brodie’s full time job is babysitting our guys to make sure they’re following our protocols. Anytime you pour concrete, or cut or grind anything, you’re aerosolizing whatever you’re working with. You’re going to need to wear protective glasses, you’re going to need a respirator. You don’t want to breathe in or absorb any of those chemicals or dust into your eyes or lungs. He makes sure our guys are using the eyewash station after every job. We prioritize safety on a level that you normally don’t see on other sites.”
Brodie and our site coordinators make sure that not only are the workers following our strict safety code, but that they’re well informed on the reasons behind each step. “We make sure everyone’s had the proper safety training and orientation so they can see what happens when you get a little lax with PPE equipment,” says Daniel. “For some of the old school guys, it helps to remind them what can happen when they start to get too confident in themselves. You have to stay humble when you’re working on site.”
PPE equipment can literally be the difference between life and death. “We drill it into everyone’s heads so that it becomes second nature to wear their protective gear at all times,” says Brodie. “As the safety officer it falls to me to enforce all site safety rules and I am constantly reprimanding complacent workers for not wearing their gear when required. We use a three-strike system here starting with a verbal warning for a first offence, written warning for a second, and a temporary suspension for a third. If absolutely necessary, workers can be permanently banned from site or have their employment terminated for repeat offences.”
We hope to be an integral part of instilling a strong safety culture throughout the construction industry in B.C.
