Recent Comments - Construction Business Owner Blogs

This week, I?m pleased to welcome David DeVita, a safety expert with 20 years of experience, from Carolina Safety Consultants.

I had the opportunity to do some work outside the construction industry a few weeks ago in which I toured a manufacturing plant with an ergonomist. The manufacturing company makes and assembles small to extra-large gear assemblies for everything from small electric motors to large rock crushers.

The company called us to come in and evaluate some of their work stations where they seemed to be getting the most injuries from repetitive motions. One of the areas we looked at was their pallet/skid area, where they were struggling to design an ergonomic work station. This started me thinking back to the construction industry and how we struggle with this very issue. OSHA has been grappling with the idea of developing a specific ergonomic standard for the construction industry. But what would that look like and how would contractors be able to comply with some of the very costly expenses?

When working in a manufacturing plant, you can design or build workstations that can fit the workers physical needs. But on construction sites, where change is the desired goal each day, building ergonomic work stations is very difficult. I think the main areas we need to concentrate on in the construction industry and ergonomics are the hand and power tools workers utilize, material handling equipment, employer and employee training.

There are newer hand and power tools that are ergonomically designed for a better comfort grip so to reduce employee squeeze tension, vibration or awkward posturing of the arm, hand and/or body. These tools are a little more expensive, however, if proven to help reduce employee discomfort and injuries, they would be an good investment.

It?s also important to educate employers and employees on the availability of the newer technology in tools and equipment that can assist in reducing injuries to workers. One example of this is the use of nail guns and other pneumatic tools rather than the swinging of hammers. This is just one example of many that are out there.

Although I don?t believe ergonomics will ever be able to be as fully implemented or embraced in the construction industry, I do believe we have made some significant strides and need to continue these efforts.

So what are your thoughts and ideas regarding ergonomic applications in the construction industry?

www.dexterchaney.com

Tags: construction safety, ergonomics

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 at 1:20 pm and is filed under John Chaney Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

tcu dr. oz heart attack grill las vegas the heart attack grill joe kennedy iii joseph kennedy iii ghost hunters