Construction Safety and Health
Introduction
Different companies or organizations are expected to conduct their construction activities following regulations that are laid down by these bodies and institutions. For instance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an institution of the Department of Labor in the United States that its responsibility is to ensure healthy and safe working environment for employees.
Why safety is Important
The importance of safety a core element of OSHA cannot be overemphasized. Severe workplace injuries can change the lives of employees permanently. Thus affects the ability of employees to discharge their duties. With limited or reduced ability of working after the injuries, this means that their livelihood affected as well as the lives of their families, friends and close relatives.
Safety regulations and training helps workers avoid carelessness that causes injuries or even death. Safety regulations have helped reduce the number of fatalities in different types of workplaces (Moore & Viscusi, 1989). In case of injury at work, both parties can be affected greatly. The worker may lose life or be crippled while on the other hand he or she can sue the firm and result to compensations of huge amounts of money. Injuries at work place also lead to compensation claims that are costly and wastage of time. Injuries at work place may also kill other employee’s morale with the fear that they may also end up on the same situation as the victim. For these reasons, firms are obligated to maintaining safe and healthy environment for their employees. Availing the safety regulations and instructions to your workers employs trust and confidence among employees and thus they feel that their life and safety is cared for (Dan, 1979). Firms should prioritize their employees’ safety welfare at all the times.
Ethics and safety
Safety has some ethical values and principles that govern and dictate the decisions made by different leaders and organizations. The most common is ethical decisions to made are on legal and illegal options (Bowen, 2000). As far as health and safety standards and making of profits is concerned, it requires the ethical principles to guide a person through decision making. Some of the ethics that organizations and firms should follow are; don’t do any harm, do a good job and be honest. If these virtues are incorporated together with the safety regulations requirements, then risks of injuries and damages may be reduced.
If a firm will employ the ethics of doing any harm no matter how complex the regulations and policies are, it will ensure total safety to its employees. This is because, companies or firms may opt to dubious means of boycotting the Safety and Health policies with good intentions of creating more employment and profits but on the other end imposing a risk to the workers (Goetsch, 1998).
Secondly, the virtue of being honest is hard and rare case with many people and organizations. Being honest to your employees about the risks involved in the construction activities will help them make good decisions for their life. Knowing the risks involved in any operation will help the workers determines whether they will still seek the employment or not. It will also help the workers be familiarized with the risks and take precautionary measures at workplace. This will reduce risks of injuries and death.
3. OSHA compliance
Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a body in the Department of Labor of United States that was formed under Occupational Safety and Health Act. Among other roles played by this agency are; implementing and enforcing standards and provide training, assistance, education and outreach and also enforcing different types of statutes and regulations. Among other objectives of OSHA is curbing injuries costs that accrue to the firms as a result of injuries (Dan, 1979).
A combination of the hazard communication plan, evacuation plan, emergency plan and other disaster mitigation plans in an organization serves to prepare for state of emergencies and development of plans that reduce damages and injuries.
In order for firms and organizations to comply with OSHA, they need to the following:
1. Form a hazard communication plan. The plan should contain protocols that inform employees about any risk of hazardous materials at the place of work. OSHA requires that you make more copies of the plan and avail printed copies to workers containing precautionary ways of handling any hazardous materials or substances (Dan, 1979).
2. Form fire evacuation plan. provide evacuation routes that are safe and ensure employees are familiar with these routes
3. Formulate emergency Action Plan Standard. This involves the right actions and procedures to take if there is any safety risk involved. This will also detail emergency actions and evacuation instructions in the occurrence of fire.
4. Ensure that your firm has enough fire exists and fire extinguishers that comply with the department of fire and OSHA codes.
5. Clearing of walkways and floors of potential clutter. This requires that you clean slip hazards and spills as soon as possible.
6. Ensure that they have a first aid kits. This also requires that you train your employees on how to conduct first aid procedures using these kits.
7. Post of OSHA fliers and posters. Ensure you update your firm with OSHA guidelines and requirements carefully.
Total Safety Management
Total safety management reactions and maintenance of healthy and safe environment for workers. This has become an important element in a firm’s competitive definition. David Goetsch used the annotated model for TSM in an organization and outlined different components of a holistic approach to safety management (Goetsch, 1998). There is a need for creating a safety and conducive environment and showing how the safe environment created becomes a responsibility of every person in the organization in creation of strategies that ensure a sustainable environment.
Gaining executive commitment entails taking a leadership role in creating a safety environment for your organization. After acquiring a leadership role in the organization, it will be the responsibility of management to select your team and train them on safety and health procedures and requirements. This team will also assume a role in educating other workers on the Health and Safety measures (Goetsch, 1998).
Identifying the organization’s safety and health weaknesses and strengths enables an organization to determine the risks that are most immediate. That way, it determines the risks to address first and which ones to follow in that order. This is because there are risks which have a consistence occurrence than others. However, all the risks should be addressed in order to ensure a safety environment.
Goal setting ensures that organization sets their objectives and guiding principles for safety promotion. The guidelines should contain instructions on some of the basic procedures and operating manuals for machines and equipment for the workers. This is then followed by the training of employees on basic and advanced operations of these machines. More than 75% of accidents are as result of deviations from proper procedures of machine operations. Goal setting should identify employee training as one of approaches of reducing machine accidents and injuries caused (Lundgren & Andrea , 2013).
Environmental Safety
Environmental safety is an important factor that should be put into consideration when safety and health of employees is concerned. Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) is a set of laws formulated for protection of the public, employees and the environment from any harm. These laws ensure that construction activities do not affect the health of the workers and the environment as well. In the event that the employees and the environment are affected, this set of
laws proposes avenues of making good nay harm that could be as a result of the construction activities and other operations. In addition, HSE laws ensure all operations that may impose any health risks to the public and the environment are avoided at all costs. HSE proposes that organizations should consider carrying out construction activities that are environmental friendly in order to ensure safety of the environment (Moore & Viscusi, 1989).
HSE also creates basic approaches to complying with the policies and regulations that offer environmental protection such as emissions and waste management including the carbon emissions. These regulatory requirements play an important role in streamlining the health and safety procedures. With an organized system of efforts and procedures, there is systematic identification of hazards that may pose dangers to the environment. That way, HSE develops a system of complying with environmental regulations. Issues of waste management and emissions are managed and these goes a long way into helping an organization reduce its carbon print; a feat that every organization should strive to achieve.
Promoting Occupational Safety
OSHA, HSE and environment protection agencies such as EPA among other bodies, have helped in reducing injuries and accidents that face employees at work place. This has been able to promote safety of workers in many different organizations globally (Moore, pg501). Their cooperation has also ensured there is environmental safety especially when construction activities are involved. The penalties and fines that are directed to those people who do not comply with the rules and regulations sated has also helped in promoting safety, this is because the fines and penalties are so severe that no organization will risk being caught off guard by OSHA inspection officers and any other agency involved.
Basic OSHA philosophy is to promote safety, health and security of employees by protecting them from occupational hazards (Dan, 1979). Policies that promote safety have a baseline of legislative compliance at all levels. In addition, OSHA advocates from the establishment of management organizations that ensure all organizations employees are trained and educated about occupational hazards. With such an implementation of occupational hazard reduction systems, the OSHA philosophy of promoting safety of employees gets a boost.
Conclusion
Despite all the rules and regulations that ensure safety of workers in an organization, the responsibility of safety of an individual belongs to an individual. By this, workers should be able to assess their working environment and avoid situations that will cause dander to their lives. Once the environment that employees work in has been evaluated, the employers need to put occupational safety measures into consideration. Finally, ethical values and virtues should be employed in decision making in order to promote safety at all grounds.
Work cited
Bowen, J. (2000). The ethics of safety-critical system. Communications of the ACM 43.4.
Dan, P. (1979). The OSHA Compliance Manual. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Goetsch, D. L. (1998). Implementing total safety management: Safety, Health, and competitiveness in the global marketplace. New York : Prentice Hall.
Lundgren, R. E., & Andrea , M. H. (2013). Risk communication: A handbook for communicating environmental, safety, and health risks. John Wiley & Sons.
Moore , M. J., & Viscusi, K. W. (1989). Promoting safety through workers' compensation: The efficacy and net wage costs of injury insurance. The RAND Journal of Economics.