Real-time Proactive Safety in Construction

By Larry Green, CSP, DuPont and Gary Tominack, Day & Zimmerman

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For each of the past 10 years, nearly 1,200 U.S. construction workers have died as the result of injuries received on the job. Of these fatalities, 25% involved heavy equipment—most categorized as struck-by incidents. Remote sensing and visualization technology promises to improve worker situational awareness on congested and busy work sites.

Most large power plant construction projects will consume two or three million man-hours over several years without a contractor experiencing a worker fatality. Contractors for those projects have embraced modern work site safety practices, such as behavioral safety management, onsite traffic flow management, continuous worker training, and policy changes. Despite these apparent safety advancements, the safety record of the entire construction industry lags other industry sectors: about one-quarter of all construction deaths are related to construction equipment and contact collisions (see sidebar).

No. 1 Cause of Construction Injuries: Collisions

Center for Disease Control (CDC) construction accident data for 2009 shows that there were 834 “fatal on-the-job injuries to construction workers,” representing 19% of all work-related deaths. That’s down from 975 in 2008. CDC data also shows that of 465 vehicle-related construction fatalities (1992 through 1998 data), 318 of the victims were workers on foot, and the equipment commonly involved in the collisions was trucks (60%) and large construction equipment (30%). Of the 465 fatalities, 110 involved equipment operators; the remaining 37 involved supervisors or other workers. Fifty-one percent of the fatalities occurred when a vehicle was operated in reverse.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration construction worker fatality database for the period 1990 through 2007 reveals similar data. For collisions involving forklifts, skid steer loaders, scrapers, and backhoe loaders, 36% to 88% of the fatalities involved workers on foot.

Although there is no data available that identifies the specific cause of those worker–construction equipment collisions, anecdotal information indicates that collisions are usually caused by either a lack of worker experience, appreciation of the risk factors, or loss of situational awareness caused by construction site distractions.

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