Preventative maintenance is the routine servicing of machinery to prevent future breakdowns or failures and is all about taking care of your construction equipment regularly so that it doesn’t break down unexpectedly. Preventative maintenance can help extend the lifespan of the equipment and by regularly servicing your construction equipment, you can keep it running properly for many years. This saves you a lot of money in the long run, as you don’t have to constantly replace things, and can also help prevent safety hazards. Given any industry, many risks are avoidable, and hence spotting problems and risks early on allows you to eliminate them before occurring.
The most common construction safety risks include working up the high trip and fall hazards, moving hazards, noise, vibrating tools and machinery, collapses, material handling, breathing hazards, electricity etc.
There are multiple reasons to undertake preventative measures in construction
Keeping the Public Safe
Following health and safety measures on the construction site helps protect members of the public who find themselves near the site and given that construction projects frequently take place in urban areas with a lot of population, construction teams need to ensure that passers-by don’t endure injury due to a lack of safety compliance. At a minimum, it’s imperative to keep in mind that civil fines and even legal action can result from failure to protect public safety. This is due to the fact that the law considers construction companies legally responsible for the well-being of those who pass by or work near the construction site.
Here are just a few examples of injuries or deaths sustained by the general public on construction sites:
- People not authorized to access the site or breaching boundaries
- Employees working nearby caught in accidents
- Visitors falling from dangerous heights or straying into active areas
- Becoming caught without used construction equipment in severe weather or dangerous operations
Preventing Project Delays
Project delays and timeline slippage are very common for members in the construction company, even in the best of circumstances. One way to avoid them due to a safety problem or violation is to take safety measures seriously as not only can good safety practices prevent significant and long-term project delays, but also help increase employee productivity. Even being able to gain just a few minutes per day can quickly turn into profitable hours.
Train staff
It is the employer's responsibility to ensure that every worker is appropriately aware of the hazards to which they are exposed. The employer must provide staff with all the useful resources to deal with such hazards. Therefore, you need to ensure that your employees are fully trained to carry out their work without endangering their safety or that of their colleagues. If any of your employees have not received specific training or is unaware of the risks involved, they should be denied access to the site until trained properly.
Increasing Safety Compliance
Construction companies have little excuse to claim ignorance when it comes to safety compliance because learning the rules and expectations is a major aspect of obtaining a contractor’s license. Safety compliance is an expectation of not only machinery traders but also project managers and employees. Knowing the parameters for compliance is just the beginning of the process—companies must commit to enforcing as well as monitoring these rules.
Minimizing Response Times
When construction workers receive quality education on health and safety processes, they can react appropriately if there is an emergency and responsible construction companies have clear protocols designed in order to ensure quick response times if an accident does take place.