Safely Building the Future
October 2009
The most popular radio station in the New
York City is 1010 WINS. There, the news is repeated every 10 minutes and, in
the background, you can hear the clatter of a teletype. If you asked anyone
under the age of 40, few would be able to identify the sound. Digital
cameras have an audible click when the picture is taken, but there are no
shutters in most cameras. The click and the clatter is for our benefit, our
comfort.
By TJ Lyons
Turner
Casualty and Surety
A weakness in risk management is a penchant for sticking to the standards
and fear of change. When the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) set
the minimum for safety through regulation, in some cases almost a decade
ago, the bar was set, and it was set low. Through negotiated rulemaking and
minimum fines for noncompliance, there has never been much incentive to do
better. A Regional OSHA director once noted, "To comply with our standards
is to get a C- on a test."
Sons and daughters die while following these
minimum standards, and we should feel just a bit guilty for that. This
writer's sister Linda died from long-term exposure to toluene, and she had
no idea of the risk until a few weeks before she died.
In managing risk,
one must always start by eliminating the hazard, like lead in paint, or the
contributors, like poor footing for a crane. In one of the best books ever
published The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,
author Leonard Mlodinow writes, "The chances of an event depend on the
number of ways in which it can occur," and you will see that thread in the
later examples. Remember, an event is not just a catastrophe, but ranges
from losing a finger to a fatality.
The following highlights three
specific scenarios where change or alternatives must at least be explored.
In a world where we are required [emphasis italics] to wear seatbelts, and
ironworkers are allowed to work 30 feet up, with no protection, there is
room for improvement.
Click for Figure 1: Unprotected Decking Operation
Center Piling of Scrap
The suspicion is, as modernization came about, the common laborer found
less dust to sweep, clinkers to move, and ash cans to haul to the curb. With
the boom in construction, and new building methods and equipment generating
scrap by the yard, laborers had to find something to do, so they stepped in
to pick up after others.
In many states, the trades like electrician,
plumbers and carpenters do their work and toss their scrap to the floor or
center of the room. This is called center-piling. Contracts are actually
written to allow this crude behavior. Rooms become temporary dumpsters until
the laborers can remove the scrap left behind. Regretfully, they need to
pick this material by hand since it is a hodgepodge of debris from all the
trades. As a result, good men spend their days stooped to pick up someone
else's crap (let me be honest here) while getting stuff in their eyes,
cutting their hands, and wearing out discs in their backs.
The material is
then loaded into "totes" that have little-bitty wheels and are hard to push
around. These rustic devices are used because they've always been used for
this purpose. Since the floors are littered with debris, this is a real
chore for a laborer, and many good sons and daughters are hurt simply doing
their work.
Click for Figure 2: Tote Cart
This practice must be examined and put behind the construction world for
two reasons. First, is it is extremely unsafe, and such handling is a major
contributor to falls at the same level, i.e., people trip on things on the
floor. Ironically, workers would not practice this at home but are
encouraged to at work.
The second reason is the gross inefficiency involved. The author once
tracked how many moves it took to get a steel stud end to the dumpster and
did some exploring. Here is the life of a stud end.
Click for Figure 3:
Stud End
The stud end is pushed from the work
bench to the floor. Later it was tossed to the center of
the room with the balance of the debris. That debris was then
picked up by hand and loaded into a tub. That tub was wheeled to
the lift, while the laborer waited for the lift that services 33 floors. He
then took the cart to the ground level. Since the dumpster was also at the
ground level, the laborer was forced to toss each bit of
debris from the tub into the dumpster. Click for Figure 4: Manual Handling
of Debris. That one stud was physically touched four times before it
was discarded. The dumpster was then followed to the sorting yard [emphasis
italics] where it was dumped on a concrete pad, and good workers, stood in
the open sunny and saturated atmosphere of Philadelphia and yes, stooped and
threw each type of material from PVC pipe and steel studs
into the appropriate dumpster. Then it went to China.
Based on this crazy but accepted method of material
handling, one very smart project manager elected to eliminate this archaic
process. He contracted with a firm to supply simply cardboard totes on
pallets and required they be placed under where every piece of scrap is
generated. Workers come in at night swap out the bins, have full access to
the lift, and empty boxes are in place the next morning.
This "Nothing
Hits the Ground" campaign makes real sense and is now being copied on other
projects. The irony was a call to the general contractor from the Laborers
Union that work would be stopped until this campaign was halted. When the
manager explained just as many laborers would be needed to move the carts
around, everyone was happy.
Fall Prevention
It wasn't until Pliney
the Elder (ancient Greece) noticed that supervisors (not those enslaved) who
oversaw cutting of alabaster for roman columns were dropping like flies that
the first attempt at a respirator was used. Not only was it uncomfortable to
wear, but one must remember it was made from the bladder of a goat or some
such organ.
When stairs were invented it became obvious that we could make
buildings taller and, as a result, builders found they also fell farther
than from the top of the old sod house. Imagine this conversation in the
mid-1800s as everyone readied for the Industrial Revolution:
"Anthony, I
got to tell you, last week my son took a header and … well I really miss
him. So I got to thinking, your son took over for him and gosh it would be a
shame if he fell too. We have so few sons left. Let's say we take a rope,
and just tie him to the building!"
Now consider,
perhaps a century later, according to the OSHA standard for Fall Protection,
you are still allowed to work up to 30' above the ground with absolutely no
fall protection. Should you choose to "tie-off," you will still fall in most
cases from 10-14 feet before being stopped by the floor below or a
magnificent jolt. This is dishonestly called "the 6-foot fall rule."
Steel
erection is steeped in tradition, and ironworkers are proud to work high
above others. Those who are successful are unrestricted by anything but
tradition. It is unconscionable that contractors expect and allow their
workers to perhaps fall 30 feet while doing their work in a country where we
install protective tunnels under highways for salamander to travel.
What
is needed is clear—eliminate working unprotected at any height, for if the
only way not to die is to tie someone to a rope, that's no answer. Planners,
engineers, and erectors must find ways to eliminate the risk to good workers
who are unprotected at height. Firms are now erecting buildings several
stories high using mobile elevated work platforms like scissor and boom
lifts. The challenge is for equipment designers to see the value they would
bring to the construction world if they can work out a solution.
Cribbing
for Cranes
Mobile cranes are the most dangerous device on a
construction site, requiring extensive planning and care, best tempered with
a touch of fear. This topic was covered
in an earlier column
but remains a huge risk and common observation.
A consistent weakness on
a construction project is how these cranes are placed
and what they are
placed on. This author estimates that if 100 crane
operations are evaluated, 80 percent would be incorrectly sited. Inherent in
crane operations is the taxicab syndrome. When you climb into taxi, you
expect a sober driver, who is licensed, knows how to drive, and knows where
to go. We never feel the need to ask, for they typically are chatting on a
cell phone. Without asking, you trust your life to someone you don't know.
The same challenge is presented with crane operations. Though many of these
guys are expert, in many cases, they have become inured with doing the same
things, thousands of time successfully, but they have forgotten about chance
and probability.
Click for Figure 5: Unsupported Outrigger
With many areas of risk
associated with crane operations, the easiest to address is cribbing that is
placed under mobile crane outriggers. This is often called dunnage or pads
and typically is constructed of heavy timbers, fencepost, pizza boxes, and
in one case I witnessed, Styrofoam. You should understand the risk by now.
Following is typical of poor crane planning and a lack of care by the
operator.
Click for Figure 6: Shoddy Cribbing
One answer is to simply,
eliminate the opportunity of chance by requiring solid plates or devices and
remove the potential of failure when little block are used to hold up big
things. Make it contractual, give some examples of vendor supplied or
engineered outrigger pads, make sure they are sized right, and you will
eliminate considerable risk, four contributors, and it takes little work.
Click for Figure 7: Solid Ground
Conclusion
The elimination of risk by removing contributors must remain the focus of
any manager. When high-risk operations are underway, even the smallest
missed opportunity for improvement cannot be overlooked. Hence, the need for
looking past the regulations, seeing them as noncompliance, and building a
system of safeguards based on what is right and works, not what's regulated.
The challenge is to look back the history of your firm, dig out the
photographs of guys in ties pouring concrete, look, and ask yourself these
three questions: Have your methods changed? If something looks wrong, are
you still doing it? Would you want your son or daughter to doing what you
see? Then go to work from there.
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