By Penny Lane

It is a very sad statistic but workers who work n buildings often drop off the edges and get injured or killed almost every day. This is the highest sort of accident that can happen on any building site so the contractors must put up fall protection or a rail guard to stop them from doing this.

Indeed, these accidents usually happen because the worker is just thinking about something else at the time. A little absent-mindedness makes them stop back to admire their work, or to see if a line is straight, without realizing that they are so close to the edge. Even tools or debris that is left on a roof will trip up the person and off they go.

Although the contractor has to insure anyone who is working on site, no amount of compensation will make up for the loss of a loved one or taking away the ability to walk in those who survive.

To try to stop this from happening so often, many contractors now put in safety measures to protect not only the workers, but those people passing by below.

Aprons that stick out from the side of the building in question catch anything that is dropped by accident. A brick or hammer dropped from some height becomes a lethal weapon when it picks up velocity so this is very important indeed.

Walkways and scaffolding too has to be fully secured to prevent rocking which also makes people lose balance too. All structures around a building have to be secured to the building just in case the weather gets windy or heavy loads make it veer away from where people are working.

Even ropes and pulleys are used these days to anchor workers to the sides or on the roofs of buildings. When they fall off, they only fall a short distance and although they may receive some minor injuries, these are nothing like the injuries they would receive if they just dropped off straight.

Another great little innovation is the self-closing gate that people put in on fences built around the top of a building to prevent accidents. Very often the workers will walk through with their hands full and they may well intend to come back and close the gate but get waylaid doing something else. By using the self-closing kind, no one has to bother and a level of safety is always maintained.

Of course, if the building site is a neat and tidy one, accidents will be kept to a minimum. What most workers do is to just dump their tools where they finish with them. But if a policy of always taking the tools back to one central point is adhered to then accidents should at least be cut down.

Even wood which has been ripped out of a building has to be stripped of nails and screws too, much to the disgust of the workers, but many accidents occur when they inadvertently step onto a six-inch nail protruding from discarded wood. Safety is the obvious rule here.

About the Author: Penny Lane recently researched

fall protection

and other safety protection items for her company. She had a

rail guard

installed to protect her employees from entering a danger zone.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=697272&ca=Business