There is a good reason why it seems that I am now spending a lot of time with my blog focusing on safety on construction sites.

When you look at all the various trades that are or can be used on construction sites – from metal workers to carpenters, to plumbers to electricians to flooring installers, masons, and the like – we are talking about the largest group of workers in the U.S., with an estimated 2 million additional jobs being filled between 2010 and 2020, according to a recent study.

That is a growth rate that is twice what is projected for the overall U.S. economy over that same 10-year span. That is a lot of workers who will be in what is considered the most dangerous vertical in the economy.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Stuart Cole via a Creative Commons license] While senior executives may be the furthest from the floor of a worksite, their engagement is safety will make or break the entire safety protocol at a company. There are some accountabilities that senior managements should embrace if safety is truly to be top priority at a company.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Stuart Cole via a Creative Commons license]

So yeah, with such a risky industry growing at a huge rate, you bet I’m going to post summaries of articles that have had a heavy focus on the construction trades. After all, as spring is coming, this is usually the time in most of the U.S. and Canada where construction tends to ramp up heading into the summer and fall months. There is expected to be a lot of hiring, albeit much of it temporary work, in the coming weeks and months for the large number of construction and renovation projects that are planned.

And as was written before, it really doesn’t matter whether your workers are salaried or temporary, they all have bodies and lives that are at risk every single day they work on your construction site, and it behooves you to take the necessary steps to protect all workers in an effort to mitigate the numbers of fatal and serious-injury incidents that occur in the construction industry.

The Body of Work

Risks in construction aren’t just for those serious injuries or deaths. There is a very high risk of what are called all musculoskeletal injuries and disorders, just simply because of long hours of physical labor. These kinds of injuries can occur with workers who stretch, bend, lift, use repetitive motions, have awkward posture, or use tools or machinery that cause  large amounts of vibration.

The latest construction-related safety article attempts to address some of these various issues specific to certain trades and tries to provide a blueprint for mitigating or preventing some of these musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) which cause a rapid drop in productivity and an increase in lost time on the job. Not to mention, those who are “hurt” (a difference from “injured”) while on the job may put themselves at higher risk for more serious injuries when they try to compensate and work around their injury with different posture or a different technique in doing the job which may not be the safest way.

MSDs are in high prevalence on construction sites, and they can lead to a myriad of problems. An article in the January 2016 issue of Professional Safety magazine, co-authored by Sang Choi, Lu Yuan and James Borchardt, attempts to address all the different roles on construction sites and how supervisors and safety officers can address each of the specific trades and develop procedures and protocols that can help mitigate MSDs and perhaps slow down the rate of serious injury that occurs on a construction site.

The Research

To introduce this article, the co-authors disclosed how they went about their research, which came from a detailed keyword search of various studies and surveys, as well as interpretations of those studies and surveys, that have been conducted in the last couple of decades. The group of researchers also looked at existing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for MSDs across all construction trades.

Taking all of this information, the authors sought out and found three general categories of risk for MSDs faced on a construction worksite, and the article goes on to work out some ideas of how to solve these questions:

  1. Documenting and having awareness of the issue;
  2. Direct research of MSDs in construction; and
  3. The evaluation of ergonomic best practices on construction sites.

We’ll take the next few posts to drill deeper into this article and summarize the research and the steps that may and should be taken to improve overall health and productivity of these hard-working laborers who drive the American economy.