Now ye're talking - to a construction site manager

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Thanks, so what can they do when alerted - drop everything and run back and move the vehicles?

Pretty much that’s all that can be done

Treppen wrote: »

Favourite pranks on-site?
.... when that type of thing used to be allowed and nobody gave a fiddlers.

The wind ups were always my favourite. Years ago one of the plasterers was building his own house and one of our chippys roofed it for him and he was told by our boss to tell the plasterer he accidentally went 6” high with the ridge but nobody would notice. Fast forward three weeks and said plasterer got a phonecall from ‘the planning officer’ explaining why his roof (now slated) would have to be taken down and redone to the correct height! He was white until he saw us all doubled up! That kind of thing, still makes me laugh!

Both, the subbies are for all the stuff that are priced/packaged out. Like the framing/drywall package etc. I use the agencies then for crane drivers/banksmen/short term GOs etc. The subbies are easiest to deal with as we'd have more sway with them than agencies.

I haven't seen many thank god. I was on a big housing scheme where the bucket of a digger fell on the man in the trench and killed him, we were at the other end of the site, didn't see anything and the site was closed for investigation. The pin wasn't put in after the bucket was switched. Same site an apprentice cut two of his fingers off (wedding and baby finger on left hand) with a circular saw when he was cutting a small piece of 2x2 and reached in to catch it instead of leaving it drop to scaffold boards. He had them put back on but never had the same use/mobility in them, left the trade because of it.

Reasons are all the ones you state. We get nicks and cuts on a daily basis and get a reportable accident once/twice a year (where the injured party misses 3 or more days of work due to on site accident) these are usually small and not bad injuries.

We are pretty safe these days, specially on bigger sites as we usually have a full time H&S advisor but it is still construction so there will always be an element of danger we can't eliminate. Its not like long ago when it was like the wild west at times! I remember coming out of block release and we were being made wear hi-vis and helmets, everyone was saying this wont last long! little did we know.

I only ever considered the aftermath of an accident to be physical until recently. The mental struggles they can bring can be more damaging than the physical.