Tag Archives: excavation

Protect workers engaged in excavation and trenching works

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

The Occupational Safety and health Administration and laid down some stringent laws that protects the rights of the laborers engaged in perilous job activities. Now it becomes the onus of the construction companies to follow those laws or else the license to continue business will get scrapped. Just one complaint from anybody and if the authorities find that the laws were not followed it can pose a lot of problem to the construction company. This is why it is a must to all the construction companies that they take uttermost care in ensuring that the workers working in perilous conditions are provided with enough protection so that if there happens to be an untoward incident the number of casualty is limited. Dangers are immense for construction workers that are engaged in excavation and trenching works. Though both excavation and trenching are different from each other but they both carry enough risk that may cause huge casualty and therefore enough care needs to be taken to protect the life of the workers.

Before any excavation or trenching work begins, the construction company should do a thorough study of the soil. It will help them understand the kind of risk one has to undergo and also the kind of precautionary steps the company needs to take to ensure the lives of all the workers are protected. No soil from two different places is similar to each other and therefore when the excavation process begins the soil may act differently. Trenching work is more difficult than excavation work and time and again it has been observed how important it is to understand the soil composition first and then start with the trenching work. Pre-planning of excavation or trenching work is also equally important. There are many things that one needs to take into consideration and plan everything in advance to the initiation of the project. Companies who are experienced in excavation works do not take pre-planning lightly and understand its importance towards the success of the project.

For companies that are new into excavation work, they need to be little careful with what they do. First and foremost they need to prepare a checklist of the things that they require and the things that they need to check prior to starting the work. Things such as the weather of the place, the traffic around the place, soil classification, the surface and the ground water, overhead and underground utilities etc. needs to be checked. These things should be known to the company before it places bids on the project. Once that is done it also needs to check the number of ladders it may require, the fall protection needs, safety equipment needs etc. They can gather much of this information from the local authority officials and other utility companies. This will help him to figure out an approximate cost to the project and also the cost of the safety equipment he need to garner to ensure the project is completed safely and without any harm to any of its employees.

How does rain affect a construction job site

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Challenges have many faces and sometimes it comes in the face of weather. If there is a hostile weather and you have strict deadlines, it is just not possible to complete the job on time. You have to stop work as your men will have a tough time to carry on with the site operations and it also not makes any sense to risk the lives of your workers when you know that it is not going to happen. Though excuses do not work in the construction sector but this does not mean that you are going to put the lives of the workers at risk. A stormy weather or heavy monsoon can be a real spoilsport for your work. Other seasons like summer and winters can still be managed but during monsoon it just becomes unmanageable. One good thing is that it does not rain heavily all throughout the monsoon. There are few days in a month when you will not see the sky pouring water and this is perhaps the time when you should work hard to try and complete the work and be ahead of schedule.

Rain has always been a major threat to the construction business. If it rains a lot it may also affect the quality of the building. The workers have nothing to do as they are instructed not to proceed with the work for a couple of days. This makes things quite difficult for the company. The delay caused due to rains has to be compensated on other days by working for extra hours. The engineers may have their own plans to sort things out but rain can turn things away from them and not all might end up as per the plan laid by them. Heavy rains also impact the digging work. Excavation work becomes riskier as the earth becomes soft and quite unpredictable. Moreover the ground is watery and this can turn really ugly for the guys employed for digging work. No number of safety equipments can be of much use when they work in a situation like this.

Industry experts believe that nothing more can have a much greater negative impact on the construction sector other than hostile weather and specifically monsoon which has after effects too. Some companies have even experienced the worst. It took them almost 3 months to place a slab of a building which ideally does not take more than a couple of weeks. It seemed to rain every day and when it did not workers could not find it convenient to work.

Heavy rains also block the supply of materials to the jobsite. Materials are all blocked for days and it becomes tougher for the company to operate in such a situation. Now one can’t control rains and therefore need to chart out a strategy by keeping these things into consideration. Rains can cause quite a havoc in the construction industry and the companies should be prepared to take on challenges that comes along with it.

Buy Now on eBay [ebayfeedsforwordpress feed=”” items=”2″]