Fighting Fatigue when working

Fighting Fatigue when working

Everyone is tired at one time or another at work, in most jobs being tired at work hurts your performance in the daily duties that you are required to complete. In construction that same scenario can be dangerous to you and the people that you work with on the jobsite.

Fatigue is the condition of being physically or mentally tired and or exhausted. Extreme fatigue can lead to uncontrolled and involuntary shutdown of the brain; this can be very serious for you and the people around you.

Construction requires you to be alert to what is happening around you at all times, when you are tired you miss key things that happen around you. These key things can be things such as vehicles and equipment moving around the site, open holes, workers on scaffolding above you and missing signage that is posted to keep you and your fellow workers safe.

Construction site safety only works if you are aware of it. Being tired or fatigued means that there is a higher than normal chance that you won’t notice or follow safety signage, safety instructions or safety procedures.
If you find that you are tire or fatigued you should report this to your supervisor who should allow you to go home. It shouldn’t affect your job unless it becomes a chronic issue of you being sent home for being fatigued or tired.

Workers on construction sites should refrain from activities that will affect them the next day at work, showing up and not being fully alert can be the most dangerous thing that anyone can do and no amount of safety training or equipment can help you if you wouldn’t help yourself.

Remember to work safely and stay alert.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

Safety tip-Wear that hard hat

Safety tip-Wear that hard hat

In today’s residential construction industry safety is more important than it has ever been before. The simple practises of working safe are the ones that keep people the safest and allow them to do their jobs without the fear of being hurt. One of the simplest ways to make sure that workers are proceeding in a safe manner is to ensure that they wear a hard hat.

In residential construction hard hats have not been the biggest safety issue over the last couple of decades, hard hats have always been more prevalent in commercial construction where the project is bigger, government supervision is stricture and there are more workers on the actual site.

Residential construction with its smaller work sites, less workers and less overall government supervision have never in the past had it enforced. Today’s residential construction sites are different, today because of new labour laws, ministry enforcement and insurance employers are more apt to make their employee’s wear hard hats.

One of the worst injuries a person can suffer is a head injury; a simple but strong blow to the head can have life altering consciences. A hard hat can reduce the chance of that happening, but it can only do it if you are wearing a hard hat.

In construction sites there are always workers working at heights and other workers walking or working in the area below them. Falling tools or material does a lot more damage to a person’s head if there isn’t a hard hat involved.

Weather conditions can have an effect on falling tools and materials, sudden strong gusts of wind can blow materials or tools off elevated work platforms onto workers below. In construction you can never control the uncontrollable; you can never control the weather.

Protect your head and the head of your fellow workers, wear that hard hat.

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village Builders Inc.