MAY - 2021CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM8IN MYOPINIONSAFETY AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS: THE ROLE OF DIGITIZED SAFETY AND COMPLIANCE IN THE MODERN CONSTRUCTION ENVIRONMENTBy Dwight Abshire, Vice President of HSEQ Bilfinger North AmericaWe have long known, and recent OSHA statistics confirm it: construction is one of the most dangerous of all industries in which to work. One out of every five worker deaths in the U.S. is construction related. Non-fatal injuries cost companies millions of dollars each year in a work stoppage and lost productivity and also take an enormous human toll. Over time, the industry has responded with more robust training and complex safety management systems. Yet despite these innovations, serious dangers still remain. Here, digitization is making a difference, transforming safety cultures through data collection that produces better and more efficient work processes and improved analyses, collaboration, and decision-making. Safety at the speed of businessConstruction sites are dynamic environments that can change day to day, hour by hour. It's difficult for supervisors to know which workers are on-site and what tasks are being completed. Besides, they must communicate safety incidents or other hazards when they are relying on, in some cases, manual processes, daily logs, emails, and other old-school solutions.Digitization or app-based safety enables us to move at the speed that our business demands, communicating events within minutes throughout the organization. For instance, if a dropped tool event happens at a project site, the app-based system could be prompted to send out a notification to every employee in the company that an event occurred with the necessary details. The system could also send a reminder that if you're working at heights, please be sure you understand the "Dropped Objects" policies and secure your tools and equipment. Dwight Abshire
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