Understanding The Real Health & Safety Challenges on Construction Sites

Construction sites are forever changing and dynamic environments. With workers moving between tasks and various equipment through out the day, conditions vary widely across site. While keeping the project moving, it makes health and safety monitoring much harder.

Exposure to Noise:

Noise is one of the most common occupational hazards within the construction industry. Activities such as demolition, cutting and drilling all create high sound levels at close range. As workers are rarely in one place throughout the day, moving between tasks using various tools, assessing an individual’s noise exposure level becomes more complicated as they are in multiple areas where noise is changing compared to a single area where noise may be more consistent.

Noise changes throughout the job every day, ultimately leading to an inaccurate measurement of someone’s true working day exposure. By using a personal noise monitor (dosimeter) it allows companies to gain a clearer and more accurate insight to what their experiencing are facing each day.

Hand-Arm Vibration:

Most construction projects involve power tools. Calculating noise and vibration exposure for one individual in such an unpredictable environment can be tricky because trigger times can vary from day to day, depending on how workers rotate between tools and areas. By not having precise measurements, you can increase the risk of overexposure or injury to your employees.

With modern tools such as the SV 104A and the SV 103, you can collect accurate exposure data directly from the source without disrupting site workflow. The SV104A is designed to monitor a worker’s daily noise exposure, while the SV 103 measures hand-arm vibration levels directly from the worker’s hand. Their Bluetooth connectivity and automatic report generator help streamline the data collection process overall making it easier, efficient and effective.

By measuring exposure directly at the worker’s hands, you are gaining accurate and real-world data that can help aid companies to make PPE changes, show compliance with regulations, apply control measures and reduce the risk of employees developing long-term conditions such as HAVS (Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome)

Better Data, Better Decisions

One of the biggest issues within construction health and safety monitoring is ensuring the data is truly representative of the worker’s daily exposure. Estimating a worker’s exposure only goes so far. By having reliable and efficient data allows companies to spot risks earlier on, helps maintain compliance while also ensuring safety protocols are efficient and effective.