Construction Safety Week - Keeping Sites Safe
Here at Trinity Subsurface, we’re no stranger to safety – and this week is Construction Safety Week. Our team helps keep people safe by investigating and locating utilities and other subsurface structures that may get in the way of planned construction.
In a lot of cases, people plan without underground utilities in mind. When putting up a fence for example, you’ve got specific locations in mind for each fence post to drill into the ground. However, without locating prior to digging, there’s a greater than zero chance that one of those posts will damage an existing utility. Likewise, cutting or coring into a structure can be dangerous as well. Some locations planned to be cut into may look fine from the surface, but have reinforcement that can lead to structural damages. While you may get lucky and not damage any underground utilities or structures during work without locating, there’s always a chance that can be avoided with taking initiative.
Most of the time we don’t find out about the potentially dangerous incidents – because they don’t happen. As a result of locating and preparing ahead, our team prepares other teams for the unexpected by gathering utility information, ultimately preventing a number of dangerous situations. What about the really close calls? Here are a couple of examples of last minute situations that could’ve been worse if investigating and planning ahead was completely ignored.
We’ll start with one where knowing the difference in a line made for a drastic change in how work was going to take place. Our team was on site where the client wanted to dig in an area with known utilities. This area was known to have a small existing water line, but the client wasn’t stressed about it. They shut off the water with the intention of replacing the line afterwards, not thinking much of it initially. Someone on site said they should investigate the area to make sure they weren’t going to hit anything else in the process. Our team investigated the site and found that the shutoff water line they were going to drill through was actually an active gas line. If it weren’t for another person on site to suggest getting another review of the site, the damaged line could’ve caused harm to the crew.
Here’s a situation where work was already taking place before we were called. A client had called us out after a contractor had completed 95% of a concrete saw cutting job. With dozens of exposed and unmarked conduits, the contractor working on the cutting wasn’t concerned about hitting them. They had shut off the power to the area the work was taking place in. However, the last 5% of the job still had live electricity running through the conduits – in the portion we performed the scan. Sawcutting through the live conduit would’ve been catastrophic.
This year’s Construction Safety Week theme is “All In Together”. With both of the close calls, even one person promoting safer practices on the site made all the difference. Making a plan to stay safe, owning your part in providing a safe working environment, and committing to keeping safety at the forefront of your projects will protect your crew from dangers at all possible angles. Our team at Trinity is committed to keeping both our team and yours safe from damages. To find out more about Construction Safety Week and how you can do your part and hear stories from companies on their safety plans, visit their website here. To find out more about all of the utility investigation services our team at Trinity has to offer, visit our website. Stay safe out there!
