4 Ways To Improve Construction Site Safety Before Workers Arrive Onsite

Behind the scenes of every construction project there are a great deal of administrative tasks. These jobs can take hours each week, and as we know, time is money on any construction project. While many admin tasks may not contribute to the physical build of the project, they are critical for keeping your workforce healthy and safe. 

Safety managers truly have their work cut out for them when it comes to keeping track of who’s on site. This includes understanding whether each subcontractor’s training is up to date, if they are compliant, and if they have completed all of the necessary onboarding prior to their arrival. One could argue that people management, alone, is a full-time job. Fortunately, there are digital tools like that help safety teams with each of the aforementioned responsibilities.

Here are some of the ways in which a digital onboarding and safety management app like GoContractor can help streamline administration tasks and maximize the safety of your construction site.

1. Carry out a digital health check before worker’s arrival on site

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, pre-arrival health screenings for employees have become the norm for most businesses. Not only do you have a duty of care as safety manager, but each individual worker also has a personal responsibility to ensure that they aren’t coming on site when they could be unwell or have been in close contact with someone who has been confirmed as having Covid-19. 

Fortunately, using tools like GoContractor makes it possible for you to ask all workers to carry out a pre-arrival health screening questionnaire on a daily basis, which should help mitigate the risk of there being an outbreak of the virus on your construction site. Here are some common health screening questions that you can include on a questionnaire:

• Do you have a high temperature (or feel hot to the touch on your chest or back)?
• Do you have a new, continuous cough? 
• Have you experienced a loss or change in your sense of taste or smell? 
• In the last 14 days, have you been in close proximity to anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19?
• Have you been tested for Covid-19 and are waiting for your results?
• Have you been vaccinated for Covid-19?

GoContractor allows you to set up your own surveys like this, and workers can access them on their app and answer the questions before they walk on site. The results will then get emailed to you, so that you can approve or restrict access based on their answers. This streamlines the entire process and gives you a central record of the results that you can refer to at any time.

2. Allow workers to complete remote onboarding

Before you can allow workers to start their jobs on site, they will need to complete the onboarding process. A study by Pinnacol Assurance showed that more than 50% of workplace injuries involved people who had been on the job for less than a year. This cost businesses over $60 billion in 2018, alone. This statistic indicates that perhaps, proper onboarding hadn’t taken place prior to the commencement of work, increasing the risk of accident or injury in a workforce that is constantly moving from project to project, with new hazards, site setups, and people to interact with.

Onboarding is crucial for site safety and provides workers with proper and comprehensive training on site protocols, safety procedures, reporting, equipment handling and more. This can dramatically help to reduce the number of accidents and injuries on site, keeping your construction project on track and within budget. GoContractor enables safety managers to upload their own onboarding documents and processes in a variety of formats and languages, making them accessible anytime, anywhere and able to be completed remotely before your workers even arrive on site.

3. Check and monitor worker compliance with ease

As a construction safety manager, worker compliance will undoubtedly be one of your biggest priorities as you need to ensure that all workers on site are in compliance with all outside regulatory and legal requirements, to help to mitigate risk. Fortunately, you don’t have to keep track of worker compliance manually. Digital solutions like GoContractor provide a centralized system for which all compliance can be logged, additional training can be assigned, and reminders can flag workers whose compliance is about to expire.

4. Enable or restrict site access with contactless check in and out

In the light of the pandemic, safety managers are also expected to minimize touchpoints in and around their construction site. GoContractor supports this approach by enabling contactless check in and out access using simple QR codes. Your site security scans the GoContractor QR code on your worker’s mobile device, and this enables them to gain access or clock out at the end of their shift. 

If there are any issues with a worker’s compliance or the results of their pre-arrival health screening, you can restrict access to prevent them from entering the site with the touch of a button. This keeps the remainder of your workforce safe and enables you to do contact tracing if necessary.

Are you ready to find out how digital solutions can help you most effectively onboard and manage safety on your construction site? Schedule your GoContractor demo today.