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Construction Curiosities #47

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Construction Curiosities #47

Safety Week!

May 6, 2023
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Construction Curiosities #47

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Hey! Happy Saturday! Matt here.

Welcome to the Construction Curiosities newsletter. Especially to all the new beautiful faces!

This week was Safety Week 2023 !

So that calls for a Construction Safety edition of the Newsletter and for a Safety Dance!

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This weekly Newsletter explores my Curiosities about the Construction Industry. It's meant to make you think, smile, and become a better, more well-informed Construction Professional.

Summary

This week we will look at:

  • One Musing: How much Safer has Construction Gotten?

  • One Video: The Watermelon in the Hard Hat

  • One Quote: Safety Gets Old

  • Two Memes: Safety Imposters


One Musing

I meant to write a musing this week about how insurance companies and the litigious society we live in have caused the pendulum to swing too far on the CYA paperwork front that many times can be counter-productive to the actual mission of keeping folks safe. (I’ll keep that thought for another day).

But I spent the first half of the week out tent camping with the family and ran out of time. Soooooo I am sharing this musing from Brian Potter on his “Construction Physics" substack:

Construction Physics
How much safer has construction gotten?
When talking about (the lack of) construction productivity growth, or the fact that we used to build things much faster than we do today, commentators frequently mention the safety of the construction workers. On this view, construction speed/efficiency and worker risk are a tradeoff, and as a society (for better or for worse) we’ve opted to reduce risk…
Read more
7 months ago · 33 likes · 10 comments · Brian Potter

Make sure you read the comments too, especially this one from CatCube:

Not exactly tied to productivity, enough to bring up a website that fascinates me and that I link with the slightest excuse: Reclamation's list of fatalities for Hoover dam

https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fatal.html

This list is sorted into pages by year, then by type of fatal accident, and finally sorted by date, giving a by-name list and cause for deaths.

I had toured the dam when I was a kid, and had heard the statistics about the number of people killed (I think the 112 number on that page). However, until I was working in the construction industry, I did not realize just how abso-posi-loutely batsh*t bonkers this list is. It is one of the most astonishing documents to ponder when you have a twenty-first century view about the acceptability of construction casualties.

The one I always point at is the list for 1933: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fat1933.html

I really urge everybody who is familiar with how construction accidents to be handled on a modern jobsite to contemplate this project when deaths are considered chronologically:

Jan 1: Fred Palmer, killed by fall

Jan 10: Gus Enberg, killed by explosion

Jan 11: Howard Cornelius, killed by explosion*

Feb 1: Vernon Blair, killed by fall

Feb 7: M. Kaighn, killed by falling material

Feb 7: J. Powers, struck by truck/equipment

Mar 12: Tom Markey, killed by fall

Mar 16: William Koontz, struck by truck/equipment

For the first quarter of that year, they were killing a guy every two weeks on average on this jobsite. Using today's standards, by mid-February the US Government would fire this contractor. This is one of my favorite(?) examples of "The past really is a different country."


One Video

I’ve seen a few people do these watermelon hard hat demos and they are always eye-opening.

Make sure you wear your hard hats!


One Quote


Two Memes

Where I lacked in my own Musing this week, I make up for with an extra meme. Enjoy!

🥸 🤷‍♂️

Professional Actors on a Closed Course. Do not try the “Safety Squint” at home.


Hope everyone has a great weekend and a Safe next week!

Adios!

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