If you manage a construction site, you’ll know that managing risk is a huge part of any project. However, this can be easier said than done when there are plenty of moving parts.

Government research shows that in 2019, 182 Australian workers were fatally injured while working, compared with 144 workers in 2018. Amongst the industries that had the most injuries and fatalities were Transport, Agriculture and – you guessed it – construction.

If you manage a construction site, or look after any aspect of workplace safety for your organisation, it’s always useful to brush up on your incident and risk management skills. To help, we’re running through the top 5 ways to reduce the risk of an incident on your site.

Educate Your People On Incident Risk

Risk increases when employees don’t understand the dangers of their environment, and often the only way to bridge that knowledge gap is by educating them yourself. Realistically, health and safety is one of the last things on the average contract workers mind, but it’s so important. One of the first steps in reducing the risk of an incident on your site is educating your people.

Often an effective learning management system or LMS can be very helpful in keeping track of the modules that people have completed and having a record in one place. Training people on health and safety best practices will help to reduce the risk of an incident on your watch.

Perform Regular Inspections

Having a handle on the level of risk is important, and regular inspections to see how your risk level is holding up is essential. Without constantly checking in and going over the hazards that are present on your site, new risks can crop up and cause issues.

Having a risk register that you can refer back to is very important and helps to remind everyone of incidents that have occured in the past and the potential weak spots where an incident may occur in the future.

Take A Risk Management Approach

On many sites, the policy is just ‘wait until something happens and then enforce safety measures’, however often that’s when incidents occur. Taking a risk management approach may seem boring or over the top, but having this attitude will help you reduce the risk of incidents on your site.

A risk management approach means that you actively seek out the risks and measure the likelihood of an incident occurring so that you can prevent them in the first place. This risk management attitude should have a trickle down effect from the top project managers and stakeholders to the day to day construction workers.

Once You Have Identified Risks, Make A Plan

Once you have identified the risks of an incident on your site, make a plan of attack to ensure that they don’t occur. This safety plan should be well documented and readily available for everyone to access.

A list of preventative measures should be implemented, and you may need to check in with your teams weekly or even daily to make sure that everyone is on top of these risks and doing everything they can to reduce the risk of an incident on your site.

Ensure That Your Tools And Protective Gear Are Up To Scratch

Aside from human error and negligence, one of the main causes of incidents on sites is when there is an error with equipment or protective gear. It is important that your business has an allocated individual to check the safety of tools and protective gear to keep your people safe.

Task Management software can help to ensure that everyone is on top of these tasks and keeps a record of when checks have been carried out.

For more information on how to reduce the risk of an incident on your site, head over to our contact page and get in touch.