Health and Safety Program.
Table of Content
Safety Statement.
At MOCEA, we strive to insure the safety of our employees and surrounding public, this is at the forefront of our typical day to day operations. We are committed to the occupation health and safety act of Nova Scotia. We understand that people become complacent with health and safety standards. We are looking to insure that the day to day for everyone is safe, completed as expected and not just standard check marks on a sheet of paper without actions.
The following documents have been prepared for the guidance of a typical working environment. Each project will be looked at with the understanding that some procedures may require changes. Therefore, safety is considered to be an evolving program within our company.
We expect everyone to return home at the end of the day. We expect you to return the same way you arrived in the morning/evening/night to work, maybe a bit more dirty, but in one piece. Your supervisor is on your side regarding safety concerns. You can always call your safety advisor with any concerns; you’re not alone in safety.
But remember you (our employee or visitor) are require to follow our safety requirements to help us insure we can accomplish this. Safety is a group activity.
Therefore, report, record and enforce safety on every single project you are on from now on and into the future, doesn’t matter who you work for.
Definitions
Orientation - What the project is about, where everything important is, what are restriction to the site. Finding out what you’re getting into.
Incident - The word that is used to describe a bad day. Car accident, cut finger, near miss…
PPE - Personal Protective equipment. CSA approved equipment only.
Pre Start Rundown What we call the morning Group conversation about work.
Construction equipment - Any machine that moves, has hydraulic components, makes life easier for employees and that can injure someone by accident.
Blind Spot - Where you are not visible to someone in a machine, car or on a site that is uneven. Not a good place to be.
Cold Crew - New to a site, not sure what the site is, learning what the day hold in the morning and not from the day prior. Production rates are at a lower expectation (Production rates are important)
Employee means a person who is employed to do work and includes a dependent contractor; responsible to follow the health and safety policy within this book.
Supervisor an individual who has had extensive experience working in similar scenarios you’re going to face day to day. The level of supervision is granted based on a metric of different systems. Mostly on how bad of an experience was faced and conquered. Supervisor is responsible for his crew, everything they need to be successful is part of the job; including time sheets, ordering equipment and material and reporting back to home base with paper work that is required to make the office successful.
Employer “employer” means a person who employs one or more employees or contracts for the services of one or more employees, and includes a constructor, contractor or subcontractor;
Production Rate The fictional numbers that granted us the opportunity to prove our ability to perform the work as quoted. How much work your expected to accomplish in a given rigidly set amount of time. This work is to be completed in a safe manner. You’re not allowed to cut corners because you are behind.
Heist What we call a job.
Silt fine sand, clay, or other material carried by running water and deposited as a sediment, especially in a channel or harbour.
Wire nail is the mythical thing that can hold a large amount of weight with a simple 3/16 inch hole in the concrete with a common 3 1/2 inch nail and rebar wire. Friction from the nail and wire give the common nail a good grip to hold (most of the time) wood board. Drop in anchor are recommended for more serious long term requirement.
Our Basics Requirements.
A work day starts at 7am and typically will end around 5:00 pm on a regular day (Monday to Thursday) but we encourage a 3:00 pm completion on Fridays. Some days will be longer others will be shorter but the amount of hours worked may equal the same. Some project locations will have hours that change from the typical time frames due to limitations in the construction time. Accommodations will be made to insure we can meet these random requirements. Night work may be required.
You are to show up to work ready for the day plan activities. Excuses for how great last night was are not generally accepted.
Work days should have been planned up to two weeks prior. This will help prep for the health and safety requirements the site and to plan a crew properly. When people know where there going to be keeps moral up and confident.
Supervisors are required to have a Pre site start check list completed, insuring toilets and other random necessary things are on site. Supervisors will be required to complete weekly inspection and daily pre start run downs. Paper work is found in the back of this book.
Chain of command: Owners - Management - Supervisors - Foreman - Labour/operators. Your concerns go to the ownership, we will probably ask you directly one day randomly as we make our site visits and participate in everyday day to day work. You will be asked, how’s it going, you can respond with anything you want.
To Start a Day.
Pre start run down. Supervisor responsible for the day talks about what we will accomplish today. If today is day one, that means we are a Cold Crew. Discussion of safety issues, Discussion of safety procedures and requirements, Discussion of Production rates that are expected to occur, General discussion about random issues.
Orientation for Cold Crew
Equipment Checks - Greased - Fuelled
how to end a day.
Review of today’s issues. What will make tomorrow better.
Review of production rates. Where are we on “the” schedule.
Planning tomorrow morning. What we need to have on site before the start.
Where everyone is going tomorrow.
Personal protective gear.
Minimum Requirement for safety equipment on site.
Vest - Hi visibility Class 2.
CSA Green Tag Safety boots
Hard Hat
All equipment is to be in good working condition. IF replacement is required return defective material and we will replace the hard hat and vest.
Boots are required to be purchased by the employee - Standard Practice.
Safety Glasses will be provided and are to be used when a risk of eye injury is possible, example would be and not limited to cutting any material with power tools, drilling into any material with a tool, working with concrete.
Inspection of safety equipment should be completed before any use. Do not use defective equipment.
Incentives.
We at MOCEA believe that good work needs a good reward. So, we have decided to inform everyone of our incentive idea.
1. You are allowed to have extra paid time off after a good heist.
2. OR You can have a bonus of the cash value of the time off and keep working.
3. Safe site, have free lunches.
Disincentives
If you can’t follow our rules, you don’t work for us.
Plain and simple.
If you are dangerous there is no warning, you will be terminated during your probation period.
how to report an incident
An incident happens randomly. Most conversation with witnesses after an incident say things similar to; it was a perfectly normal day then… It’s crazy when you think about how quickly a day can change. And memories only last so long before the story is loss, so we try to get the story within hours of the event happening.
First Aid is typically the 1st response, First aid is trained to all full time employees.
Incident happens (random Event), Scene is secured, 9–1–1 is notified, supervisor is notified, the situation unfolds. Once everything is returning to normal, documents for accident investigation start to be prepared and completed.
We are looking for the:
What
Who
Why
When of what just happened
Details such as:
peoples names
phone numbers
pictures of drivers license when applicable
what was hit
who did what
how did it happen
when did it happen
and what happened as factual as possible. Recording the story as soon as possible is the best practice; literally voice record yourself is 100% perfect (if you give the right details), app is already on your phone.
The information will be requested by your supervisor in person or over the phone; all depends on what happened. Your supervisor is going to review the information and apply his understanding of the story. Depending on the severity of the incident, it might stop here, if it continues Labour Enforcement will be involved and more paper work and litigations.
When dealing with an incident, don’t fight the people who are working to figure out what happened. It happened, lets get though the paperwork and move on.
Near Miss
You’re working with your coworker whom you get along with, the activity you both are working on is placing silt fence, swinging a sledgehammer downwards on a 2x2 wooden post. On the next downward hit of the hammer you miss the post and the hammer lands right beside your buddy’s foot. Nothing bad had happened - but none of you thought about this possible outcome before you commenced your day. This is an example of a near miss. The purpose of the near miss report is to help inform the rest of your team that this can literally happen. No notify your team that anyone could get him by a sledgehammer randomly in the future.
So how would one report this? Call your supervisor and explain the story. Accidence always have good stories to record. There will be a document that gets created for incident investigations; as stipulated above. This is a standard form that will allow review and help with legal issues that can arise from accidents. Recording the story as soon as possible is the best practice; literally voice record yourself is 100% perfect (if you give the right details), app is already on your phone.
Work site
Depending on where you work with us, you may have a more typical understanding of what a worksite would be or you could have no idea. But the one thing for sure is the work site is where the magic can happen, it’s the location of a particular project we as a company estimated we could complete. A work site is typically delineated by a fence or siltation barrier to demarcate the work area dangers to the surrounding public. What most take for granted, construction is far from typical work place. Natural elements will play with us as much as we anticipated to be outside working. A nice clean site can turn into a mud hole and become dangerous at times.
To help alleviate some of the potential issues that arise during construction, site are outfitted with random stations. A station is a location for a specific purpose. A muster station is where you go when something bad is happening on site, eye wash station is another example of a station on site to help. The site specific orientation will inform you of all the particular locations and purposes of the stations.
Depending on the relationship we have with the site, we may be responsible for all the stations. IF we are responsible for all of the station, we must insure they are all working. If you notice anything wrong with a particular station, advise your supervisor. Additional thought would be to pretend we are responsible for every station on every site and work to keep everyone safe.
Water management is very important during the construction period of the project. Water can build up and freeze if the time of the year is sufficient for this to happen (winter). Remove water before it’s a problem. Keep the walkways as clear as possible. Salt and sand as required. Don’t salt new concrete, if you’re going to be working on a new building with new concrete, use Urea (40–0–0 fertilizer) to melt the ice.
Site large and small will have some sort of congestion that multiple sub contractors will require to work in the same area. One of the things to note is the sequence of work. Just because you’re on site 1st doesn’t mean it’s the right sequence. Try to understand what comes before and after you, will help you judge your project. Don’t work in unsafe conditions to meet other peoples demands.
Working around Equipment.
Construction equipment found on typical project have blind spots, pinch points and items that can accidentally fall down causing injury. The following is our procedure for insuring the safety of our employees and surrounding public.
People who are unfamiliar with working around equipment should feel comfortable talking with your supervisor about this. Your supervisor will show you potential blind spots, pinch points and other issues. Each machine is different and has different potential issues.
Simply said, Don’t work around within blind spots of equipment, work near but not in the path of danger. It is typical for an excavator bucket to be inches away from a grade man who is finishing a task. Remember, Accidents can happen, humans make mistakes and just because it may be typical, doesn’t mean it’s right.
HOW TO GET AN OPERATORS ATTENTION
If you don’t see the operator of the equipment he most likely doesn’t see you. Eye contact with the operator should be engaged before walking around equipment.
Simple ways to get the attention of the operator would be to throw a rock or something small and similar into the bucket of and excavator or just in front of the machine. This will get the attention of the operator, we instruct operators to look for this action during there orientation. Now you need to explain what you plan to do and get the nod or the ok from from the operator. Communication is a two way street, just because you have someone attention doesn’t mean they understand what your trying to accomplish.
Yelling is also a method that is accepted, call out the operators name. 90% of the time the operator should be able to hear you talk to him from the ground. Equipment is loud but not to loud.
An experienced operator will be looking for you before he moves, if you are missing from his picture, you might see an excavator make a jerky motion, or a horn honk. Call out the excavators name, don’t walk in a dangerous spot to be noticed.
Reversing Equipment
There is nothing more dangerous than a dozer and skid steer backing up. The machine has a very large blind spot in the rear and sides of the machine.
But that being said, all machine that back up are dangerous.
We at Mocea strive to keep mono direction of travel. The machine comes in one way moving forward and without reversing returns travelling forward. If this is unable to be obtained due to site conditions, a designated back up area will be outlined with a sign. The purpose of this is to inform others to not stand there, that this locations has been designated for an equipment turn around location.
Personal Protective Equipment. (PPE)
Working around equipment might require some extra PPE but typically expect to have the following on:
Hi Visibility Vest - Class 2
Hard Hat
Safety Boots.
Deep Foundations.
Excavation is the name of our game, MOCEA will typically be excavating different locations to start projects for others. The work we will do sometimes has depts in the 10m plus range. Therefore, any excavation that is deeper then 4ft will require:
1. Trench Box or Sloped banks
2. Excavation plan.
3. A way to get into the excavtion that is not jumping down or up.
If you’re unable to slope the banks, shoring system is required. I don’t want anyone on site to think they are alone in figuring out what is required to make a site safe. Communication is require, talk to a supervisor before digging deep, make a plan.
Placement of excavated material is important. Material that is excavated will not be placed within 1m of the excavation top of slope. Material will be hauled off site to a specific dumpsite location is our preferred option.
When you excavate underground, you mostly likely will encounter water. IF you don’t know where your water is going to go, that’s a big problem. Water is not to be left in the excavation while people are working. Water must be pumped out as per the dewatering plan. (See working around water) make sure you do not just pump water back into the excavation. That can be dangerous.
All loose material shall be removed form the slopes to insure nothing can fall into the excavation. Rocks, boulders loose pockets of clay, all must be safely sloped away.
Underground Utilities.
Just because you have a big excavator, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to ruin everything in the ground. You are expected to excavate around existing utilities. This is done by 1st calling and confirming what is underground, Reviewing drawings, and slowly digging down.
Hydro excavators should be used to locate gas mains and water mains. Electrical duct banks are typically cased in concrete but should be located before digging.
Hand dig down slowly before using the excavator bucket. Smoke breaks for excavators operators sometimes save underground utilities and conduit. Take your time, there is no rush that is faster than doing it right. Once something is broken, the day becomes long for all. You will typically be near the end of a shift when it’s broken. The emergency crew coming to repair the work is looking for 8hours. You will be on site until the repair is completed to backfill if needed. Long days are possible to avoid.
Top of Excavation Protection
Excavation to be protected to prevent people form entering the excavation accidentally and to insure the safety of public. This can be completed with fence placed 1m away from the excavation, other barriers can be used, but all placed barriers should prevent the access into the excavation.
Deep excavation that require shoring will be done as per the engineering documents created for the particular project. This can be several different options, sheet pile coffer dams, solder piles and lagging… Excavation to be completed as per engineering drawings.
Access into the excavation should be completed with Ladders (see ladder safety) or preferred staging (see scaffolding safety) set up as per engineering drawings.
Working around water - Dewatering excavations.
Believe it or not, water will erode a slope or bank of an excavation and working in mud is dangerous and stupid. You are not allowed to work underwater. If you are going to work somewhere that has water and you don’t have a pump, you’re not working there.
Water can not just be pumped willy nilly into whatever you think is acceptable. There is a government body that is required to oversee our plans to insure we don’t hurt the fish or other wildlife during the planned work.
When you pump water, you will be moving a sludge of sediments from the surrounding excavation native material. This sludge is called silt. Silt discharged directly into a watercourse is bad. You need to prevent this silt sediment deposit from entering the watercourse. This is accomplished with a few things.
1. Straw bale flow checks dams
2. Straw bale holding ponds.
3. silt fence
4. dewatering bags. - last resort
5. Catch basin silt bags.
This equipment needs to be in place, as per plan prior to the start of excavation. Equipment is straw bales, filter fabric non woven 270R, 3ft wooden stakes.
2 Inch and 3 inch submersible pump
The 2" submersible pump is one of the typical standard super pumps used on small excavations. It is able to push water up about 20ft without issue and far enough away to make the day successful.
The 2" pump is typically electric. You need a power source, wall plug is the best, generator is ok but overnight is the requirement. If water is in the hole in the morning we can’t work until it’s gone. So a solutions to the plan is to come in extra early in the morning to insure the day is ok, but that’s the supervisors issue.
The 2" lay flat hose has a gasket that is required at the connection end. This prevents leaks, leaks washout roads or make messes in places we get in trouble for.
When you are thinking about placing a pump in an excavation pit, have a rope tide to the handle, if there is no rope, the pump shouldn’t go in. They sometimes get stuck to the bottom of the muddy excavation. When you pull on the hose, it breaks off or the power cord rips out. Rope on the handle of the pump can help you out of a lot of problems.
Try to only use enough hose, don’t have to much extra, kinks in the line prevent proper discharge of water. Sometimes can make the hose whip around, this is dangerous, can hit people in the face with velocity.
Protect the discharge hose line from equipment running it over. If equipment needs to traverse the area often, I recommend burring the line under ground in a culvert or pipe large enough for the bell of the lay flat. If digging the line underground isn’t an option, do the same and make a speed bump. The goal is to not damage the lines and relocate the water as professionally as possible.
Larger Pumps
Depending on the volume of water that needs to be displaced, you may require a really large and dumb pump. Larger pumps will require solid pipes, very heavy some times and very short lay flat hose; sometimes less then 10ft.
When the larger pumps are required, we will have a pumping plan in place. Suction pipe locations and protections will be implemented and discharge locations will be able to handle the high flow of water with plastic or other material protecting the ground.
Ladder Safety
Ladders hurt more people then most would expect. For example, a ladder can slide down a wall while you’re working on it because the bottom slipped out. This can result in broken ankles. I would prefer to use scaffolding if the site has room for it or if the ladder will be used long term.
If you’re going to use a ladder at work, you must insure the bottom is secure from kick outs. This can be done by wire nailing a piece of wood to the ground preventing the ladder from moving backwards. This can also be done with rope holding the last rung of the ladder and secured to a solid something else; column, anchor point or similar. The rope must be secured on the side under the ladder, as the rope is to prevent the ladder from sliding out.
Ladders need to follow Occupational Health and safety. Maximum height extension over the landing area (3ft) to be followed. Maximum number of ladders to be used. Maximum height to climb with ladders. All to be checked in the occupational health and safety. Access into a site requires planning, access into the site can not be last minute.
If you are going to make a ladder out of wood, you are required to support every rung of the ladder, you cannot have loose rungs. You’re also required to have multiple nails holding the rungs in place. Scaffolding is better.
Before use of a ladder, you must inspect a ladder. If you find issue with the ladder tag it out as dangerous and inform your supervisor.
As you climb ladders, you are increasing your altitude from the ground you started from. In Nova Scotia the working heights regulations states that anything above 10ft from the foot to the ground requires harness. If you’re climbing a 20ft ladder we must insure we are using some sort of fall protection. This is another reason why we like scaffolding on sites.
Working at heights - Scaffolding Safety.
All scaffolding will require shop drawings - no shop drawings no construction of scaffolding. This is to be provided by the rental agency we are using to set up the scaffolding.
Inspection of the equipment daily, if issues are found, notify the supervisor and tag out the area as dangerous.
If anyone is found purposely damaging the scaffolding system that is installed for any reason, you will be removed from site during and investigation. If it is deemed that you purposely endanger employees, termination to follow review. Zero tolerance. If the investigation shows you where unaware of scaffolding requirements, training will be provided to accommodate the learning curve.
Using Power tools to cut things - Making Dust.
Cutting material is a normal day to day things. We will be cutting concrete to HDPE pipe. All material will have different dust particles that we are going to be creating in the air. This is considered bad, and everyone around you will require protection.
One of the best ways to control this is to use water to weight down the particles before they become airborne. Most rescue saws (quick cuts) are fitted with water hose fitting.
If you don’t have a hose bib to utilize on site, we can make a system that uses tanks and has a spigot near the bottom to allow water to flow to the saw cutting. Water can also be applied by hand, beside the saw cutting, if this method is used, insure the dust is soaked and not your partner working with you.
Dust mask will be supplied during dusty work. Full face masks are best, each employee who is regularly cutting material will be given one, but it is the responsibility of the employee to insure it returns to work regularly and not damaged.
Note, that if your using a mask because there no water or way to safely dilute the dust, you are required to give masks to everyone else in the area working. Safety is a group activity. This option should also only be used for limited amount of work.
Tag Out Procedure
If you find any piece of equipment, may that be a power tool or safety equipment that is not in good working condition, you the finder are required to report this to your supervisor. You are also required to notify others of your findings and insure no-one can use the defective safety gear. Just because you found the issue doesn’t mean others will.
This is typically done by placing an “OUT OF ORDER” tag on the piece of equipment or safety gear. You will find this in the back of this safety binder. The out of order tag will have a way to fasten the tag to the defective gear.
Once the tag is placed, notify your supervisor and team mates, tell someone else who should let someone else know.
Transportation- hauling equipment
As much as we want to think about the digging portion of the business, moving things is probably more important. You dig a hole and you got nothing to put back is a problem. With this responsibility to continually move material, equipment to keep the show moving forward, we must do this safely.
Load restrictions
No trailer shall be overloaded purposely. You cannot have an excuse of I didn’t know I couldn’t do that or I was unaware of the load of the trailer. If you don’t know ask, if they don’t know ask someone else.
Restraining material
Large Responsibility of moving material is keeping material in the truck and or on the trailer. Tarps are to be utilized when the vehicle equipped with them. Chains shall be used to hold equipment and tighten with ratchet chain binders. Large equipment will typically show a diagram of how to properly chain down for hauling.
Even though the operator of the float will be trained, accidents do happen, usually when the need to get the equipment is urgent. Taking an hour to figure out the right way to move equipment is 100 hours better then not being able to complete the activity due to something bad happening.
Pick up trucks.
The company truck, a luxury that gets misused and treated as a rental; by the few. Some treat the truck with respect to cleanliness that newer vehicles typically start there.
When the pickup truck is working with a crew, it is a living representative of what that crews workmanship is. The back of the truck can become dangerous to the fellow road warriors you will encounter along your travel. It is possible to hit a bump and something resembling a ladder would hop out on the freeway. Similar issues with shovels, extension cords and other random things that show up in the back of the truck.
Moral of the story, secure the content in the back of the truck. Tarps, straps and spiderweb tie down are available all the time. Keeping shovels tucked in the corner of the box bed is a very safe place to strap them in.
Problems with drinking and driving are not problems. If it happens it’s not allowed to be our trucks involved, if it is, no more truck.
The truck is intended to be left at the yard, you would drive to the yard switch trucks and drive to site. But sometimes the site isn’t in a practical location for this to work on a feasible level of operation. So the truck goes home and straight to the work site in the morning. Personal use is allowed, but the canada revenue agency are stringent on a few rules regarding this.
In the end, you’re representing the company when you driving a company vehicle. You are expected to represent us properly, drive with care. If you’re late, your late things happen don’t rush because you’re late.
incase of Emergency
You have had an accident or something similar. What do you do?
Take a deep breath
Are you ok?
If your ok is everyone else ok?
Call 9–1–1 report your incident if required. What is required, accident where someone is hurt. If it’s just vehicles with no injury a “fender bender”, “parking lot scrap” move on to the next.
Call your supervisor. If no answer call the health and safety advisor.
Follow there instruction. Everything will be ok.
Conclusion
Safety as stated above, is an evolving practice within our company. Upon review if you have suggestions or recommendations to our policy feel free to reach out to me directly.
Thanks for helping us make a safe work place.
Sincerely;
Madison Byrnes.