Construction safety plans are essential for all projects that involve heavy equipment, vehicles, and other potential hazards that could impact workers and anybody else on the site. When you include power lines in the mix, it adds another layer of safety considerations for your plan.
Although you’ll need to adapt to the unique needs of every project, we have gathered some of the basics to guide you in developing a construction safety plan for power line maintenance and rebuilds.
Steps for Making a Comprehensive Plan
The first step in making a construction safety plan is understanding what it is. The goal of the process and the resulting document is to identify potential safety hazards, communicate them to the people who could potentially be impacted, and identify methods for proactively preventing safety issues.
To do this successfully, you must understand the scope of the project to learn about:
- Types of equipment and materials that will be on the site.
- The required activities for the project.
- The methods and practices for preventing accidents.
Once developed, the safety plan must be approved by the project owner and other key stakeholders. The approved plan is then distributed to everybody who will visit the site, typically through an orientation that includes safety training to learn the protocols for avoiding hazards.
A construction safety plan is a living document that should be updated when the scope changes, a new safety issue arises, or an accident occurs and new protocols must be implemented.
What to Include in Your Construction Safety Plan
All construction projects come with their own unique hazards, so each plan must be customized based on the project’s scope and the site conditions.
Some of the components to include in your construction safety plan include:
- The project details, including the location, type, goals, and scope of work.
- The project timeline, including anticipated start date, end date, and key milestones.
- The potential hazards based on the scope of work, geographic factors, and site conditions.
- Site drawings that identify locations for potential hazards and first aid locations.
- Safety practices to avoid potential hazards, both general and site-specific.
- Guidelines for personal protective equipment.
- A schedule for planned safety checks.
- Key contact information for the project.
- Company policies, accident investigation processes, and communication plans.
Safety Issues to Consider for Power Line Maintenance and Rebuilds
In addition to all of the safety issues that could happen on any construction project, power line maintenance and rebuilds present their own unique challenges, namely electricity.
Some of the additional elements to include in your safety plan might be:
- The location of overhead and buried power lines.
- Protocols for operating around power lines, transformers, and other equipment.
- Protocols for working at height.
- Project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE), such as suitable footwear and insulated gloves, sleeves, and helmets.
- Matting requirements for creating an equipotential grounding zone.
Benefits of Creating a Construction Safety Plan
The most obvious and important benefit of a construction safety plan is that it will help reduce the risk of injury and death. Additional benefits include more streamlined and efficient reporting, fewer project delays, and a reputation for putting safety first.
Safety Matters at YAK ACCESS
YAK ACCESS is committed to providing safe work environments for our employees and anybody who visits an active site. In addition to providing access matting, crane mats, and equipotential zone (EPZ) grounding grates to provide stable work surfaces and temporary roads, we ensure our crews get ongoing general and site-specific safety training. We’ll also work with your team to identify and mitigate potential hazards when accessing power lines to provide safe access for all.
To ensure your team’s safety on your next project, download “A Complete Guide to Selecting the Right Ground Protection Mats for Your Next Project” today.
