Hazards can occur if employees are present during a fire. Everyone needs to know how to respond to warning signs and to escape from a fire. Workers could get hurt or killed from smoke inhalation and burns as well as injuries due to rapidly leaving their work area. They may work alone in an area and get trapped during a fire because they don’t hear the fire alarm. This is why it is important to have construction site fire protection.
According to OSHA, the biggest hazards to workers on a construction site involve:
- Falling from a height
- A trench collapses
- A scaffold gives way
- Workers get hurt by electricity or arc flash/arc blast
- Workers not using personal protective equipment correctly
- Injuries from repetitive movements
Fires Happen All the Time
Have you ever heard of a construction site fire setting back a project for months? Or, more importantly, did you wonder how the construction workers responded to the emergency?
We recently saw footage of a massive fire on the rooftop of the SkyCity Convention Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. At the time, the site was the largest construction project in the country.
To fight the raging fire, a massive rescue effort required 23 fire trucks. While emergency responders battled the flames, they had to evacuate hundreds of workers from the site. Bystanders took pictures and videos of people on the roof awaiting rescue.
Fire Prevention and Monitoring Are Essential
When you review a scenario like the SkyCity Convention Centre blaze, you imagine numerous things that could go wrong on your construction job. For example, if the security cameras aren’t secured in every area, then they can get hacked. Then, when a fire occurs, there is no early warning, and it’s harder for the fire authorities to mitigate the damage.
Wherever there is building occurring, there can be the presence of electrical wiring, propane gas, wood, and Kraft paper, for example, that can quickly ignite and cause extensive property losses. If there are workers on a site during a fire, serious injuries and deaths can also occur. Long after the fire is extinguished, there is the potential for irreparable damage possible to your company’s reputation as well as lengthy investigations by OSHA and other agencies. As a construction company owner or contractor, don’t leave anything to chance.
Keeping Buildings Safe
When you invest in a proper alarm system for your construction site, you can prevent these types of damage within partially or fully built structures:
- Damage to building materials, equipment, and tools
- Gas leakage
- Heat damage
- Soot damage
- Fire damage
- Smoke damage
- Water damage
- Mold damage
Essential Safety Systems in a Construction Site
Multiple systems are used in construction to help workers and inspectors remain safe on the job site, but many accidents occur because workers are ignorant of safety hazards. The ways workers can stay safe include these practices:
- Easy-to-read warning signs (i.e. high voltage, holes, asbestos in use)
- Cordoning off restricted areas
- Safety procedures
- Video surveillance
- Alarm systems (for fire protection)
- Communication systems (such as cell phones and wireless radios)
- Personal equipment (i.e. hard hats, safety vests, harnesses)
Our WES3 units can help your construction project comply with NFPA241 guidelines and OSHA safety and health regulations for building sites.
How Are You Protecting Your Construction Site?
Without the right preventive measures in place, many weeks or months of construction tasks could be destroyed in a few minutes by a severe fire. Because you don’t want your construction business to end up on the news and you want to keep everyone safe, consider protecting your construction site with the WES3 system.
How Our Alarm System Works
The WES3 system is a new technology that includes individual units strategically located throughout the construction site or building. These alarms were designed in conjunction with the leading construction experts and radio and electronics engineers. Together, the wireless units provide an enhanced evacuation and medical alert system. When implemented properly, these units are easy to test and improve construction site safety.
There are multiple benefits to putting these high-tech units in every area for safety monitoring:
- Detecting smoke and heat
- Monitoring the site when no one is present through cloud-based monitoring
- Running emergency drills
- Triggering emergency responses from fire, EMS, and police
- Pinpointing the exact location of a worker who requires medical assistance
- Testing the efficacy of individual alarms without needing to conduct a full evacuation
- When the incident is in contained in one area, the other alarms can be set to sound quietly, which would prevent a full evacuation
- Detecting if units are added or removed from the networked system (for complete monitoring)
Keep Workers Safe From Heat-Related Illness
When you are committed to monitoring for smoke and heat at the construction site using a system like WES3, you can protect your workers from more than fire hazards. If workers are exposed to high levels of heat during other building processes, they can also develop a heat-related illness. They need enough rest, water, and shade to work in the sun. Your workers should also avoid outdoor areas where the temperature is higher due to heat applications. We can suggest how to integrate the use of WES3 units into your training and emergency protocols.
Get Video Monitoring to Support Your Alarms
WES3 is a cutting-edge design that helps construction managers to maintain an evacuation and emergency alarm system for all workers. While it was developed by the wireless alarm experts at Ramtech Electronics, it is also used to help your organization comply with fire safety standards and to locate employees who get injuries such as falling, electrical shock, and heat exhaustion. You have other options to enhance fire monitoring, including thermal detection cameras that provide full video surveillance. These cameras also deter tampering and theft.
Conclusion
We know you can invest in the safety of everyone working in your company as well as site inspectors, vendors, and subcontractors. Everyone who enters the job site should be aware of the alarm system and how to get out safely if there is a fire or another emergency.
