May 5, 2017

Crane rescue demo part of Safety Week

Photo by Jay Weisberger/Skanska USA [enlarge]

Doug Boehm shows construction workers how to get an injured worker down from a 200-foot-tall tower crane.

Passers-by in the University District may have been doing double-takes on Wednesday as what appeared to be a couple of bodies descended from the top of a tower crane on the site of the new Burke Museum.

What was going on?

Guardian Fall Protection instructor Doug Boehm was on the University of Washington campus to show construction workers how to lower an injured worker from the top of a tower crane.

In this case, Boehm “rescued” a dummy dressed in a yellow suit. He used a rope and harness system to lower himself and the dummy more than 200 feet to the ground.

The exercise was part of Safety Week 2017, which ends today at scores of construction sites across the U.S. and Canada.

Wednesday's tower crane demonstration was backed by the museum, the UW and Skanska USA, which is building the museum under a GC/CM contract.

Safety Week is an alliance of more than 60 associations and companies trying to create safer workplaces. Skanska is part of the alliance.

Mindy Uber, director of environmental health and safety at Skanska, said there were safety demonstrations this week at about a dozen Skanska jobsites between Everett and Renton. She said most sites had one event per day and others had two.

Uber said participation from vendors and subcontractors has been strong this year: Hilti demonstrated a new tool that eliminates dust when drilling into concrete, reducing the amount of silica exposure for workers. Genie showed how to properly use a new aerial work platform and Brundage-Bone made a presentation about the hazards of concrete pumping.

Uber said work crews are more aware of safety and more eager to participate than they were just a decade ago. She said the entire safety culture is shifting and jobsites are getting safer, partly because safety has become integrated into jobs and partly due to new technology like the Hilti tool that vacuums up concrete dust.

This year Safety Week is focusing on hand injuries, which are second only to back strain as a cause for missed work days, according to a news release from Safety Week member Gilbane Building Co.

Contractors participating in Safety Week were encouraged to cover these areas: hand injuries on Monday, analyzing hazards on Tuesday, glove types on Wednesday, teamwork and incident response on Thursday, and first aid Friday.

Safety Week has been around since 2014.

Skanska has been conducting its own safety week program for 13 years, before it become an industry-wide event. “If anything, we've gained more momentum because we have gained more partners,” Uber said.

The new Burke Museum is opening in 2019.