6 March 2009

The last two weeks was spent on two different construction sites, an we were part of a civil construction company, observing their work, pitching in on the labouring duties and doing all kinds of odd jobs.

The main learning experience for me was observing what was going on around us. Absolute chaos!
The work the civil company are doing on both sites is fairly low risk except for the earth moving machinery. Their biggest risks are all the people working around them with no regard for safety and the value of a persons life!

When we got to the first site we waited two hours for our safety induction that was scheduled for 08h00, around the induction room where we waited, I observed many people working unsafely and not following procedures, and the Safety Officer who gave us the induction walked right passed them not even noticing them. So even before I entered the site I realised that people lives were not respected and Safety was purely practiced to comply with legislation, very sad but unfortunately this is the reality!

The most shocking realisation that I got to, is that there was a serious potential for a fatality every day that i was there, You just look around and see people every were working unsafely and can't help to think what if under slightly different circumstances a major injury can happen.

We have now moved on to the second site and I have noticed that there is no proper working safety systems. the only evidence that I could gather was that some people had a safety inducted sticker on their hard hats and that there were some sort of safety consultants on site for about 15 minutes for the whole week. So there is definitely a system but is definitely not working! We as group have not received an induction of a day old. But thank goodness the risks are a lot less but there is definitely still a potential for loss!

So all an all it was a good learning experiance and it strongly motivated me for the future!