
Safety pros working construction, what does your day look like?
I’ve pretty much been in general industry my whole career, but will occasionally be involved in some contractor work where I actually get to meet the construction safety pro. Seems like a totally different world to me.
Curious - is anyone here working construction safety? What does your day look like?
Comments (4)

I have a little bit of a special situation where I dabble in both General Industry and Construction. We have a main facility that manufactures the parts that are installed out in the field by our installation teams.
Disclaimer: I've only been with the company for 7 months so I haven't gotten too deep into everything.
Most of the day to day interactions with installation teams involve providing them safety materials like pretask plans, specific safety procedures, training materials, and responding to any safety concerns or incidents.
We also interact with the customers for projects by providing them with Contractor Safety Acknowledgments and addressing any questions or concerns brought to the attention by the customer.
I haven't gotten to yet, but the Safety Manager will also take trips to job sites for safety inspections. These could just be day trips or multiple days depending on the site and what needs to be addressed.

I am in same boat! Been in Manufacturing for over 50 years! So I am very comfortable around factories and manufacturing plants. However, they will not let me near a hammer, and God forbid a trench! In my opinion, there is a lot of overlap. When I worked for a big manufacturer (Machining, Forming, Plating, and Assembly) I did have to work with some contractors on additions to the building and remodeling projects. The lines between 1910 & 1926 were somewhat blurry at times. For example, is a contractor moving and setting a large Presses or Turning Centers (Millwright trade) go by 1926 or 1910?
There is a lot of overlap between the two. 1926 seems to me to defer much more to 1910, for example Lockout and PITs, than the other way around. They also have different emphasis in my opinion. 1926 seems to emphasize trenching and scaffolds, and talks only a little about machine guarding. 1910 talks a great deal about mg and lockout, but little about scaffolds, and hardy anything on trenches. Going back to my Millwrights setting a huge Turning Center, if they dug a trench for lubrication lines, water, and whatever, I would use 1926 to keep them safe, when they got to working around the point of operation we would be talking 1910.212 and/or 1910.147.
In most cases I just use 1910 as that is the one that by a wide margin I know best! Only exception would be something like trenching, which is hardly covered in 1910, I would use 1926, as I said above. What I really would do is call one of my Safety Construction Consultant Friends.

Having worked in both manufacturing and construction, when you boil it down it is fairly similar! (*Disclaimer, I work for a large GC so my experience is only reflective of that) It's a mix of reviewing subcontractor work plans, walking sites, conducting training, and incident investigations. The things that you look at and teach differ, and the sites change every day which can make controlling hazards more difficult as unforeseen things pop up. The key to success in my experience is anticipating what's coming next based on the phase of the site and how to prevent hazards from existing in the first place. The deadlines involved here certainly hit much harder than in manufacturing and safety is more readily pushed aside in those situations.
Oh, and how could I forget the added benefit of doing all of that with the weather!