Take time for safety

Concrete Construction, Dec, 2002 by Bruce Slattery

A concrete crew was given the task of building a retention structure to collect runoff water from a shopping mall parking lot. They excavated the construction site in preparation for forming and pouring the wall footers. The superintendent had planned to back concrete trucks down a ramp and pour the footer right out of the trucks.

The first section of footer was formed, and the rebar was in place. When the mixer truck arrived, the driver backed it down the ramp, but it got stuck in the soft dirt. They pulled the truck out and switched to Plan B--using a crane and a concrete bucket that were onsite to pour the footer. Along one side of the construction area were overhead power lines that had to be avoided, and there was also a single line that ran parallel to the backside of the excavation.

Between placing buckets full of concrete, the crane was also used to fly bundles of rebar down to the ironworkers who continued to work on the next section of footer. The crane boom had a jib extension, and the jib line was used to fly the rebar. The heavier concrete bucket, however, was hooked to the crane's main boom load line. The workers would switch the crane back and forth, depending on whichever was needed in the hole--rebar or concrete.

As workers continued to move down the footer, pouring concrete, the crane boom moved closer and closer to the single power line. Finally, after setting down a bundle of rebar, the crane operator did not raise the jib line all the way back to the top. The next load of concrete brought the boom into a position where the dangling jib line struck the single power line.

At the same moment, the superintendent reached out and grabbed the bucket to guide it over to the men placing the footer. A charge of 7200 volts went through the crane and through the superintendent to the ground, killing him instantly.

Everyone on the crew wished they could turn the clock back even a few seconds, wanting the outcome to be different. Mostly they wished that someone had been aware enough to keep the crane away from the power line. It would have been easy to do. They had plenty of help, and a fatality would have been avoided.

Plans change every day on the job because circumstances change, and we have to adapt. The important thing is to plan safety into everything we do. "Take time for safety" and take time to include safety in the plan, even when the plan changes.

--Bruce Slattery is vice president for safety, Baker Concrete Construction, and is a member of the American Society of Concrete Contractors' Safety Committee.