Raise your hand if this sounds familiar. You are at the worksite of a major construction project. There are heavy machines moving all around. There are piles of broken up rock and dirt at random and unpredictable locations that have been excavated from a deep hole or two in the ground. There are various piles of concrete, wood and other building materials lying around waiting to be used. All of these present serious hazards if not carefully monitored. And yet there is at least one work crew horsing around and not paying attention at any given time.
There haven’t been any major injuries lately, but there have been plenty of close calls. You know what I am talking about, the time that a hammer falls off a 3rd story girder and just misses someone’s head. Everyone thanks their preferred deity and moves on. No recordable incident means no record is made of the event. No one wants to get in trouble or get any of their crew in trouble so no big deal is made of it. Nothing actually happened, right? It is just human nature to simply move on and get back to work. But it is not ideal from a safety perspective. Perhaps we can learn from these close calls and prevent a more significant incident from occurring in the future.