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From Construction Dive
Most forms of personal protective equipment and the ANSI standards associated with them have evolved to keep risks to construction workers to a minimum. Gloves have become increasingly cut resistant, hard-toed boots have replaced standard work boots and some workers have retired their high-visibility tee shirts for reflective vests. But the most iconic protective item, the hard hat, hasn’t significantly changed in its design in the 100 years since it debuted.
Hard hats are extremely effective at protecting workers in the event of an object hitting them from above, and the American National Standards Institute’s Z89.1-2014 guidance on industrial head protection thoroughly addresses this risk. What it doesn’t account for, though, is a falling worker.
Falls are the No. 1 cause of death in the industry, representing more than half of fatal work-related traumatic injuries. Not only that, construction workers sustain more traumatic brain injuries than employees in any other type of U.S. workplace, according to a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health study.
When an employee slips, trips or falls, his or her hard hat can come off before it's needed most, on impact. Recognizing this unnecessary risk, some general contractors have started switching to helmets, which they say are better suited for falls and other types of accidents.
Protection when all else fails
After a successful trial run of Kask helmets on a Washington, D.C., project, Jason Timmerman, environmental health and safety director at Skanska USA Commercial Development, kicked off a formal six-week pilot in 2017 across Skanska’s four business units, surveying workers at various points in the process.
He told Construction Dive that initially users were puzzled by the headgear, which looks similar to a climbing or mountaineering helmet and comes with a chin strap to keep it in place. “Everyone was a little bit cautious at first because they look so different,” he said. Unlike traditional hard hats, the helmet also includes a high-density expanded polystyrene foam liner to protect from impact to the top, sides, front and back of the worker’s head, and webbing to distribute that force.
Employees started warming up to the helmets at the pilot’s midpoint, Timmerman said, and by the final survey, “I literally had nothing but rave reviews … that said they felt safer wearing this product.” Skanska USA’s safety leadership is now letting the program grow organically, he said, and business units can receive support to deploy as many helmets as they want. They’ve been used frequently across D.C. projects and mandated on the I-5/SR-16 project in Tacoma, Washington, as well as the SFO AirTrain project at San Francisco International Airport.
Another contractor, Clark Construction Group, turned to jobsite helmets after incidents in which employees didn’t receive the protection they needed. In 2012 an employee had to be placed into an induced coma for several days after falling just 4 feet while dismantling a scaffold at a D.C. project. The employee did not return to work and the direct cost to Clark was $350,000, according to Division Safety Director Seth Randall. The company then made the shift from helmets with slide suspension to those with ratchet suspension, but "looking back, it was only a Band-Aid on a bigger issue," he told Construction Dive. In 2016, Clark set about exploring options for even more robust head protection