Accreditation

Ask the Expert: Five tips to create a safer environment during construction

Accreditation Connection, June 13, 2005

Because construction projects at your hospital can add a confusing and dangerous element to your work place, how can you maintain a safe environment for your employees and patients?

To ensure that everyone in your hospital is safe during construction, Kenneth Weinberg, PhD, owner of safety consulting firm Safdoc Systems, LLC, in Stoughton, MA, offers the following five tips: 

1. Warn affected staff members about any planned utility shutdowns

Imagine the problems that will be caused if nobody lets the nurses on a unit know about a scheduled water pipe shutdown for the area.

It's not hard to get the word out. "Planning for shutdowns? Anybody worth a flip can do that," says Weinberg, who spoke during the American Society for Healthcare Engineering's International Conference on Health Facility Planning, Design, and Construction in Phoenix earlier this year.

The key is once you know a shutdown is necessary, start planning for it well ahead of time. That doesn't mean calling a meeting among clinicians two days before the water goes off, he says.

2. Let the nurses know whom to call

The safety officer should work with contractors to post emergency contact information in the hallways. These signs alert nurses and other caregivers about what to do if something in a project area goes awry.

For example, this preplanning helps cover situations such as a third-shift nurse hearing water running out of a pipe at 2 a.m., Weinberg says. Hospitals should expect any contracting firm they work with to take that kind of urgent phone call.

"If you don't want to be woken up at night, go build a Wal-Mart," he tells contractors. "Healthcare is a different kind of business; they need to understand that people's lives are at stake."

3. Widely distribute meeting summaries

If, for example, your hospital decides to increase positive airflow rates into a construction area, the safety officer should pass that information on to nurses, project supervisors, contractors, and even subcontractors.

"Summarize the points and the decisions needed, and communicate them," Weinberg says.

This step should occur after any type of progress meeting, too. E-mail is an easy way to quickly reach all the people who need to know what discussions took place.

4. Make preconstruction meetings mandatory

These meetings help establish the general conditions under which subcontractors work. Areas to cover during the meeting include:

  • security requirements, such as identification badges and employee access to project areas
  • procedures for deliveries and trash removal from the construction site
  • no smoking policies
  • limits on personal items, such as radios
  • acceptable bathrooms for contractors to use and places where they can eat

Ignoring these items can taint a project. A great relationship between a hospital and a construction firm will sour the moment that nurses complain about a trash removal problem, Weinberg says.

5. Hold contractor safety orientations

This is not new advice, but it still bears repeating, even for workers who will just be in the building for two hours, Weinberg says. Successful orientation requires time and good people skills from the hospital representative and the project superintendent.

Contractors who resist this type of education risk saddling themselves with a poor image in a competitive environment. "Hospitals are currently more sophisticated with whom they hire," Weinberg says.

Staff members will feel more comfortable knowing contractors received this important information. Consider issuing hardhat stickers or badges that say a construction worker went through safety orientation.

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