Construction Safety Week 2024 focuses on fall prevention

In the 10th year of the annual event, contractors will stand down with OSHA to highlight hazards associated with working at heights.

Dive Brief:

• More than 70 major contractors in the U.S. and Canada will take part in the 10th annual Construction Safety Week starting Monday.
• Founded by the Construction Industry Safety Initiative and the Incident & Injury Free Executive Forum, the event’s organizers provide companies with resources for toolbox talks in an effort to raise awareness about worker health and safety in the industry, presenting an opportunity to recommit to best practices in the workplace.
• This year, the leaders of Construction Safety Week are partnering with OSHA and its National Safety Stand-down initiative to call attention to fall prevention in construction. Falls are a leading cause of injury and death in the industry.

Dive Insight:

Construction Safety Week offers daily topics for discussion on the jobsite, including encouraging and welcoming workers to speak up about hazards and rewarding them for doing so. Daily materials will be available in English, Spanish and French.

Companies partnering in the official Construction Safety Week include Barton Malow, Black & Veatch, Brasfield and Gorrie, Clark, DPR, Fluor, Gilbane, Granite, Hensel Phelps, JE Dunn, Kiewit, McCarthy, Mortenson, PCL and Skanska, to name just a few.

Many of those companies will participate in OSHA’s fall safety stand down on May 8 — though employers are encouraged to take part in the stand-down any day during the week. Contractors that take a break from work for a toolbox talk or similar event can receive a certificate of participation for the event.

In 2022, construction had more deaths than any other industry, and had the third highest rate of deaths in the U.S. at 9.6 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Falls, slips and trips accounted for 410 fatalities in 2022, the most recent year of fully available data. That meant about 40% of on-the-job fatalities resulted from a fall.