The Best Free Online Construction Safety Checklist 2022
Construction Safety Checklist for Free... With ComplyFlex
The Best Free Online Construction Safety Checklist of 2022
What is a Construction Safety Checklist?
Do you want to keep your employees safe? Do you want to save big bucks on workers’ compensation claims? Yeah, I thought so. Safety Checklists are tools that when used properly, can help make worksites safe for employees. The “Construction” in the title refers to a work location that falls into OSHA’s Construction standards, as opposed to OSHA’s General Industry standards. An effective checklist gives the company’s site inspector (most likely a safety professional or a supervisor) easy-to-follow steps to identify possible hazards and take corrective actions to mitigate any hazards present during the evaluation. If you have read this far, you are awesome and you care about the safety of your employees. Keep going. I do not write articles to give you information that you already have. I write to inspire new ideas. I write to inspire culture change to promote safety. I don’t want to waste your time or mine. Let’s dig in…
Defining a Hazard
A hazard in the workplace is an unsafe condition, which could negatively affect employee health if not mitigated. Employers are responsible for ensuring that the workplace to which they have employees assigned is protected from all hazards that could cause the employees injury, or negatively affect their health.
Defining a Corrective Action
A corrective action is an action taken to correct an unsafe condition. Using a checklist to identify hazards is the first step of the process but taking action to correct the hazards is imperative. If you notice an unsafe condition while completing a safety checklist, you must mitigate the risk ASAP!
What does OSHA state about self-inspections?
Let’s let OSHA take it from here:
“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has developed a final policy describing the Agency’s treatment of voluntary employer self-audits that assess workplace safety and health conditions, including compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Act). The policy provides that the Agency will not routinely request self-audit reports at the initiation of an inspection, and the Agency will not use self-audit reports as a means of identifying hazards upon which to focus during an inspection. In addition, where a voluntary self-audit identifies a hazardous condition, and the employer has corrected the violative condition prior to the initiation of an inspection (or a related accident, illness, or injury that triggers the OSHA inspection) and has taken appropriate steps to prevent the recurrence of the condition, the Agency will refrain from issuing a citation, even if the violative condition existed within the six month limitations period during which OSHA is authorized to issue citations. Where a voluntary self-audit identifies a hazardous condition, and the employer promptly undertakes appropriate measures to correct the violative condition and to provide interim employee protection, but has not completely corrected the violative condition when an OSHA inspection occurs, the Agency will treat the audit report as evidence of good faith, and not as evidence of a willful violation of the Act.”
So, OSHA is not regularly required to ask for your self-inspections, but it doesn’t mean that they won’t. Most importantly, they specifically state that if you as an employer acknowledge a hazard in the workplace and take sufficient steps to keep employees safe from that hazard then OSHA will not issue a citation. Let us be clear here; OSHA will not issue a citation, which means completing one inspection and mitigating a workplace hazard could prevent a hefty penalty!
OSHA Penalty:
Sections of a Construction Safety Checklist
- Program Administration
- Fire Prevention
- Electrical and Utility
- Hand and Power Tools
- Heavy Equipment
- Barricades and Fencing
- Materials Handling and Storage
- Excavations and Shoring
- Ladders
- Scaffolding
- Welding and Cutting
- Personal Protective Equipment
Why is it Important to Complete Safety Checklists?
Why? Why would we spend our dollars paying our safety, management, and supervisors to complete safety checklists? Easiest question ever; we need to keep our employees safe. No employer wants to go to bed at night thinking that they could be coordinating a job that will destroy the life of one of their employees and through the unavoidable ripple effect, destroy the life of the employee’s family, friends, etc. That is always the number one answer. The supporting number two answer is the same answer that any business makes; how is this profitable for the company? As a company, you have an obligation to the corporation to produce revenue. Any job tasker can price out what must be done, and how much it will cost. How many of these job taskers include in their price the cost of a life? How many include the cost of a serious workers’ compensation claim? It is not built into our standard quotes to assume that we will put an employee out of work for the rest of their life, on our bill.
Let’s back up for a minute here. If we properly mitigate all the hazards on the Jobsite by completing a job hazard analysis and a Jobsite checklist, we may never have to account for those costs. Boom, that’s it. Prevent the injury, and we don’t have to ask our estimators to account for loss because there won’t be any.
If you are thinking at this point, “well, our job is dangerous, our employees could be hurt by…”. Whatever you fill in those … dots with, those are the hazards that you must put barriers in place for. You have just started your first Job Hazard Analysis – NICE JOB!
You have made it this far, but you haven’t taken action to keep your employees safe. You cannot tell OSHA “well, we knew the hazard was there, we just hoped that it wouldn’t get anyone hurt”. You realize how lame that sounds, right? Show them with a document (I don’t think we can be more obvious here) that you completed a Job Hazard Analysis, and completed a Construction Safety Checklist to ensure that your employees would not be injured on the job. Remember: it is not what you say, but what you do. So do it. Keep your employees safe and protect your company. Complete your Job Hazard Analysis here for free, and complete your Construction Safety Checklist here. All for free, with a printable PDF, at ComplyFlex. We are giving these tools for free – there is no excuse.
Tips for Completing Construction Safety Checklists
Tips? We have got you covered. Here is a quick bullet list of what you need to make sure you checklists do to be effective:
- Do them! Don’t just think about completing a safety checklist. Make it your company culture to complete them for every job.
- Make them thorough. Don’t just complete a checklist to check boxes. Checking boxes has never in the history of mankind has helped anyone. You need to put effort into it, and implement meaningful solutions (corrective actions, see how this all links together?).
- Act on the corrective actions. If you identify hazards in the workplace you must take effective measures to mitigate those hazards. If you need help, always refer to the NIOSH upside-down pyramid or reducing the risk of mitigating hazards. These people at NIOSH have done their homework and know the best ways to keep employees safe and healthy. We don’t have to re-create the wheel here, just ride one of their wheels.
- Don’t be scared of safety. Attack it with the tools provided by people that have spent their lives identifying how to keep jobsites safe. At ComplyFlex, we have built our tools in alignment with these governing bodies. Just use them. THEY ARE FREE.
Yeah, nothing is free. Well, this one is. We want you to use our tools and feel the power. Get in there and try it out. We only get paid if you like our free tools enough to become a member to get upgraded tools. We will sleep well knowing our free tools could make a difference in the culture of a company and save lives. It is a weird paradox with safety: you could save many lives and not know it, but the one life that is lost you will never, ever forget. Apologies for getting heavy, but in reality, we are talking about employee lives. It is heavy.
Safety Inspections Made Effective, Simple, and Easy Online
Our mission statement: Make online safety tools that are effective, simple, and easy to use online. We believe that we have done just that. If you think so, then become a member. If you don’t think so reach out to support and tell us what you need! We are here to serve you. Not our clients, but our partners. I despise the term “client”, as it is strictly transactional. I see members as partners. We are partners in keeping employees happy, safe, and healthy. Let’s be partners in this. You don’t have to do it alone.