Safety Should Be Your Number One Priority.
At Marco, we talk a lot about product quality and the perils of cutting corners when it comes to the components you include in your roofing systems. After all, we go the extra mile to ensure our products are field proven with superior performance. We believe almost nothing is more important to your business. Almost nothing. Your safety, however, trumps that by a long shot.
Earlier this year, Phoenix’s City Council unanimously passed a heat safety ordinance requiring local employers with outdoor workers to have a heat safety plan on the books. While some opposed the measure, thinking it was more red tape to deal with, the move was a sincere effort to protect outdoor workers from the sweltering Arizona heat—heat which claimed more than 600 lives in Maricopa County last year.
We know most of our readers don’t work in Phoenix, but plenty of you are beginning to feel the summer heat ramp up on your jobsites as we inch into June. The problem is that our human nature tends to classify this as uncomfortable, not potentially dangerous. The families of 600 people in Maricopa County would disagree.
Phoenix’s steps should be a reminder to anyone working outside, especially roofers who are incredibly exposed to the heat, that the smart move is being prepared and taking safety precautions seriously.
The heat safety plans mandated by the ordinance must include:
- Availability of free cool drinking water.
- Ability to take regular and necessary breaks (including water breaks).
- Access to shade and/or air conditioning.
- Access to air conditioning in vehicles with enclosed cabs.
- Acclimatization practices.
- Training on heat illness and injury.
This is a great outline for preparing your own heat safety plan. Not only will it help with the health of you and others on your crew, David Hondula, director of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, explained how it could benefit employers as well.
“It also makes good business sense for us to have and implement a heat response plan,” Hondula told the city council prior to the vote. “For one, research shows us that workers who are not dealing with, recovering from or worried about heat-related illness are more productive on the job.”
Nationwide, OSHA has plans to develop a heat safety standard. On April 24, the OSHA Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health unanimously recommended that OSHA “move forward expeditiously” on a notice of proposed rulemaking for a new heat standard. But the agency says they will continue to seek input from stakeholders and the public and has not announced a timeline for implementation. That leaves this important task up to you. There are many resources online that highlight how to prepare for extreme heat and how to recognize the signs of heat-related illness. OSHA’s Protecting Workers from Heat Stress is a great download that should be in all your work vehicles. You can also get info from the Red Cross, Weather.gov, Ready.gov and more.
Your safety is paramount … to your family and your business. After you’ve taken care of that, what you put on your roof installations is a solid second—and we can help with that! To learn more about the industry’s best ventilation and roofing accessories, visit www.MarcoIndustries.com or contact us directly by email or call 1-800-800-8590.
