A Sphere of Safety

By Brad Sant, senior vice president of education and safety, ARTBA

Approximately 800 people are killed each year in roadway work zone crashes, and over the past decade, the rate has been increasing by 2 percent annually. To emphasize the need for heightened vigilance at roadway construction sites, ARTBA developed an approach called the “sphere of safety” to help everyone at a project visualize their work and identify potential hazards.

This sphere requires attentiveness for overhead hazards, underground dangers, and surrounding risks. It is designed to protect both workers and the public, which pass through these project sites as motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians.

Roadway construction workers not only face many of the same hazardous conditions as other construction sectors, but also frequently must work next to moving vehicles, including large earth moving and paving equipment, cranes and derricks, large trucks, and non-construction traffic passing at high speeds within inches of the project.

The Sphere of Safety concept was adopted three years ago as the anchor for the National Stand Down to Prevent Struck-by Incidents, now commemorated each April in conjunction with National Work Zone Awareness Week. This stand-down is organized by construction industry safety professionals, from both the private and public sectors, through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) Construction Sector Council, a project of the Institute’s National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA).

The NORA Construction Sector Council helps individuals and organizations share information, form partnerships, and promote adoption and dissemination of solutions that work. The council seeks to facilitate important research, understand effective intervention strategies, and learn how to implement those strategies to achieve sustained improvements in workplace practice.

The 2022 National Stand Down to Prevent Struck-by Incidents will be commemorated with four free webinars focused on a different aspect found in the sphere of struck-by hazards. For the first time, it will also feature a webinar in Spanish. Topics include struck-by challenges in work zones, around heavy equipment, and from dropped tools and other objects.

The webinar series is hosted by CPWR – The Center for Construction Research and Training:

• 1 p.m. Eastern, April 11– Preventing Struck-by Incidents in Roadway Work Zones
• 3 p.m. Eastern, April 11 – Prevención de Incidentes por Atropellos: Zonas de Trabajo, Equipos Pesados e Impacto de Objetos
• 2 p.m. Eastern, April 13– What’s the risk? Best Practices to reduce the likelihood of struck-by injuries from heavy equipment and crane activities
• 2 p.m. Eastern, April 14– Preventing Struck-by Incidents from Dropped Tools & Other Objects

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) has also created a suite of safety materials—most of which are offered a no cost—to assist the construction industry meet their safety training and education needs.  They can be found in the “Transportation Construction Safety Center” at https://artbatdf.org/safety-center/ . It is the consolidated home for a suite of valuable programs, materials, and services.  One of the most popular courses, Preventing Runovers and Backovers in Roadway Construction, directly addresses struck-by hazards educating workers on the best ways to separate trucks and heavy machines from workers on foot in the work zone by creating internal traffic control plans.

In addition, ARTBA operates the National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration and the Texas Transportation Institute. It has grown into the largest online transportation construction safety source in the world. Clearinghouse information is available whenever and wherever it’s needed at www.workzonesafety.org.

ARTBA and its industry partners are working together to offer a sphere of safety materials that will continue to grow and evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of the construction industry.  We are committed to do everything in our power to enable everyone involved in transportation construction to have the information and resources necessary to work safely. We will not stop until we reach zero injuries and fatalities.