Addressing Fall Risks in Construction

If you insure construction companies for CA Workers Compensation and other essential types of coverage, you may have received questions from your clients about the most common job site safety hazards out there. Unfortunately, construction site workers may sometimes be at risk of falling on the job and suffering injuries, which in turn can cost the company and damage its reputation. If your clients are interested in fall prevention techniques, there are several preventative steps they may want to put in place as soon as possible. Take a look at the mitigating steps you can advise your clients to take.

Keep an Eye Out for Potentially Risky Setups on the Construction Site

In order to avoid falls on the job site, it’s important for your clients to know which warning signs to look out for. There are some common yet potentially risky setups that they may want to eliminate or change immediately. Some common setups that could increase the odds of a worker suffering a fall include:

• Few or no guardrails on site
• Inadequate inspections of the site
• Rickety ladders or stairways
• Shoddy scaffolding at risk of collapsing
• Improper site setup or improper use of tools on site
• A messy or disorganized work site or a lack of cleanup crews

Implement Several Guardrails and Other Essential Precautions

Perhaps the most important step your clients can take to address fall risks in their company is to implement essential precautions such as guardrails on all of their construction sites. You may wish to advise your clients to institute:

• A safety net system, especially at higher levels on the construction site
• A personal fall arrest system with anchors, lanyards, body harnesses, lifelines and other similar tools
• A guardrail system set up throughout the construction site to protect exposed areas where workers could be at higher risk of experiencing a fall

Understand the Potential Consequences and Secure Appropriate Insurance

To truly protect themselves financially and legally, it’s critical that your clients secure the appropriate level of insurance coverage for their situation. You may want to walk your clients through the types of coverage they’re legally required to have in their area as well as the additional coverage they can opt into. It may be useful to remind them of the potential consequences of having to deal with an employee’s fall while uninsured. Falls on the work site could potentially result in:

• Lawsuits and associated compliance and legal fees
• A damaged company reputation, poor publicity and lowered employee morale
• Workers’ compensation costs
• Lost time and productivity on the job following the incident

To avoid costly lawsuits, reputational hits and other professional and legal problems, it’s imperative that your CA Workers Compensation clients take mitigating steps to address the risk of falls on their construction worksites. Although falls may be a relatively common risk in the construction industry, your clients can prevent these types of accidents by immediately taking the key preventative steps outlined above.

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