Partner Protecting All Workers on Jobsite

With today’s sprawling commercial construction projects, jobsites can spread across several acres. A safety professional cannot always be at every location. That’s one reason why TD’s Partners have a responsibility to learn the signs of safety risks and act accordingly in order to fiercely protect the safety of everyone on the jobsite.

It’s also one way how TD’s new safety app SmartTagIt helps disseminate these crucial lessons quickly.

One of our Partners, a senior superintendent in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, recently showed why both are important to the safety of all current and future TDPartners. When a Partner recognized two non-TD contractors working in potentially life-altering situations, he stopped work for each issue, reported the safety problem, and documented a safety alert on the SmartTagIt app so other Partners could quickly be made aware of the unsafe situations and learn from the issues.

TD has partnered with app developer SmartTagIt, which provides real-time, integrated safety notifications from safety process engagement. It also allows Partners to share, like and comment on pre-task safety plans, inspection reports, observations, and safety alerts. The system uses photos, videos, and offers robust reporting, dashboards and safety metrics. The alerts and observations even include Partner feedback on their own severity-level rating of the conditions or behaviors observed.

The first incident involved a precast tradesman from another company. He was not using a lift or wearing fall protection while working at a height of approximately 15 feet. Anytime a worker is above 6 feet, OSHA requires him or her to have the proper fall protection PPE. The TDPartner spotted this unsafe behavior, immediately stopped all work in the area, reported it to the general contractor, and documented the incident on the app, powered by SmartTagIt.

The second incident involved a tradesman working 14 feet in a trench, without proper shoring in place. Normally, an excavator would stair-step the grade and help prevent a cave-in. In the event of a cave-in, this worker would be in dire risk of a serious injury or death. Our Partner stopped the worker, reported the issue to the general contractor, and shared the issue with his Partners on the app.

Both situations could have been life-altering or resulted in death.

Quick actions and dedication to safety helped stop dangerous work and potentially serious injuries," said the production manager on the project.

The decision to properly document the events, using photos and a description within SmartTagIt, will help prevent future serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) as well as through education. TD safety leaders can also use his photos in a later meeting to demonstrate warning signs for potential SIFs.

That’s especially important for a large company such as TDIndustries. With jobsites spread throughout Texas, Arizona, and Colorado, information sharing can become another critical bottleneck. The SmartTagIt app is helping bring TD’s teams together across multiple regions for better safety awareness, education, and improved planning. These actions demonstrated the power of this new tool.

"The use of stop-work authority and heavy use of safety engagement helps stop potential Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs), and this app helps us be better at finding and fixing hazards," said Jamie Dabbs, director of safety. “We’re glad that we have Partners actively observing the safety of everyone at his project, and that we have a great tool to quickly share alerts and safety information across the entire company.”