PLH GROUP NEWS
Injury Happens When You Become Complacent
Date: August 14, 2019
Situational awareness involves understanding what is going on around you at all times. It can help you identify safe and unsafe atmospheres and promote good communication efforts with those around you. Everyone processes their surroundings differently and we must constantly reevaluate what is happening around us to avoid becoming complacent. Complacency makes us overly comfortable in a familiar environment and we start to desensitize ourselves to new potential hazards. In conjunction with OSHA Safe + Sound Week August 12 – 18 2019, PLH Group safety directors will communicate Situational Awareness with all 11 business entities.
There are four main factors of the elements of situational awareness: identification, processing, comprehension, and response. To identify critical elements of information, we cannot repeatedly focus on just a few items. We must constantly reevaluate and reset our minds to become aware of any new information or events. Once elements are identified, we must process them in our minds to determine if our surroundings are safe or unsafe. Proper training and communication with colleagues are great tools to sharpen our minds and increase our situational awareness. Once we process critical elements, we must identify what is actually happening and identify what could happen. This is achieved by separating information into segments known as schema. These schemas can be referenced in the future to help identify hazardous environments. The final factor involves responding to the given information. When hazards are identified, we must communicate, eliminate, control, and fix the situation to the best of our ability to protect ourselves and those around us.
Situational awareness comprehension can be skewed by faulty information processing, excessive motivation, complacency, overload, fatigue, and poor communication. Being aware of where you are, where you’re supposed to be, and potential hazards around you is especially important in the construction industry to prevent employee injury. You have the right to a safe and healthful workplace and that can be achieved if we all work together to identify risks.
PLH Group is a full service power line construction, pipeline construction and specialty contractor that serves the electric power line, pipeline, oil field electrical and industrial markets, where safety is a value that is ingrained in the way we conduct our business and live our lives.
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