Your first days on a construction site

Construction is one of the most rewarding ways to earn a living. You build things people use for decades, you learn a trade that travels with you, and every day is a little different. It is also one of the more dangerous industries to work in. The hazards are not mysterious: people fall from heights, get struck by moving equipment and falling objects, get caught in or between things, contact electricity, breathe in harmful dust and fumes, and strain their bodies lifting and twisting. What makes construction risky is that all of these hazards can be present on the same site on the same morning, and the site changes every day as the building goes up.

This course is the safety foundation for every trade in the Skilled Trades stream. It is written for people who are new to the work, such as first-year apprentices, pre-apprentices and labourers, and for anyone who wants to understand what a safe site looks like from the tools up. It follows the hazards a new worker meets in roughly the order they meet them, and it uses Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act and its construction regulation as the main example of Canadian law. The other provinces and territories have their own laws, written on the same principles, and the course points out where the details are likely to differ.

If you go on to supervise or manage work, the Safety Training stream (the HSE courses) and the Construction Management course CON-355, Safety Leadership for Site Supervisors, build on this one. Here the view is from the apprentice's boots: what you will see, what you will be asked to do, what you are allowed to refuse, and the habits that keep you and the people around you in one piece.

Meet the crew

The course follows one first-year apprentice through her first months on a real-looking job. Maya Chen has just signed on as a first-year plumbing apprentice with Northbridge Mechanical, a mechanical contractor that installs plumbing, heating and ventilation systems. Northbridge is a trade contractor on Kingsway Tower, a twelve-storey residential building with two levels of underground parking going up in Hamilton, Ontario. The general contractor, Stonebridge Construction, is the constructor for the project under Ontario law, which means it has overall responsibility for safety on the site.

How people get hurt in construction

Workers' compensation boards in every province publish injury and fatality data, and construction consistently has one of the highest counts of fatalities among all industries in Canada. Many construction deaths are from occupational disease, especially cancers from asbestos exposure decades ago, but the traumatic deaths that happen on site today follow a pattern that has changed little in years. Falls from heights lead the list, followed by being struck by vehicles, equipment or falling objects, being caught in or between equipment or in collapsing trenches, and contact with electricity.

Behind each of these events is a chain: a hazard that was present, a control that was missing or not working, and a person who was exposed at the wrong moment. Safety work is about breaking the chain at the earliest link. The best place is removing the hazard before anyone arrives, the next best is a physical control such as a guardrail that works without anyone thinking about it, and the last resort is a person relying on their own care and equipment. Lesson 4 sets this out as the hierarchy of controls, and you will see it in every lesson.

Why new workers are at higher risk

Research across many countries has found the same thing: workers in their first months on a new job are injured at a much higher rate than experienced workers, regardless of age. Young workers and new workers share several disadvantages. They do not yet recognize hazards that an experienced worker sees instantly, such as a ladder footing on loose gravel or a load that is not balanced. They are often reluctant to ask questions because they want to make a good impression. They may be given the least pleasant tasks, such as cleanup, carrying and digging, which carry their own risks. And they may not know their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work.

None of this means you should be fearful. It means you should expect to be trained, expect to be supervised closely at first, and expect to ask a lot of questions. A good contractor wants you to ask. Every experienced tradesperson on the site was once the new person who did not know which end of the pipe threader to stand at.

The site orientation

Before Maya can start work, she attends Stonebridge's site orientation, run by Anika Shah. Ontario requires employers to provide information, instruction and supervision to protect workers, and on construction projects that starts with an orientation that covers the specific hazards of this site. Separately, Ontario requires basic awareness training for every new worker and supervisor, and approved working at heights training for workers on construction projects who may use fall protection. Northbridge checks that Maya's training records are current before she is sent to the site.

The orientation takes about an hour and Maya leaves with a sticker on her hard hat showing she has completed it. It covers the things every person on the site needs to know on day one.

The orientation is the site's introduction. The rest of this course follows that training topic by topic.

Who is responsible for what

Safety law in Canada is built on the internal responsibility system: everyone on the site has a share of the responsibility for safety, in proportion to their authority and control. Under Ontario's Act, the constructor (Stonebridge) has duties for the whole project, each employer (Northbridge, Brightline and the other trade contractors) has duties for its own workers, supervisors (such as Dave Kowal) must make sure workers follow the law and must tell them about hazards, and workers (such as Maya) must work safely, use the protective equipment required, and report hazards and contraventions. Lesson 2 looks at these duties and at Maya's rights in detail.

In practice, the arrangement means that Maya always has someone to turn to. Her first contact for anything unsafe is Luis, then Dave. If they are not available, or if the hazard comes from another trade, she can go to Anika. Nobody on the site should ever tell her that a hazard is not their problem.

Housekeeping, access and the everyday hazards

The hazards that hurt the most people on a construction site are often the ordinary ones. Slips, trips and falls on the same level are among the most common injuries in construction, and they are almost always caused by poor housekeeping: cords across walkways, offcuts and packaging on the floor, mud and ice at entrances, and materials stored in access routes. On the upper floors, loose material near an edge can also be blown or kicked off and become a falling object hazard for people below.

Kingsway Tower's rule is simple: clean as you go, and leave your work area cleaner than you found it at the end of every shift. Each trade has bins on each floor, and Stonebridge's labourers empty them daily. Cords are run overhead on hooks or along walls, not across walkways. Materials are stacked away from edges and openings, on stable ground, and no higher than is safe. Walkways are kept clear and marked, and the pedestrian route at grade is separated from the truck route by fencing.

Struck-by and caught-in hazards at grade

Maya's first week includes days at grade helping receive material deliveries. This is where struck-by hazards are concentrated. Delivery trucks reverse into the laydown area, the telehandler carries pallets of pipe to the hoist, and the tower crane swings loads overhead. Each of these machines has blind spots where the operator cannot see a person on foot, and each moves heavy loads that can crush.

The rules at grade are designed to keep people and machines apart. Pedestrians stay on the marked walkway. Nobody walks or stands under a suspended crane load, and the area below a lift is barricaded. When a truck reverses, a signaller guides it. When Maya needs to cross the path of a machine, she waits until she has made eye contact with the operator and received a signal to cross. She never assumes an operator has seen her, because the operator's view from the seat of a telehandler with a load on the forks is limited.

Caught-in hazards include trench collapses, which are covered in later trades courses and in the HSE stream, and rotating equipment such as pipe threading machines and core drills. Loose clothing, gloves, long hair and jewellery can be pulled into rotating parts in a fraction of a second. Luis's rule for the threading machine is that sleeves are rolled down and buttoned, hair is tied back, no jewellery is worn, and gloves are not worn near the rotating chuck. Lesson 11 returns to this, because gloves are an example of PPE that protects in one task and creates a hazard in another.

Fitness for work

A worker who is impaired, exhausted or unwell cannot react to hazards in time. Most sites, including Kingsway Tower, have a fitness-for-work policy: nobody works under the influence of alcohol, cannabis or other drugs, including prescription and over-the-counter medications that cause drowsiness. Fatigue from long hours or a second job, dehydration in summer and cold stress in winter all slow reactions in the same way.

The policy also protects workers who come forward. If Maya is taking a medication that makes her drowsy, she tells Dave so he can assign her to work that does not involve heights or machinery. If she sees a co-worker who appears impaired, she tells her supervisor. Nobody likes reporting a co-worker, but on a construction site an impaired worker endangers everyone around them, and a good policy treats impairment as a safety issue first.