Cole Cunningham

To: All Management

From: HR

Subject: Incident Report

Date: September 21, 2017

Introduction

Yesterday, September 20th, a construction worker Ryan suffered a severe injury on the

job site and had to be treated at the hospital. This report includes a detailed narrative of the

entire incident as well as its challenges, solutions, and costs.

Narrative of the incident

Around 10:45am the piling crew was finishing up the piling work on the west end of the

greenway. As they were finishing up some of the equipment needed to be moved further

down the project to prepare for work after lunch. Ryan was instructed to load the equipment

in to the utility vehicle and transport it to the other end of the project to be used later. He

loaded the equipment in to the back of the utility vehicle including a spud bar. Upon loading

the spud bar, he realized there was no orderly way of securing it to the back of the utility

vehicle. Ryan laid the spud bar horizontally in the back, wedged between the back seat and the

rest of the equipment. The spud bar is very long, and half of it was hanging out of the driver

side of the vehicle, perpendicular to the vehicles direction. About 3 feet of the spud bar hung

off the side of the vehicle. With the equipment loaded in the back of the vehicle, Ryan

proceeded to drive down to the next starting point.

 Cole Cunningham

At the next starting point, the quality inspector, Matt, was standing next to his vehicle

and discussing requirements with two workers. In that moment, Matt noticed Ryan driving

down the path and heard a loud metal on metal sound. The spud bar that was hanging out the

side of the vehicle had clipped a tree when Ryan drove past. Upon hitting the tree, the spud

bar wedged between the other equipment, spun to hit the metal frame of the utility vehicle.

When Ryan was driving the vehicle, he had his right arm resting around the passenger seat with

his hand on the back of the head rest. When the spud bar hit the metal frame, it also hit Ryans

hand on the head rest.

Ryan stopped the vehicle and ran to the inspector Matt. He said it hit his finger. He

showed his finger to Matt and Matt observed that Ryans right pinky finger had been nearly

severed and was hanging on by skin. Matt found a roll of cloth in his vehicle wrapped it around

Ryans hand. At this time, the foreman Bob had noticed the situation. Matt took Ryan in his

vehicle and Bob instructed him on where the nearest hospital was. Matt and Ryan drove off

first, with foreman Bob following in his vehicle. Ryan was calm during the ride to the hospital

and had been calm during the whole incident. Both vehicles reached the hospital safely and

Ryan received treatment for his wound.

Challenges of the situation

This incident happened possibly because of inadequate safety training and supervision.

Employees are trained to exercise caution when transporting unsecured objects around a job

site. The spud bar should have been transported in the bed of a truck instead of the small bed

of the utility vehicle. No one witnessed or stopped Ryan from operating the utility vehicle with

equipment unsafely loaded.

 Cole Cunningham

Possible Solutions

As part of the solution to this incident there will be safety briefing for all construction

employees on the dangers of improperly transporting equipment on the job site. There will

also likely be a workmans compensation claim.

Possible changes to further prevent future incidents include: having the foreman

personally supervise all equipment transport, or having a minimum of two workers transport

equipment to check each other.

Cost analysis of solutions

The workers compensation will be costly. Of the two proposed future changes, requiring

foreman supervision for all transport will be the costlier option. The foreman is already busy

and having to travel around the job site for every vehicle transport will be inefficient and costly

to the productivity of all workers. Having a worker help another worker load vehicles and

ensure safety would be most efficient.

My Recommendations

I recommend that we proceed with the mandatory safety briefings for all construction

employees. That we also institute a new requirement that all construction workers must be

accompanied by another worker when loading vehicles to insure they are loaded safely before

driving.