Information on this page is drawn from "Ergonomics Best Practices for the Construction Industry" published by the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation
Situation — Manual Landscaping Tasks (Digging, Lifting, Carrying)
In construction, tasks requiring digging, lifting, grading and carrying earth materials are prevalent. These tasks often involve heavy manual labor, including using hand tools (e.g. shovels, rakes, and picks), hauling wheelbarrows full of dirt and rock, and digging post holes. These activities can place relatively large forces on the hands, shoulders and back. These forces, especially when experienced repetitively, contribute to CTDs.
Best practice — Skid Steerer and Attachments
Skid steerers can eliminate the need to manually perform many landscaping and earth working tasks. You can purchase attachments that can be used for grading, digging holes and ditches, hauling dirt, and transferring pallets of materials. These machines eliminate many of the accompanying risk factors, such as repetitive loading on the hands, shoulders and back. The risk of injury also is reduced.
Results
After an average follow-up period of 298 days, three construction companies that used the SafetyGRANT$ program to use skid steerers at their construction sites achieved the following results:
• The CTD incident rate changed from 17.4 CTDs per 200,000 hours worked to 12.2 CTDs per 200,000 hours worked — a 30-percent improvement;
• The ROI for skid steerers is 4.4 years;
• The restricted days rate due to CTDs changed from 17.4 days per 200,000 hours worked to 16.2 days per 200,000 hours worked — a 7-percent improvement;
• The average risk factor score for 12 affected tasks in the three companies was 32.5 before they used the skid steerers and 20.1 afterward — a 38-percent improvement.
Also, one construction company that began using a skid steerer with a gravel leveling attachment reported that productivity has increased by an estimated 65 percent.