Guest blogger Aaron Morrow shares his holiday wish for a season of safety through this special rewrite of “The Night Before Christmas."
'Twas the Day Before Christmas
’Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the site
The workers were framing the metal studs nice and tight.
The drywall was hung by the crew with great care,
Knowing the painting crew would soon be there.
The supervisors and foremen were going over the plan,
Hoping to finish by the day’s end if they can.
The safety team is wearing ANSI-approved glasses, shoes and hard hats,
Reviewing the daily checklists for the excavators, forklifts and bobcats.
When up on the third level there arose such a clatter;
What was that, I asked, some tools, materials, maybe a ladder?
Towards the temporary stairs we quickly and safely walked,
But someone left a scissor lift in the way so the access was blocked.
Just then the service elevator opened its doors;
We all loaded in, without going over capacity, and went up the two floors.
When what to our surprised but protected eyes should appear,
An apprentice standing next to a boom lift wearing his fall protection gear.
Around his feet lay a pile of scaffold cross braces;
The young worker knew we were concerned by the look on our faces.
We made sure he was OK, and asked him to give us the incident info;
Apparently he was installing A/C ducting and didn’t see the materials below.
We breathed a sigh of relief and helped clean up the mess,
Realizing we had some housekeeping issues around the jobsite to address.
Our goal is to learn from a fortunate incident like this,
So we filled out a report to document the near miss.
We gathered the workers and conducted a tailgate,
And pointed out the multiple hazards we needed to abate.
So we swept and scooped, and even used the shop-vacuum,
And the extra materials were moved to the lay down yard creating more room.
The workers all gathered after the cleanup was complete;
We all were impressed how the job looked organized and neat.
We talked about how we didn’t want these issues to become a trend;
By this time the shift had almost come to an end.
We thanked the crew and let them leave early without much of a fight,
And said:
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
(Some things you just don’t change.)
Happy Holidays,
Aaron Morrow