Workplace injuries are a fact of life in some industries. If you work with heavy machinery or spend your day on your feet, you are unlikely to go your entire career without injuring something. Even sitting at a desk typing all day has it’s hazards. Most business owners are very aware of the risks associated with their day-to-day business.

Something that often gets missed is the return to work plan. When people do get injured, inside or outside of work, they will eventually return. As much as you plan to avoid these injuries it’s also important to create a plan to reintegrate injured employees into your workforce.

Develop a Plan

The larger the project, the greater the risk – that much is a given. The importance of risk management, however, remains the same no matter how great or small the project. Although each comes with its own unique risks, large-scale infrastructure construction projects are particularly distinctive.

Public Influence

A large infrastructure project is likely to take place in close proximity to the general public and this poses many risks. In some cases, such as road resurfacing or constructing new sections of highway, construction must be staggered to allow for continued public use of the area.

As well as working in close proximity to the public, the risks extend to what happens when you are not working. If your site is in a public area, or easily accessible by public roads, extra security measures may need to be employed to protect the site between shifts. Public liability on large infrastructure construction projects is vitally important.

When we talk about risk management and risk assessment, the focus is often on the big issues. But it’s not the only way to look at risk assessment. When you’re working to identify every potential risk, you sometimes need to think outside the box. Well, in this case, inside the box.

Every individual product, from food to electronics, encounters risks throughout its lifespan. As the product passes through production lines, across borders, and through the hands of numerous organizations, it encounters a wide array of risks. By applying a risk assessment to the product itself, rather than the individual businesses involved we can get a unique view.

Establish Your Franchise

There are certain tools that are required for every risk management plan. Whether you work in construction or manage a busy office, there will be many factors that are the same. Every risk management plan requires safety equipment, training, and insurance.

There’s a simple rule in safety procedure that sticks in most people’s minds. Before you use any piece of equipment, you check it to make sure everything is working correctly. Then, when you’re done, you check it again. Once you’ve done that and you’re ready to move on to another risk management step, you check it again.

This may sound like overkill but it is necessary, especially when that equipment is designed to save your life. In construction risk management, you can never be too careful. The risks are too great to leave anything to chance.

Falltech & Construction Risk Management

A company experiencing a disruption of three days or more is at risk of going out of existence. Disruptions like natural disasters (storms, tornados), human risk (infectious disease, labor disputes) and business risks (financial crisis, supply chain) are a few of the events that can affect a business. Within two years, of the companies that experience this kind of delay, 70% will fail. After five years that figure rises to 90%. The majority of companies will have insurance coverage, but this may not be enough to protect them in the long-term. The key to a business surviving one of these events is to be prepared for every eventuality.

With all of the extreme weather we’ve been experiencing lately, you could be forgiven for thinking that maybe the Mayans were just a year off with their apocalyptic prediction. There have been floods, hurricanes and most recently, snowstorms battering the nation from every angle. If you don’t have coverage for extreme weather, you might be thinking that now’s the time to get it. Let’s take a look at what disaster risk measures you can implement to protect against the damaging effects of America’s extreme weather events.

Assess

The first box to tick on your disaster risk checklist should be to assess whether certain types of extreme weather are likely to affect you. Make sure precious items aren’t stored in your basement or any other area of the house that may be affected by flooding. If you do live in an area that could be affected by extreme weather events then you may want to think about getting the appropriate insurance coverage.

There are certain items you automatically associate with workplace safety tips. Whenever anyone offers advice on safety, you assume they’ll be talking about safety goggles, high-visibility jackets, hard-hats and handrails. Those are vital building blocks in creating a safer work environment. Of course none of these measures provide guaranteed workplace safety.

To truly ensure that your employees are safe you need something extra, alongside the standard equipment. There are four key measures you can implement alongside your standard safety practice that don’t require a single piece of equipment.

Training

The term ‘risk management techniques’ automatically brings certain images to mind. You picture safety goggles, staircase handrails and insurance policies. It can be hard to imagine anything other than the standard measures to control risk. You think of a risk, and then you think of something that would protect you from it.

That usually means a physical object, or financial measure that protects your business. What we often forget is that the best risk management techniques are the ones that have a positive long-term effect on the business. That means finding measures that do more than mitigate or prevent risk; measures that improve productivity, morale, efficiency or simply make the workplace better.