Sir Fred is back

After a month and a-half deserved break, Sir Fred is back from the land of 7,107 islands, the Philippines.

Sir Fred is our ES&H Manager in our project. In his watch, he brought honors and accolades to our project and overall to the company. To name a few, the Best Contractor of the month in Housekeeping, Best Contractor of the month in ES&H and 3,000,000 accident-free Man-Hours.

To laymen’s point of view, maybe it is not a big deal. Best in housekeeping? What is that? 3,000,000 accident free Man-Hours? What is that? But for those men and women in the construction industry, it is a big deal.

Firstly, housekeeping in construction terminology is not the usual housekeeping we all know about like making up your bed, cleaning the house, throwing the garbage, washing the dishes, etc. No, it is not that simple as it may seems although the principle is almost the same.

Put it this way, say your office table, you have your computer, in/out trays, few pens, few folder files and a coffee mug. How often do you able to make it in order, tidy and spick and span. Maybe for a day? For a week? For a month? Now we progress to a bigger perspective, say your office (room), how will you manage to keep it spick and span. For a day? For a week? Now try to imagine a massive area of a construction site, with hundreds of workers, bulks and bulks of materials, construction debris, wastes, equipments, etc.

Keeping the construction site tidy, everything in order and free from hazards to health and safety. This is what we call, in the construction industry, Housekeeping. Challenging huh!!!

Now, the 3,000,000 accident free man-hours. What is this all about.

Man-hour means, one man working in one hour. For the whole day that you worked for eight hours, you have logged 8 man-hours. Let us say that for the whole day you did not fall from you chair, or bump you head, or bump your knees under your table, or cut your fingers, or spilled your hot coffee on you, did not caught your fingers while closing your drawers, etc. Then your have 8 man-hours without incidence.

So, what is 3,000,000 man-hours like? It is like you working for 1,027 years, 365 days a year, without any incidence or accident. Mind-blowing huh!!! You might ask how anyone could work for 685 years. Good question. In the construction industry, hundreds of workers are involved in a project. That is how they manage to log millions of man-hours.

Best housekeeping, 3,000,000 man-hours. Pretty cool huh?

Unfortunately, Sir Fred will be in for a surprise. A week after he left for his vacation, one of our refueling trucks has caught on fire at the site. The truck was totally burned down, literally. The generator set that was being refueled at that time was also destroyed. And a week before Sir Fred is due to arrive, one of our steel worker has an accident. His hand was caught by the steel bender machine and it crushed his fingers.

One of the set-back as a result of the 2 incidence is that our project has already logged 3,600,000 (+) man-hours without incidence. We are at the home stretch of hitting the 4,000,000 milestone which was the project to be achieving come this February 2009, a very big setback for the project team especially to our safety team. Now we are back to zero man-hour and a lot of catching up to restore the lost pride.

Fortunately though, the 2 incidences had no fatalities and except for the crushed fingers no other injuries were reported, and the project team is very thankful to that.

With Sir Fred back in the project, obviously facing insurmountable challenge and with dispirited safety team brought about the 2 incidences, I am confident that the team will be back on track and we will soon be taking some safety awards again.