The increasing death toll related to Construction Site Safety across the United States has stirred much distress and anxiety among employees. According to OSHA, deaths occur among one in five U.S. workers, and the main factor behind it is falls, which are accountable for 34% of all deaths concerning all construction deaths. Therefore, enforcing correct preventative measures could eradicate falls in construction industries would have prevented fatalities and accidents.
Though there are many efficient ways to prevent construction site hazards and enforce regulations to ensure workers’ safety as well as secure work culture, technological advancements in Drones, also called uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), have the likelihood to divert construction-related deaths and inconveniences such as injuries and accidents due to falls, hazardous chemical spills, electrocution, and being hit by heavy objects.
Furthermore, many government laws mandate construction companies and industries to regularly execute construction site surveys and inspections to ensure workers’ safety. When inspections are conducted by compliance safety and health officers, it can take 10 hours to even days, while with the enhancements in UAV technology, drone-building surveys complete the task in just 15 minutes.
Drones can upgrade and improve Construction Site Safety in many aspects of construction work in four ways discussed below:
Construction-related Mishap Prevention:
Not only being a time taking procedure, surveying a construction facility on foot is highly hazardous to employees’ health and safety, primarily because of the height involved, heavy machinery, unstable and unsteady electric wires, areas beyond reach, and many other reasons.
Through drone inspections, construction engineers and inspection officers can carefully ward off the dangers of injuries or fatalities to a much more considerable extent by correctly identifying potential hazards like accurately locating a bulky object, the motion of hazardous equipment, and unsteady floors.
Upgraded Survey Efficiency:
Not only can drones be deployed to recognize and catch the faults and repairs required, which is way more productive than stationing workers on heights and near unspecified hazards, but they also eradicate the menace and inconvenience of sending workers to ascend large scaffoldings or walk over unstable structures.
Moreover, drone-building surveys are free of manual labor and time. One can singlehandedly manage the survey of construction structures without any risks by using UAV technologies such as aerial imaging and economical thermal inspections and for this task, a professionally trained UAV operator and adaptable software to probe the data.
Observing Site Progress:
Deploying several construction workers to monitor a job site personally has become old school since drones can transmit real-time images and video recordings of the job site to the construction supervisors. Additionally, it can be converted to a 3D model, which can further be contrasted to previously saved data to determine the site’s progress, especially in monitoring potentially dangerous locations of the construction site.
Furthermore, the site’s drone progression can assist the supervising team in ensuring everything is carried out according to the blueprint and schedule. Drones can also be employed to observe heavy equipment and materials loading and unloading, traffic at the job site, and transportation, ensuring that all functions are executed safely.
Deterring Theft:
It is more challenging than it seems to manage a construction site since it accumulated value-added items to steal, such as power tools, equipment, and lumber, and the cost of stolen construction equipment ranges from about $300 million to $1 billion.
Since Drones can provide adequate security by flying over and encompassing a construction site 24 hours, they track the movement of equipment in storage rooms to ensure that everything remains safe. Moreover, UAVs with qualities such as night vision, motion sensors, and infrared are far way better than surveillance cameras since they can encompass even those locations which are seemingly out of reach. Besides the video recording, which can be employed to alarm the supervisors distantly, it can also be used as evidence to indict the perpetrators, if any, in the future.
Final thoughts
Securing construction sites by deploying drones could become a $28.3 billion global market. Hence, in the long run, using drones for construction site safety is advantageous to recognize and control the potential dangers to employees and the workplace. Therefore, if implemented in construction industries, UAV technology can be the best safety practice in the modern era to ensure the health and well-being of construction workers.