Thursday March 1st, 2018
The days have been getting longer over the last few weeks in France, but temperatures remain stubbornly low. In these conditions, working outside can be difficult. The cold creates health and safety risks at construction sites. Now, more than ever, prevention and vigilance are essential.
Temperatures have plunged overnight. At the Tour Alto construction site in the La Défense district on the edge of Paris, Fabrice Jouan, the logistics and general services manager from Construction Privée (Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France) makes sure that it is safe for site workers to move about and access their stations before anyone begins working. “Any risk of an employee slipping or falling needs to be addressed,” he explained while checking that lighting levels were sufficient.
Organising sites so that site workers can take breaks out of the cold, making sure that there is plenty of warm food and drink available, trying to reorganise the work so that as much of it as possible takes place indoors… These are some of the steps that construction sites take to limit cold exposure, which can cause fatigue, numbness, loss of dexterity, or even hypothermia. All of our entities regularly issue information flashes about extreme cold, and the Health, Safety, and Risk Prevention department publishes and distributes risk prevention sheets about working in such conditions.
We’re also adapting in terms of the personal protective equipment we use: Distrimo provides clothing that is adapted to extreme cold: insulating glove liners, hoods and hats that can be worn with a helmet, wool mufflers that don’t retain dampness, slippers, soles, and more, enough to cover up from head to toe to the tips of your fingers so that your extremities, which allow heat to escape, are kept warm.
Lastly, a special warm-up exercises are used during the winter, when it takes longer for the body to heat up: these exercises involve activating the joints and muscles, unlike classic warm-ups, which have three different phases. Maude Demenois, Bouygues Construction Ergonomics Manager, specifies that, “We’ve focused these warm-up exercises on activating all of the joints and muscles, ensuring that site workers are in the most dynamic phase of their warm-up when they start working.”
Tour Alto (la Défense) buried under the snow. ©Véronique Mati
When temperatures fell to -5°C, this glacial cold makes machines and tools more fragile, and makes it impossible to pour concrete without affecting its quality and resilience, ultimately risking the strength of the final construction.
If snow begins to fall, blurring edges and hiding black ice, it makes the situation even more dangerous. Fabrice Jouan, logistics and general services manager, stated categorically that, “As soon as conditions become unsafe, we stop work on the construction site automatically”.
No matter what limitations we face and how we adapt, employee safety remains our priority. Safety first!
Tour Alto (la Défense) buried under the snow. ©Véronique Mati
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