Whether you operate aerial devices, cranes and other lifting equipment, situational awareness is central to reducing the risk of injury and even death. A recent article by Neal Gracey of Henkels & McCoy, published by Incident Prevention, addresses three aspects of situational awareness: perception, comprehension, and projection.
Gracey explains that the ability to identify hazards effectively is a result of “education plus experience—not one or the other, but both.”
All experiences, both good and bad feed into our situational awareness memory. Many potentially dangerous situations can be mitigated by taking the time to think safely, slow down, and apply our experience to the situation at hand at hand.
At DICA, we provide safety education resources online to help improve your situational awareness on the job site.
Gracey’s recommendation to employ “self-checks, peer checks, stop-work authority and three-way communication” are other great reasons to read the full article on how to develop situational awareness for everyone on the jobsite.