Make safety a stretch

by Clair D. Urbain

I’ve been on many jobsites in my career, seeing some very good (and some not so hot) work practices taking place.

When I arrived on Mortenson Construction’s jobsite to complete interviews and take pictures of the Camp Grove Wind Energy Farm in central Illinois, workers were milling around the job trailer just before the morning briefing.

As I walked up to the crowd of perhaps 100 workers, they all began stretching exercises. Arms in the air, waists bent, every one of them was doing warmups more reminiscent of high school football practice than a jobsite out in the middle of corn and soybean fields.

It’s all part of an effort to prepare workers to work safely the rest of the day. After all, workers will be doing a variety of strenuous work and cold, stiff muscles are prime candidates for soft-tissue injuries. This is one of the many ways Mortenson helps workers protect themselves.

Mortenson puts safety first on every jobsite, or so they told me. Not an uncommon corporate contractor statement, but this was one of the most interesting and innovative examples of putting safety words into action that I have seen at a jobsite.

Professional athletes stretch before they play; doesn’t it make sense to have construction workers warm up before setting out to do a day’s work? Construction workers are professionals too, and should treat their bodies in a way that helps them do their jobs safely and productively.

The Mortenson commitment to safety continues on the jobsite. I was required to go through the first orientation session before I was allowed near any of the construction sites. Throughout my visit, there were constant examples of workers putting safety first and doing their best to look out not only for themselves, but for everyone on the site.

It was quite a sight to see the whole tower, turbine and hub and rotor assembly process. Workers were Lilliputian in comparison to the 267'-tall units that, one by one, were dotting the corn and soybean field landscape, even dwarfing the once tall and proud barns and silos.

If you’d like to see more of this assembly process, click on the “Capture the Wind” story link. There you’ll find a link to a slide shows that chronicles the windmill assembly process. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did capturing the construction process.

Published in the November/December 2007 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.

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