Ensure Safety in Your Quarry in 4 Ways

Quarry sites are prone to accidents with heavy equipment moving back and forth, workers scattered around, and trip and fall hazards everywhere.

For safety officers, it's a daily challenge to ensure that no accident occurs in the work areas to avoid disruptions and potential lawsuits.

For these reasons, quarry operators and safety officers lay down precautions that seek to prevent accidents or at least minimize their hazardous impacts. One such safety measure is called soil nailing, which is a technique to stabilize the soil by embedding reinforcing bars. This soil stabilization method can be applied to retaining walls and slope protection infrastructures in quarries and public works.

Aside from soil nailing in the UK, these are the commonly-used safety techniques that you could employ in your quarry site:

Regular safety drills

All quarry workers must participate in regular safety drills to prepare them for emergencies. The beauty of conducting regular (and in some cases, unannounced) safety drills is that workers will become used to the appropriate actions required during specific emergencies. That way, they could respond faster and better when the actual emergencies occur. Regular drills also lower the possibilities of injuries and death at quarry sites.

Installation of signage

Warning signs in quarries are as indispensable as drills and PPEs. As such, your quarry site should have ample and proper signage installed in conspicuous places.

Your warning signs should be visible from afar and should ideally be made of reflective materials, especially if you have night-time operations. More importantly, your workers should be properly oriented on their meanings and the actions that are expected on their end to make the signage effective in deterring workplace accidents.

Quarry signs should be easy to source since there are companies that manufacture signage specifically for quarry sites.

Strict enforcement of PPE use

Personal protective equipment (PPEs) provide great protection to quarry workers. PPEs include hard hats, work gloves, reflective vests, face masks, and the like. That said, safety officers and supervisors must strictly enforce wearing complete PPEs within quarry premises to prevent or reduce the risks of bodily harm.

Workers must also be properly oriented to the proper wearing and importance of such PPEs in keeping them protected as they go around the site to do their tasks.

Soil/slope stabilization

Soil nails and ground anchors are excellent means to prevent landslides and rock slides in quarry sites. With such safety nets in place, you can avoid such potentially fatal slides as you operate daily.

You can hire a company that specializes in drilling reinforcing bars and anchors to contain loose or unstable rock and earth. Such a service provider has the right equipment and expertise to install these mitigating structures to make your quarry site safer for all your workers. Keep in mind that your workers' safety while on the site is a top priority.

By following these quarry safety techniques, you wouldn't just prevent accidents or mitigate their negative impacts, you could also offer peace of mind to your workers. So, be sure to take the proactive steps necessary to safeguard your workers and your business.