At GPRS, we say, “Safety is always on our radar.”
When we arrive on site, consult with stakeholders, or provide expert education to our partners, safety is always our #1 goal. Our passion for keeping workers safe around underground utilities like electrical, gas, water, and telecom lines extends past when the job is over or the day ends. So, we began asking ourselves, “How can we expand our reach to teach more people about job site safety?”
In 2023, we’ve already found quite a few ways to get our safety message to the construction industry and our surrounding communities.
One of the cornerstones of our safety outreach is Concrete Sawing & Drilling Safety Week #CSDSW, which GPRS sponsors exclusively, nationwide. Since its inception in 2019, we’ve sent experts in concrete cutting, coring, and imaging into the field to train over 30,000 workers on the best practices to keep individuals and teams safe.
In 2020, we became a national co-sponsor of Construction Safety Week #CSW. CSW is the first week of May, and three years later, we’ve trained some 60,000 workers on the hazards associated with construction work.
GPRS goes far beyond the “slips, trips, and falls” that OSHA categorizes as the biggest concerns for construction workers, and expands our talks into equally dangerous, and perhaps more difficult to discuss, topics. For instance, our CSDSW talks this year included the incurable scourge of silicosis and how wearing proper PPE and taking environmental precautions around open manholes can mitigate risk for workers and the community.
And our CSW talks discussed two often overlooked topics in the construction safety community: heat stroke and its climate-related risks on site and the effects of worker mental health on safety and preparedness on the job.
If all we did each year to expand our safety messages were these two events, we’d reach approximately 25,000 annually, in addition to those our 400 Project Managers interact with daily on jobs.
As you may have already guessed, we won’t be satisfied until we reach every worker on every site in the U.S.
When your goal is 100% subsurface damage prevention, and your standard for subsurface visualization is 10 times the NDT accepted average, you’ve got to do more. So, we are: doing more, talking more, writing more, educating more… because even one life lost to a preventable concrete construction accident or utility strike is one too many.
Here are just a few of the places you can find GPRS talking about how we view our commitment to safety:
Industrial Safety & Hygiene Podcast: Chris Moore with Benita Mehta
GPRS Senior Vice President of Internal Operations, Chris Moore, explains to ISHN Chief Editor, Benita Mehta why GPR remains the gold standard for both utility locating and concrete imaging, the important differences between public and private utility locating services, and how one of our internal mottos saves lives. “When in doubt, mark it out.”
Digging Safely: How to Avoid Underground Utilities
WTOL News 11 visited our Silica Road training location to ask GPRS Marketing Associate Christian Wagenhauser and Western U.S. Sales Director Dave Mulcahey how property owners and excavators can stay safe on site as “construction season” ramps up in the Midwest in conjunction with National Safe Digging Month in April.
Video Pipe Inspection Expands Nationally
Cleaner Magazine featured GPRS Video Pipe Inspection (VPI) Services and highlighted how in just a few short years, we’ve expanded our NASSCO-certified, national footprint by deploying state of the art technology in the hands of SIM-trained Project Management specialists like Adam Green and VPI Director Kyle Humphries.
Water Online Highlights GPRS Tech Know-How
Water Online talked to VPI Sr. Project Manager Andy Jurski about how Envirosight equipment like the Rovver and RovverXX help GPRS meet unusual customer needs when it comes to water and sewer scopes. "A lot of our jobs are locating related, so we really rely on the sonde," he explains. "If we find an issue in the line or an offset joint, we're able to tell the customer what it is and where it is," Jurski reported, along with providing specifics on some of the more challenging aspects of non-destructive water and sewer line testing.
GPRS Project Managers Dig Deeper
Dig Different Magazine spoke with GPRS Field Support Director, Jamie Althauser about how we view safety in the field with a consultative approach for our clients. We empower our Project Managers to dig deeper, to go above and beyond the stated scope of the job, so that we provide more than what the client asked for. We’re not satisfied until we provide the client what they need. “They [PMs] are not just techs with a goal of getting a job done. They are managers building relationships with clients.”
What Lies Beneath
Construction Executive Magazine likens the world of private utility locating to the “Wild Wild West.” If that’s true, then GPRS Project Managers are the sheriff, coming out to clean up the mess of an unknown private utility locate and leave behind a complimentary PDF and .KMZ file that details the location and even the depth of all your private utilities. As Eastern U.S. Sales Director, Adam Yunker and Field Support Director, Jamie Althauser shared with CE’s Grace Austin, providing elite service sometimes means figuring out how to manage jobs in unusual circumstances.
If you would like a GPRS safety expert to go to work for you, or to visit your project site or offices to provide a specialized “Lunch & Learn,” and to learn more about GPRS’ commitment to national construction site safety, contact us today.