Hard hats are synonymous with construction. From emojis to motivational posters to icons like Bob the Builder, the quickest way to identify construction workers has been via their brightly colored headgear.

But, some contractors have begun a shift in the name of safety: swapping hard hats for helmets, which they say better protect workers.

"It's interesting that in construction, we have an innovative bunch of problem solvers who are out there everyday solving issues,” said Brian Jones, chief operating officer for Lexington, Kentucky-based Gray Construction. “But with the hard hat, the first plastic one was 1960, and it's largely the same today. So 60 years later, [we’ve had] zero innovation when it comes to the hard hat.”

In addition to Gray, major players in the industry, such as Clark and DPR, made the shift to helmets years ago. Despite some worker resistance to a new type of personal protective equipment, construction leaders who have made the switch have said it was the right decision, and are now mandating their use from workers, trade partners and subcontractors.

What’s the difference?

“Just like technology has afforded great leaps in cordless tools, laser levels and robotics, the hard hat as a personal protection tool has also seen great improvements in design, suspensions, materials — leather, aluminum, plastic and carbon fiber — and more,” said Greg Sizemore, vice president of health, safety, environment and workforce development for Associated Builders and Contractors. 

Traditional hard hats are Type I safety compliant: They protect workers from falling objects landing directly on top of the wearer’s head. Type II compliant helmets, on the other hand, also have padding to protect from impact on the sides of the head, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 

This makes helmets ideal protection against falls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Falls, slips and trips killed 390 construction workers in 2021, more than any other cause, according to the most recent data available.

Protecting the head from both the sides and the front can make a big difference when a worker falls, by lessening the blow that could cause a traumatic brain injury, according to the CDC.

Often, head injuries result from slips, trips or falls from 6 feet or less — meaning they could happen to anyone on the jobsite, regardless of the work they perform, according to Ryan Barnes founder and CEO at Studson, a Lake Oswego, Oregon-based helmet provider.

Lateral impacts to the side of the head — such as those from falls or sports activities — can cause rotational accelerations in the brain, which can lead to concussions, according to the CDC. Type II headgear can help prevent that.

A November report from NIOSH published on the CDC website found the construction industry has the greatest number of both fatal and nonfatal work-related TBIs among U.S. industries. From 2003 to 2010, 2,210 construction workers died as a result of a TBI (or about 2.6 per 100,000 full time equivalent workers). 

“Now the transition to the hard helmet from the hard hat is gaining ground, and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Sizemore said.

Making the change

Gray Construction began the process of swapping its hard hats to helmets about four years ago, when Jones attended an event in Washington, D.C.

There, Jones said he heard an owner of a structural engineering company claim that, had a helmet been used at the time of a jobsite collapse, it could have prevented a fatality or traumatic brain injury.

“That was so impactful for me,” he said.

Construction helmets currently cost more than hard hats, due to the smaller number of suppliers, Jones said. With time, he predicts costs will go down, which will lead to more adoption.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Clark Construction started shifting to helmets in 2017, which it claims made it the first general contractor to do so.

When Clark first adopted helmets, only a few retailers offered them, said Seth Randall, regional safety director for Clark’s Infrastructure Group. Jones said Gray experienced the same. Now, more than 10 national suppliers offer them, Randall said. Retailers offering Type II helmets include Studson, Grainger and Lift.

Education and mandates

Ned Brown, Gray Construction’s safety director, acknowledged that getting workers to consistently wear PPE of any kind can pose a challenge, especially when it’s new. 

"With any change of policy that's going to change the look, the feel, just the overall state of the construction worker, you're going to have a little pushback,” Brown said. Nonetheless, he compared it to a policy Gray enacted six years ago that mandated glove use, which is now an issue-free practice on Gray jobs.

Marc Ness, self-perform work leader for Redwood City, California-based DPR Construction, said “there will always be challenges to PPE compliance.” That’s part of why the contractor planned its shift to helmets over a 12-month period, starting a dialogue with employees and partners.

“Before making any changes, we spent a considerable amount of time educating our teams and piloting different helmets so we could test efficacy and comfort, gathering feedback along the way,” Ness said. “Doing so allowed us to gradually introduce helmets and ensure our employees understood the reasoning behind our decision.”

Even if the change causes some friction, Sizemore said eventually, “craft professionals will embrace what the industry gives them or requires of them, and it is time to begin the journey from hard hats to helmets.”

Better outcomes

Randall said on “multiple occasions” the helmet has made a difference for a worker’s safety.

“We have had employees struck by cars in work zones, fall from heights and slip from walking-working surfaces, but the helmet provided the necessary protection and minimized or eliminated serious head injuries,” Randall said.

As more major contractors mandate them for their workers and trade partners, helmets may increasingly become the norm, or close to it. Jones emphasized the need to continue to evaluate PPE, even iconic headwear that’s existed seemingly forever.

"I think the most important thing is we recognize in the industry that helmets can save lives and prevent injuries in a very dangerous occupation,” Jones said. “And if it prevents one, it's well worth the investment.”

“It happens instantaneously,” said Emil Szotko, construction safety specialist for OSHA’s Region 5 in Chicago.

When a construction trench caves in, the force is powerful and dangerous for those working inside; their fate is often sealed immediately.

“Working in trenches is a very dangerous job, because most of the time, when trenches collapse, it’s a recovery mission, not a rescue,” Szotko told Construction Dive.

The National Utility Contractors Association named June as National Trench Safety month, an opportunity for contractors to find time to host toolbox talks, webinars or safety stand downs to discuss best practices for working in excavations.

In 2016, NUCA narrowed the focus, designating the third week of June for its National Trench Safety Stand Down. Partnering with stakeholders like United Rentals and Sunstate Equipment, NUCA collects materials, hosts webinars and calls for stand downs to focus on trench safety.

Mike Flowers, director of safety, training and education for NUCA, told Construction Dive the resources are for all contractors who work with excavations or underground — encouraging those who could use the information to take the time to assess and review best practices. 

“It’s really just reinforcing why there’s guidelines and why there’s standards and why we need to abide by them,” Flowers said.

National emphasis

In 2022, 39 workers died in trench collapses, more than double the year before, Szotko told Construction Dive. Since Oct. 1, the start of OSHA’s fiscal year 2023, there have been 11 deaths.

 “I don’t want to jinx it, but 11 is still a lot of trench fatalities, given that it is so preventable,” Szotko said. “We need to make sure people know to bench it, shore it, shield it, slope it,” he said, echoing OSHA’s guidance around ways to fortify a trench.

Last summer, OSHA responded to the swift increase in trench deaths with a national emphasis program, designed to raise awareness around excavation hazards. To date this fiscal year, Szotko said the agency has conducted over 1,100 trench inspections with around 530 unsafe conditions abated — meaning they were fixed with proper documentation shared with OSHA.

Sometimes that’s done while the OSHA inspector is still on the job, Szotko said, but there is still room for improvement. Sometimes, that can be enforced after the fact, as a deterrent.

For example, a July 2022 trench collapse that caused the death of one worker resulted in over $375,000 in initial fines for Manchester, Connecticut-based contractor Botticello. In March, the company owner and equipment operator were arrested; they now face criminal charges for manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

The company allegedly failed to provide the required safeguards to prevent the collapse, triggering citations for three willful violations. The contractor had previously faced four serious violations from trenching work in 2015, according to OSHA. Botticello is contesting the fines.

Toolbox talks and refreshers

NUCA chapters across the U.S. will host events for members this week to refresh their safety knowledge. 

At NUCA Nebraska’s chapter, events were hosted early, on June 9, said Janet Seelhoff, president of public relations firm McBride & Associates, which represents NUCA. About 150 attendees listened to a toolbox talk refresher, and chatted with an OSHA representative. The overall takeaway was was “don’t take short cuts, safety should always be top of mind,” Seelhoff said.

Walter Kusmenko is also reinforcing the importance of trench reinforcement.

A field health and safety supervisor for Lodi, New Jersey-based Montana Construction, Kusmenko said he regularly has over 100 workers on 20 jobs. He tries to visit each jobsite to ensure new workers are following proper safety protocols.

“Any new guys, we’ll have a 10- to 15-minute talk everyday next week, visiting three to five jobs a day, get to everyone,” he said. 

Though he takes the initiative to visit jobsites, Kusmenko said it’s important to ensure everyone on the jobsite knows best practices — from the workers in the trench speaking up if a trench isn’t properly protected, to the superintendents keeping a watchful eye.

“It’s good to hear not from me, it’s good for the foreman to contribute and the super to contribute and even the laborers, it’s good for them to ask questions,” Kusmenko said. “Let them do some of the talking.”

Speed kills

Experts told Construction Dive that working too fast is the biggest contributing factor that leads to employees laboring in trenches without the proper protection. 

Whether from the higher ups in the office or the superintendent on the jobsite, pushing to meet schedules can mean skipping vital steps to protect the men and women working in the excavation.

“I think it starts with the company culture,” Szotko said. “They have to care about employees.”

Flowers echoed that sentiment, saying, “someone’s got to have your employees’ back.”

“You can’t compromise safety just to meet a deadline,” he added.

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By KPA

No two companies are alike. Nonetheless, companies with excellent workplace safety records tend to have a few things in common. They don't worry about regulatory fines or astronomical legal fees, for instance. They also tend to pay lower-than-average workers' compensation insurance premiums.

Where the similarities matter most, however, are not in what these companies have achieved, but how they've achieved it. An exceptional safety record doesn't happen by accident. In almost all cases, it's the result of strategic planning, a commitment to safety, and the right habits—a combination of actions and attitudes adopted by people up, down, and across the organization.

In other words, wherever there are few or no incidents, there's a strong safety culture. And like sustainable ecosystems or winning sports teams, all safety cultures share a few basic elements:

1. Dedication to a goal to improve employee health and safety

Safe companies put their EHS initiatives in writing. They frequently start by setting a goal of zero workplace injuries. That goal may sound unrealistic, and merely establishing it doesn't change anything, but it does provide a shape, a direction, and a set of key performance indicators for the hard work ahead. Safe companies aren't deterred by the effort it may take to reduce incidents. And they know the only way to get there is to define what "there" looks like.

2. Adherence to a safety policy within the company and its supply chain

Safe companies create EHS policies and stick to them. If a zero-injury goal is the "why," policies are the "how." Without them in place, there's no way to consistently ensure and measure proper workplace behaviors. From injury prevention to accident reporting, from equipment checks to hazard communication, effective policies cover as many departments, job functions, scenarios, and variables as possible—and they're followed by workers at every stage in the supply chain.

3. Support for the employee health and safety team

Safe companies know that words on paper alone don't change behaviors. That's why they frequently build EHS teams and designate specific roles within those teams. Team members may include one or more safety managers, supervisors, officers, coordinators, advisors, and/or regulatory liaisons, as well as outside legal and risk management consultants. Whatever the team looks like—however small or large—it's only effective if it remains active and garners support from all levels of the organization.

4. Formalized health and safety training for executives or key employees

Safe companies educate and empower their key personnel to become workforce safety leaders. That means everyone engages in the in-depth, ongoing EHS training they need to do their jobs (and make sure others do theirs) properly. In a strong safety culture, workers undergo training in overall EHS policies and procedures as well as any rules specific to their jobs, sites, and equipment. And when regulations, standards, and technologies change, the company institutes new training to keep workers up to date.

5. Use of a health and safety management system

Finally, safe companies stand out for what they don't do. They don't leave EHS management up to a single individual. They don't try to coordinate everything with binders and spreadsheets. Instead, they use technology to ensure compliance, control risk, and monitor organizational performance. By harnessing a health and safety management system, any organization can minimize busywork, close gaps, eliminate uncertainty, and ultimately stimulate better EHS outcomes. Think of it as the backbone of an effective safety culture.

As we alluded to earlier, it can take a lot of work to nurture a safety culture and keep it alive. You don't have to change everything at once. Instead, focus on adopting just a few essential habits: setting safety goals, adhering to policies, supporting your safety team, training your key employees, and using a system to manage it all.

Why not start today?

As of June 1, legislation in Ontario, Canada, required every construction site there to have a naloxone kit. The medication, often known by the brand name Narcan, can temporarily reverse the effects of opioid overdose, and provide a bridge until an affected person can receive medical help. 

Opioid use disorder has hit the construction industry hard: It has higher rates of overdose death than most other sectors. Providing life-saving medication on jobsites, and educating about opioid use in the industry is now becoming more standard in the U.S. as well as Canada.

“It’s an amazing medication that reverses imminent death. There’s no reason not to have it,” said Chris Trahan Cain, executive director of Silver Spring, Maryland-based CPWR — the Center for Construction and Research Training.

Opioid use disorder has affected Americans in every walk of life, but it’s especially prevalent in construction. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,622 people died of drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2021, up nearly 15% from 2020. The CDC also found that overdose deaths involving opioids increased from an estimated 70,029 in 2020 to 80,816 in 2021.

Construction workers are at a greater risk. Studies in both Massachusetts and Ohio show that they are seven times more likely to die of opioid-related overdoses than the average worker. 

“There are a lot of things about construction that don’t necessarily lead to a balanced lifestyle,” said Cain, including lack of paid sick leave, non-traditional work schedules and a high number of soft tissue injuries. 

“We continuously see doctors prescribe opioids for pain in construction workers when it’s probably not the best pain medicine,” she said. Even though legally prescribed, these prescriptions can lead to addiction, as someone can “become dependent on prescribed opioids in a few days.” 

Part of the jobsite’s first aid kit

Although no U.S. state has mandated naloxone kits on jobsites, many general contractors have enacted the practice anyway, with help from public health resources. 

In 2017, based on findings of high opioid overdoses in the construction industry, the Delaware Division of Public Health started putting together a construction-specific plan to tackle opioid use disorder and overdose within the industry. Employer tool kits from the division can help people spot signs of opioid use disorder, give information about the epidemic and also provide training and access to naloxone, said Candace Brady, Delaware’s naloxone program coordinator at the Office of Health Crisis Response. 

Her team also holds trainings on how to use the medication, presents their tool kit at jobsite safety meetings and sets up tables on jobsites with Dunkin’ Donuts, so they can “interact with some of the construction workers,” she said. “The willingness to be part of this program is there.”

So far, they’ve distributed 354 kits. Employers don’t have to report back, so she doesn’t have statistics on if kits have been used, but she knows the partner restaurant program has utilized the kits.

Brady hopes that how to use naloxone will be seen as just another thing that someone would learn to save a life. 

“You’re not just going to walk by someone on the side of the road if they need CPR. You’re just going to do it,” she said. Likewise, this kind of training “needs to be more normalized.” 

Adding naloxone kits to a hard hat order

In 2018, Shawmut Design and Construction started their own education about opioid use disorder when they invited a speaker from Grayken Center for Addiction at the Boston Medical Center to give a keynote address to the company. 

“It really opened our eyes,” said Shaun Carvalho, chief safety officer at Shawmut. Workers responded by saying “that was a great talk, but what can we now do about it?” he recalled.

That led the company to start a pilot program to see how to obtain an adequate supply of naloxone for their jobsites and train workers on how to use it. It was so successful that now managers can order naloxone in the same way that they’d also order hardhats, safety signage and Automated External Defibrillators (AED) machines. It’s not mandatory on every jobsite, Carvalho added. They leave that up to the discretion of project teams. 

Shawmut has also trained all frontline people on their jobsites on how to deploy naloxone, and provides training throughout the year as part of general safety training. 

“The more that we can talk about these things as though they’re just as much of a hazard as falling or electricity, they become part of the normal conversation,” Carvalho said. A worker may not overdose on a jobsite, but they may realize they’re on a slippery slope and need to reach out to someone for help, which can help the worker and prevent an overdose in the first place, he said.

Carvalho said no jobsite has had to use the naloxone yet, but they haven’t had to use AED machines either. That doesn’t mean they’re not necessary. Even if not used, they increase workers’ feelings of safety on the job. 

“We just need to protect everybody. That’s the approach we go back to,” he said.

Dive Brief:

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott approved a wide-ranging law last week that will eliminate mandated water breaks for some state construction workers, beginning Sept. 1. There is not yet a federal standard to protect workers from dangerous heat conditions, and those in construction are especially vulnerable to heat-related risk. 
• The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act rolls back locally enacted protections that go further than state law, including ordinances in Austin, Texas, and Dallas which require 10-minute breaks every four hours for construction workers to hydrate and get a break from the sun, the Texas Tribune reported. Supporters of the law claim it will eliminate cumbersome, varied ordinances across the state.
• The law would also block local laws mandating paid sick leave, and a $15 minimum wage for workers on county construction projects and safety training in Harris County. 

Dive Insight:

Texas had its second-hottest summer on record in 2022, though forecasts indicate this summer won’t be as scorching. Nonetheless, climate change will likely lead to hotter heat waves that last longer.

Forty-two workers died in Texas from heat exposure between 2011 and 2021, the highest amount in the U.S., Texas Tribune reported. Even then, safety experts indicate the number of heat-related fatalities is likely larger than records show, as these deaths can be attributed to other illnesses or stresses.

OSHA is developing a heat standard for workplaces, though the process of doing so takes years of input and fine tuning. In the meantime, the advice from OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety is more rigorous than the local Texas laws: one cup of water every 15 to 20 minutes.

Until it creates the formal standard, the agency has a national emphasis program calling attention to its mantra for beating the heat: “Water, rest, shade.” 

Response to repeal

Geoffrey Tahuahua, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas, told the Texas Tribune rigid rules can encourage contractors to do the minimum to protect workers, rather than empowering them to evaluate each jobsite individually.

On the other hand, David Michaels, head of OSHA from 2009 to 2017 and current professor at George Washington University School for Public Health, told the Tribune that the ultimate responsibility does lie with employers to keep workers safe, yet “they are doing a very poor job.”

Jose Garza, environmental health and safety leader in Austin for Redwood City, California-based DPR Construction, said whenever a safety rule is revoked, contractors still have the responsibility to focus on the safety of workers on the job. Nonetheless, he said DPR found Austin and Dallas’ mandates didn’t do enough.

“The recently passed local ordinance to require rest breaks was absolutely well-intentioned,” Garza said. “In practice, however, we found even those ordinances to not go far enough to keep people safe.”

During last summer’s intense heat, Garza said DPR did intense research and managed to keep workers safe, and in the process, the Austin team discovered prolonged time in the shade was instrumental in lowering workers’ body temperatures. 

Using OSHA and NIOSH guidance as a baseline to decide break frequency helps, but DPR makes intentional decisions as the day wears on, the heat rises and the sun beats down harsher. 

With the law removed by Abbott, Texas contractors must do more to be proactive for worker safety, Garza said.

“We believe we cannot properly do business and keep workers safe without a strategy to ensure workers are protected from heat-related illness,” he said. “We do think, unfortunately, this new law underestimates this need, and we hope people procuring construction services ask how their vendors will account for heat and safety.”

Respondents to a Construction Dive survey called for an industrywide mandate on when to pause work due to toxic air quality caused by wildfire smoke.

Currently, no law or mandate requires individual contractors to halt work due to poor breathing conditions. Neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor OSHA have mandates on when outdoor work should cease due to hazardous air quality, though OSHA did advise contractors to monitor conditions and make decisions in the best interest of safety.

But that guidance isn’t enough, according to Shannon Garrett, business owner of Hage Electric & Construction Services, based in The Dalles, Oregon.

“I am very concerned with how some will react when given choices,” wrote Garrett. “If air quality or heat index are unhealthy, we as an industry need to be more concerned with the health of people than the job timelines.”

Nicholas Fragola, head of safety at Colantonio, a Holliston, Massachusetts-based contractor, wrote “just like if a professional sport is canceled due to bad air quality, we should be thinking about the same thing for our own employees.”

Another contractor based in Austin, Texas wrote an industrywide mandate would seem like something “natural” that OSHA should issue for contractors nationwide. Their company currently does not have a policy, but the recent dangerous air in the Northeast “has raised the discussion.”

While smoky conditions remain relatively rare in the Northeast, contractors in the West deal with wildfire aftermath much more frequently. For this reason, Construction Dive also opened the floor to contractors to share how their firms deal with toxic breathing conditions.

For instance, Hage Electric & Construction Services tracks the air quality index from AirNow.gov. The company then recommends workers use a NIOSH N95 mask if the level exceeds a 151 reading, and requires its use when the level is above 251. Garrett added that Hage always provides workers with these NIOSH N95 masks.

“If workers have sensitivity or comorbidities, we try to find indoor jobs with filtered air [for them,]” wrote Garrett. “Of course, if anyone is uncomfortable with working they would be allowed to discontinue working for the day.”

East Coast contractors employed similar precautions earlier this month too. New York City-based Turner Construction deferred activities on certain projects most adversely affected by poor air quality. Charney Cos., another builder based in New York City, also gave the option for workers to take the day off. Skanska adjusted operations to support the health of trade partners on its project sites in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Nevertheless, until OSHA or the Environmental Protection Agency pass an industrywide mandate, worker safety will continue to fall on the shoulders of each individual contractor.

“The health of our workers is our priority,” wrote Garrett. “If for environmental reasons a job is delayed, [it’s] for their health and also for the success of the job. No one works efficiently if they are breathing in smoke.”