Graycor Southern, a leading mechanical and general contractor, recently completed an innovative safety training event at a client project site in North Carolina. The company built unique onsite labs for training employees on fall protection, dropped objects and tie off points.

“This was an impactful demonstration of the effects of objects falling from heights and the importance of a dropped object prevention plan,” said Dave Henning, Graycor Southern’s on-site safety manager.

As the increasing awareness of dropped objects on construction sites continues to grow, Graycor Southern wanted to show the impact of a dropped object through a “realistic way” not just through custom ways of educating our professional craft. The demonstration was intended to reinforce the importance of focusing on dropped objects while working on construction sites.

“I’ve been doing construction for 30 years and I haven’t seen a drop object demonstration like this. I’ve seen plenty of the Fall Protection demonstrations, but not dropped objects,” said one craft professional.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Graycor Southern’s vice president and general manager, Shawn Buchanan said, “We designed the mobile lab to serve dual purposes: the main focus was to train on dropped objects and tie-off points, and meet the requirements for the NCCER basic and advanced rigging requirements. According to Buchanan, the company will take the mobile lab from site-to-site to advance the skills of the company’s riggers.

“Being able to show the actually impact of a dropped object is a lot more meaningful to our craft professionals.  When we stop an entire job site to educate our people on hazards it really reinforces that safety is our number one priority,” said John Paul White, Graycor Southern’s safety director.

Graycor Southern also built a fall protection lab that can be used on project sites to provide hands-on training on the fall protection requirements for any site and the specific fall protection equipment used on that site.  The hands-on training allows Graycor Southern to evaluate the effectiveness of orientation training and allows craft professionals to learn, and also demonstrate competency when it comes to fall protection.

“We wanted to build the fall protection lab to have the ability to provide hands-on training and verify the proficiency of our craft professional when it comes to the use of using fall protection, “said White.