When Brad Butler paused to ponder extra safety precautions Level Green Landscaping is asked to take at customers’ industrial sites, he couldn’t think of many.
“That’s actually a good thing,” says Butler, manager of corporate safety at Level Green. “Our safety protocols are pretty robust. We already cover most of what site managers want.”
Commercial landscape contractors don’t always understand the extra safety precautions required at industrial and construction sites. These sites often have stricter safety guidelines than landscaping companies do, and need to partner with a commercial landscape contractor that values safety as much as they do.
Here’s a look at industrial safety needs and how your commercial landscape contractor should be flexible, prepared, and ready to meet your safety requirements.
Hard hats aren’t typically standard equipment in the landscaping business. But sometimes they’re crucial.
“Construction areas always have multiple vendors doing work at the same time,” Butler says. “That requires extra safety measures, like hard hats.
“Our guys might be planting flowers, but if they’re doing that while signage or lighting is also going in, they wear hard hats, even if that job doesn’t normally require it.”
When Level Green crews use weed eaters around solar panels in a solar field the commercial landscape contractor maintains, they have to crawl beneath the panels, Butler says, “so they put on hard hats.”
“Personal protection equipment is the biggest thing,” Butler says. “Site managers want to see that it’s being supplied and it’s being used.”
Level Green takes PPE seriously, Butler says.
Personal protection equipment for each crew member includes earplugs, safety glasses, and dust masks. While some commercial landscape contractors charge employees for them, Level Green supplies them to our crews for free.
Bright, high-visibility “safety yellow” vests and company shirts add to visibility and safety.
Each vehicle has first aid kits and fire extinguishers on board.
“If hard hats are required, we wear them,” Butler says. “If chaps or gloves are needed to do a job, we’re already wearing them.”
“Industrial site managers need to make sure their landscaping company isn’t just saying the words, ‘We’re safe,’” Butler says. “They need to see it in the field, so they make sure they’re working with a company that rewards good safety and holds employees accountable.”
One safety protocol site managers will notice about Level Green crews is their meticulous habit of circling their trucks before driving away.
Crews place safety cones around their parked trucks as a reminder to thoroughly check the area before driving away.
Level Green owns hundreds of bright yellow safety cones and orange safety triangle markers, to use on job sites to section off areas and for visibility when vehicles are parked along the street.
“That circle inspection of trucks is especially important on industrial sites,” Butler says. “You don’t know what else has been going on around you.”
“We’ve gone fully mobile in reporting any hazards or safety incidents,” Butler says.
Crew leaders in the field use their mobile phones to immediately report any hazards or incidents.
“Maybe a window was broken and there’s broken glass on the site,” Butler says. “Maybe someone came out and said last time we were here we damaged their car.
“That information goes out in real time to everybody who needs to know,” he says, from account managers to branch managers to upper management.
“Everybody gets the information all at once,” he says. There’s no waiting for reports to filter from crew leaders to account managers to operations managers.
Sometimes industrial safety protocol changes without warning. Your commercial landscape contractor should be ready to comply.
“During Covid, some site managers had spacing restrictions and mask restrictions that went beyond Centers for Disease Control recommendations,” Butler says, “and we were happy to comply.”
Safety is a top priority at Level Green, including multiple layers of protocol designed to keep people and properties safe.
When you ask for any extra safety precautions for your industrial site, they become part of our standard procedure on your property.
Our comprehensive safety program includes equipment and safety training and weekly meetings for crews that cover timely safety topics. Managers meet, too, to review any safety-related incidents, from a broken window to a physical injury, and come up with a plan to prevent it from happening again.
Butler keeps a detailed spreadsheet that records every safety-related incident.
It’s the safe thing — and the right thing — to do.
Level Green provides commercial property maintenance for properties throughout Washington DC, Maryland and parts of Virginia. Level Green Landscaping services commercial properties like office buildings, homeowner associations (HOAs), mixed use, condominiums, retail, institutions and government entities.
Contact us today at 202-544-0968 or by filling out our form online.
We’d love to hear from you.
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