Skanska Pilots High-tech Jobsite Hydration Testing in Florida, Arizona

Skanska is popping to cutting-edge hydration testing expertise to maintain staff protected in locations like Miami, the place job website temperatures routinely climb to harmful ranges. 

The MX3 Hydration Testing System, from Austin, Texas-based MX3 Diagnostics, exams both saliva or sweat to indicate a employee’s hydration stage and to suggest how, if wanted, that employee can greatest rehydrate. 

Daimon Perez, EHS director for Skanska’s Florida area, says ailing results from dehydration or warmth stress can come up even earlier than the possibly dehydrated staff start to understand them. 

“With this gear, we have now an correct outcome,” he says. “It’s quite simple to make use of.”

In Florida, three gadgets are within the area, getting used on a weekly foundation to help the agency’s different efforts to beat the warmth, he says, and to assist staff correlate results they’re feeling with onerous information on their hydration ranges. 

MX3 Diagnostics primarily markets the machine to athletes, although its web site contains info on the Occupational Security and Well being Administration’s National Emphasis Program in addition to examples of it being applied on building websites and different workplaces.  

Jarrett Milligan, senior security director with Skanska, says the agency is all the time searching for new applied sciences to accomplice with, “to advance the game.” 

“We think about building tradespeople to be skilled athletes in our trade, and they’re the highest precedence to us out within the area,” he says, noting that an ironworker climbing metal may very well be placing the identical quantity of stress or pressure on their physique as an expert golfer or baseball participant. 

Based on MX3, the testing machine makes use of a handheld electrochemical workstation able to laboratory-grade evaluation in actual time. Outcomes present up on a telephone app, which might preserve a profile for every employee and present their tracked hydration information over time. One machine is ready to cowl a whole job website, Perez says. It’s a pilot mission, nevertheless it’s been instantly profitable, and suggestions has been optimistic, he provides.

“I’ve already had conferences with our medical supplier and stated, ‘Hey, this piece of kit, I feel that is going to wind up turning into a type of requirements,’” Milligan says.

The MX3 Hydration Testing System makes use of take a look at strips to measure a employee’s hydration by way of both sweat or saliva. Including strips, the gadgets price Skanska roughly $1,500 every. Perez says the trouble helps Skanska’s broader efforts at maintaining staff protected within the warmth and helps workers establish when they’re dehydrated.

On its web site, MX3 explains the machine can run two separate exams, one in every of saliva and one in every of sweat, to indicate how a lot and which sort of fluid will greatest replenish misplaced electrolytes, to “take a look at, observe and hydrate successfully to optimize your efficiency and scale back damage.”

Broader Risk of Warmth-related Sickness and Harm

For Skanska, hydration testing goes above and past present rules to maintain staff protected in a warming local weather, and a altering local weather of rules. Extreme warmth could cause a number of well being issues for staff on job websites, from exhaustion to warmth stroke and dying, accidents that correct precautions like shade, relaxation and water can largely forestall, as ENR reported in July with the information of a proposed new rule from OSHA. 

In 2022, OSHA says 43 fatalities had been due particularly to environmental warmth, up from 36 in 2021. Between 2011 and 2022, OSHA stories 479 employee deaths from environmental warmth, averaging 40 per 12 months. Between 2011 and 2020, OSHA stories an estimated 33,890 work-related warmth accidents, cautioning that these figures are seemingly “huge” underestimates of the true determine. 

The brand new proposed rule would require employers to develop an damage and sickness prevention plan to regulate warmth hazards in areas affected by extreme warmth, which it lists as larger than 80°. It contains necessities for ingesting water, and different warmth security measures, with particular consideration to staff unaccustomed to the warmth. Past reminding staff to drink water, it’s making a tradition of consciousness round staying hydrated and protected within the warmth.

“That is serving to you begin to educate your self, and be sure to get correctly hydrated,” says Perez. “It’s not simply getting water within the second.”

The protection program begins the day earlier than, he explains, and with work beginning at 6:30 a.m. to keep away from the worst of the Miami solar, it’s additionally about avoiding an extra of caffeine by way of espresso or vitality drinks within the morning. Up to now it’s gone over nicely with staff, he says.

“They know that Sunday evening they have to be ingesting water or Gatorade,” says Milligan, who has simply begun deploying the machine in Phoenix, the place temperatures topped 100° for greater than 100 consecutive days this 12 months. In Phoenix, they’re additionally utilizing flags to inform staff of warmth threat. A purple flag tells crews to be cautious, and a black flag means cease work.

“There’s no feeling on the job website that anyone is on the market attempting to be disciplinary round this, proper? We’re looking for you,” Milligan says. “We need to just be sure you can come to work and be the perfect you’re at your commerce, your process.”

The machine helps leaders information conversations round warmth security throughout the board, too, incorporating different efforts just like the flag system, cooling facilities and even hydrating popsicles. Skanska additionally employs emergency medical technicians or doctor assistants on practically all initiatives, Perez says, and the MX3 gives them with a instrument to assist them handle staff’ well being on a day-to-day foundation as they stroll job websites.

“We’re increasing utilization within the close to future, however the reception has been actually good,” Perez says. “They see that we care. It’s principally our security tradition: take care of life … we offer the suitable info to allow them to make the suitable determination.”