Focus Four wallet cards are employee safety reminders



Late last fall, District 3 Safety Compliance Officer (SCO) Eric Copeland came up with a simple way to remind employees about common safety issues – wallet-sized "Focus Four" cards. The cards were quickly adopted and have been distributed throughout the department by other SCOs and ITD Safety Manager Randy Danner.

OSHA identified the four leading causes of fatalities in the construction industry. These Fatal Four hazards are Electrical, Fall, Struck-By, and Caught-In/Caught-Between. The four are responsible for 56% of construction worker deaths. One side of the card depicts those Fatal Four.

"Each of these hazards can be found on almost every job site that ITD employees work on," Copeland explained. "It is our hope that we can reduce the risk to ourselves and our co-workers by bringing the Focus Four to the front of our awareness on a daily basis."

The other side of the card lists the 11 common sources of employee injury.

"Along with the Focus Four, we have noticed that it's easy to miss potential safety hazards while we are setting up for our daily tasks in the field," Copeland said. "We added the 11 most common sources of injuries in construction to help us identify and mitigate these hazards before work starts for the day."

"We decided to design and print a wallet-sized card that could go with our badge or on our vehicle key chain," he added.

Published 06-01-18