Are manholes a gap in your safety practices?

You’re probably well steeped in safety protocols like traffic routing, reflective clothing and ensuring your crews are trained to safely operate construction equipment. But often the devil is in the details, and sometimes the “tried and true” processes we tend to take for granted result in preventable job site accidents and injuries. According to the Federal Highway Administration, more than 20,000 workers are injured each year in road construction work zones, and 35% of those are injuries due to contact with objects or equipment. These injuries can not only lead to lost time, they can also result in higher insurance premiums.

With the challenges of hiring and keeping crews these days, there are a lot more new and less experienced workers in road construction, and this is upping the ante. 34.9% of new, untrained workers in the construction industry are injured during their first year on the job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

What are the weak points in my road construction safety?

They might be more common than you realize. It’s essential to look at every aspect of your road construction and repair processes to ensure your methods are up to date. That includes re-examining “how it’s always been done” to make sure you are using the safest, simplest and most effective materials and methods. (BTW, it’s easy to assume “new” means “more complex,” but that isn’t always true – sometimes a new way of doing things is actually a lot easier and simpler than the old-fashioned way.)

One often overlooked area to examine is your process for installing and leveling manholes.

It’s easy to overlook because manholes and other utility vault covers are designed to be relatively inconspicuous. In paving, they’re often one of the last considerations. The fact is, the way most manholes and precast concrete tops and grates are installed and leveled involves practices that haven’t been significantly updated in the last 100 years – and those outdated practices could be putting your construction workers and your bottom line at risk.

Typically, manholes are leveled to the road surface by having crew members lift heavy cast iron tops with prybars as other workers insert bricks, clay wedges or wood shims by hand to set the manhole covers as close to grade as possible (which can be challenging given the inaccuracies inherent in the shimming process).

For installation of precast concrete tops and grates, the lifting is often done with excavators or cranes, and the tops, which can weigh upwards of 1500 pounds or more, are suspended from chains while workers attempt to set them to finished grade by hand-placing shims. It often takes multiple attempts to achieve a level that is close to the correct grade, and every attempt compounds the risk of injury from crushing and pinching of hands and arms or from contact with heavy blocks of swinging concrete.  

Crushing injuries are one of U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) fatal four incidents, and “caught-in” or “caught-between” hazards are one of the leading causes of death and injury in the construction industry.[1] OSHA defines these as injuries resulting from a person being squeezed, caught, crushed, pinched or compressed between two or more objects or between parts of an object. That’s why OSHA requires the use of “special hand tools for placing and removing material without the operator placing a hand in the danger zone.”

According to Beth Stinson, vice president for Education Operations at the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) in the May 23, 2022 issue of For Construction Pros, “Many crushing injuries in road construction are a result of having inexperienced workers on a job site or the use of rigged-up tools, such as chains to lower heavy objects or any type of ‘shim’ typically used to raise objects, like manhole covers, to grade. By using products on the market with clear specifications and prefabricated parts, road construction crews will be able to greatly reduce their risk of injuries on the job.”

When’s the last time your crew leveled a manhole without putting hands in the danger zone?

With all the prying, lifting and shimming going on, it’s not surprising that working on manholes and utility fixtures can easily lead to hand-crushing, pinching and breaking – as well as back injuries – as crews attempt to raise or lower utility covers to grade using outdated methods.

Of course, safety is the top concern for your crews, but manhole-related injuries are also serious business. With high risk comes high insurance premiums – for contractors, construction management firms, utilities and municipalities. As an employer in the construction industry, you already pay more than twice the average worker’s compensation costs as compared to employers in all other industries. If you don’t get newer processes, specifications and safety practices in place, the situation is only going to get worse.

Shims are not safe, secure or efficient. Without specs for engineered solutions, shims will probably be used.

Your engineering specifications indicate the surface level of the road. But once it gets out to the field, there is no random shim that can precisely ensure that every manhole and utility cover is perfectly flush with the road surface. Shimming takes time, putting your workers’ hands and fingers at risk the longer they try to achieve a close-as-possible level.

Contrast this with newer, engineered solutions like RimRiser’s bolt- and screw-adjusted manhole rings and precast concrete tops that provide an extremely precise degree of accuracy while also eliminating the risk to hands and arms from placing shims under heavy objects. With our solution, the cast iron rings and precast tops are premade with the capability to use specially engineered screws that can be easily turned from above with a single ratchet or screw gun. This allows the tops to be quickly leveled exactly to specification by one or two workers without the use of machinery, prybars or shims. Rather than carrying around buckets of different sized shims (or trucks full of different sized leveling rings, which is another alternative), RimRiser’s screws are uniform in size and easy to carry in a pocket. And with fewer crew members involved in each installation, you save time and money while keeping your workers out of harm’s way.

How many manholes are we talking about here?

Manholes and other utility covers are commonly situated as close together as every 200 to 300 feet in a suburban area and up to 20 manholes or more in a single city center block! And the future calls for even more, as roads are re-paved and repaired. With increasingly erratic weather patterns, more utilities and services are being built or moved underground to protect them. And city beautification projects often involve removing utilities from view – making more manholes and more manhole-related injuries inevitable.

With so many manholes in your present and your future, it’s essential that your road crews be made aware of common dangers of working around underground utilities. Ensure that your systems and practices are upgraded to protect everyone involved. When proper guidelines and methods are in place, safety issues stemming from manhole and utility cover placement and leveling can be largely prevented.

Here are four key ways to improve safety in manhole construction and leveling:

1) Make sure your crews are aware of common dangers on the job

Whether they’re lifting cast iron manhole rings and covers or working with overhead objects like heavy concrete utility tops and grates, following OSHA’s simple guideline of never putting hands or limbs between objects can save  life and limb. Literally. To help you raise awareness, the American Road and Transportation Business Alliance (ARTBA) has published guidelines and tools that can be posted at your job sites to inform workers of the hazards of “crushed by” and “pinned between” hazards.

2) Employ training and safety procedures

When you have inexperienced workers on your crew, or a lack of standardized systems in place, everyone – including your seasoned pros – can be exposed to a higher risk of injury on the job. Make sure your crews aren’t overlooking safety procedures specific to underground fixtures and that every worker is educated in proper safety practices. ARTBA and the Transportation Development Foundation have published a Safety Center website where you can access training programs, events, tools and other safety resources for road construction crews.

3) Update your process with specs and engineered solutions

Safety starts much earlier than the job site. Upgrading your engineering specifications to incorporate RimRiser’s safe and simple solutions for utility cover leveling creates both safer work sites and smoother, more durable road surfaces. When you provide the right specs and engineered solutions, it helps ensure accurate installation. And your road crews benefit because it makes their work easier, faster and safer. They get it right the first time and you end up with a road surface that will last longer (and cost less money in the long run, both in insurance premiums and re-paving and repair costs later).

4) Prioritize manhole installation safety

How many times has manhole rehab or installation been last on the list of priorities for your asphalt layers? When it is de-prioritized – almost as an afterthought – it pushes workers to move more quickly to level them while paving crews wait. Now consider the added issue of having inexperienced crews on that rush job with minimal supervision and outdated methods of installation. That’s a recipe for injuries. It’s time to raise the profile of this work while leveling the profile of your utility covers!

Using more modern methods of leveling, like RimRiser, can significantly reduce the number of workers required onsite and the time required to level these heavy objects – while also reducing injuries.

Taking these simple steps can offer significant benefits, both for crews and the companies and municipalities that employ them.

You don’t have to take our word for it.

“Leveling manhole covers before RimRiser was barbaric. Literally, it involved adding shims or little rocks and packing in concrete, while fighting gravity the whole time; that is how we’ve all done it for 100 years,” said Austin Maygra, foreman for Tapani Inc. “Because of the ease and efficiency of RimRiser, we now actually enjoy the leveling process. I can get the manhole cover up to grade by myself and my guys can come back and finish the job. Now we have the tools to get the project done in a professional way without back strain or crushed fingers. All the heavy lifting is being done by a simple power tool and the RimRiser bolt system.” 

Fewer injuries = lower insurance premiums.

According to Justin Cumnock of Anchor Insurance and Surety, Inc., “When the product specs are in place and road construction crews implement safer practices, it improves efficiency, lowers overall project costs and reduces workers compensation injuries. And that can translate into a lower workers compensation Experience Modification Rate (EMR) factor and the potential to reduce insurance premiums down the road.” 

There’s a direct correlation between the products used for things like leveling manholes and other utility covers and reducing costs across the board. When insurance providers are paying attention to these important details, you can be sure there’s a business case to be made.  

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RimRiser-ready cast iron frames/rings and precast concrete tops/lids provide a simpler, safer and more accurate way to precisely level civil infrastructure in paved surfaces. For more information, contact us at info@rimriser.com or call 360-833-2277.

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[1] 1 OSHA Training Institute, “Struck-By Hazards Instructor Guide.” https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/struckby_ig.pdf