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CRH Canada Excellence Awards
OH&S Excellence Awards
Silver – Dufferin Concrete Ice Bag Breaker-Hopper
Team members: Alejandro Navarro, David Kirk, Robert Sauder, Natalya Danyliw and Brad Goode
Up until very recently, adding bagged ice to concrete loads involved manually cutting ice bags open and dumping them in a conveyor hopper that fed into the truck. This process could be labour intensive
and posed certain ergonomic and injury risks. The team was challenged with designing a device that could further reduce the risk of injuries, fatigue and/or ergonomic hazards caused by the process.
Bronze – Demix Construction
Arm Support System for Dumping Truck
Tailgate
Team members: Maxime Lemire, Régis D’Anjou, Alexandre Grenier and Pascal Bessette
A recurring dangerous situation was observed on construction sites when cleaning the rear doors of dump trucks. Workers often positioned themselves between the dump bed and the hanging tailgate. In the
event of a break in the hydraulic system and a rapid lowering of the dump bed, the workers cleaning the lip would then run the risk of
After exploring a range of alternatives, the team conceived a design that consists of a small hopper built to specification with additional specific elements to adjust to the task at hand. This new process is well adapted to the current delivery method of ice bags in trailers, reduces safety risks and has also helped speed up the process. For our customers, this provides a safer way to cool concrete mix and for our employees it significantly reduces the risks of muscular- skeletal injuries as a result of continuous bending to pick up and drop bags formerly required, and potential
cuts with the use of cutters to open the bags having also been eliminated. This innovation helps also protect the growing revenues from ice, and allows for a potential increase given the significant reduction in the risk and labour intensity of the work.
being trapped between the dump bed and the tailgate.
Following the observation of this situation, workers were prohibited from going into the dangerous zone and were asked to clean the lip of the dump bed using a shovel with a long handle. However, workers had to do it at arm’s length, which provided mixed results. To better address the issue, the idea of having a locking arm was raised. The sole objective was to improve the safety of truckers and mechanics to completely eliminate this potentially dangerous situation. The innovation was developed
in-house, with contributions from both the transport team and the mechanical workshop. It was also certified by a third- party engineer to ensure the safety of truckers and mechanics responsible for performing this maintenance work.
24 | THE CONVEYOR | December 2020