Dive Brief:
- A Maryland contractor is partnering with a nonprofit and North Carolina State University to better understand upgraded protection for construction workers’ heads, per a release shared with Construction Dive.
- Forest Hill-based Comer Construction, which performs subdivision work for commercial and residential builds, will participate in a pilot program to evaluate the practical considerations, effectiveness and feasibility of implementing Type II helmets on active jobsites. The selection stems from a grant to N.C. State from the Job-Site Safety Institute, a nonprofit.
- The program’s goal is to better understand how to pivot from traditional hard hats to Type II safety helmets, which stakeholders say more effectively protect workers’ heads.
Dive Insight:
JSI was founded in 2014 by leadership from Raleigh, North Carolina-based Builders Mutual Insurance. The initiative stemmed from wanting to ensure companies had all the tools necessary to keep workers safe, said Jodi Vedelli, chief strategy officer at Builders Mutual.
“People are still getting injured on jobsites,” Vedelli told Construction Dive. “There was this feeling of, ‘What more can we do?’”
Since its founding, JSI has awarded $1.13 million in research and education grants to partners addressing safety challenges across the construction industry…