Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/521868
May 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 16 reporter | by Equipment World staff I f you're one of the many who scoffed at the idea of a commercially-viable autonomous truck, or at best fi gured such technology was years – if not decades – away, you need to reset your expectations. Last month at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway out- side Las Vegas, Nevada, Freightliner, in conjunction with the State of Nevada launched the Inspiration, a new, autonomous truck, that thanks to legislative steps taken by Nevada is completely legal to operate Nevada highways. The Inspiration is not yet available for purchase and is still in its testing phase. But it will no longer be rel- egated to test-tracks and cordoned-off test roads. This truck will run in, mix with, cruise with public traffi c all throughout the state of Nevada as Freightliner engineers test its capabilities and refi ne its operating parameters. The conventional wisdom was that Europe would be the proving ground for autonomous truck technology and development. But Martin Daum, CEO of Daimler Trucks, said Nevada's bold move prompt- ed Freightliner to aggressively target North America as the new autono- mous truck frontier. – Jack Roberts Freightliner unveils fi rst autonomous truck that will roam U.S. highways legally A new construction safety program is increasing awareness about the specifi c working condi- tions on individual jobsites. Dubbed B-SAFE (Building Safety For Everyone), the program was developed over the last few years by Har- vard student Emily Sparer who graduated in May with a doctorate in occupational safety. The program was suc- cessfully implemented on various Boston jobsites with at least one company looking at installing the program across all of its jobsites. Sparer began working on the program in order to bring workers a bit more stability while working on jobsites that can undergo extreme day-to-day changes. "What struck me about construction sites is how dynamic and fl uid they are," she says. "You can be on a site one day talking to people, and come back the next day to fi nd a giant hole or a wall in the spot where you were standing. Safety systems need to be designed for an environment that is constantly evolving." Sparer said the problem on most jobsites isn't a lack of attention to safety, it's that the knowledge and data gathered isn't being disseminated widely enough among workers. While inspections and daily safety checks are fairly common on many job- sites, Sparer said she wanted to encourage the man- agers doing these checks to begin giving reports to the foremen of each crew working at the site. In her testing of the program, Sparer provided a weekly narrative report on safety conditions to foremen who then shared the information with their workers. She said the reports increased discussion over working conditions and found that the pro- gram gave many workers their fi rst positive feed- back for paying attention to safety. How it works A kick-off program is held on the site to explain the program before the site establishes a threshold site safety score. The score is calculated by the program's manager at the site based on safety scores at sites of similar size. Once the score is established, the B-Safe manager begins making weekly site safety assessments. These assessments include all trades and tasks on the site and are done using Predictive Solutions software. (The B-SAFE site says the program can be run using other software if preferred.) Once an assessment is completed, scores are calcu- lated for each trade, task and sub-contractor on the site and are distributed to all safety mangers and foremen within 24 hours. The scores are then displayed on posters around the site in order to encourage a bit of friendly competition between the crews. Should the site's cumulative monthly score exceed the score established at the beginning of the program, all workers on the site are treated to a free lunch or another reward of the B-Safe program manager's choosing. – Wayne Grayson B-SAFE: New program improves construction safety by updating workers weekly on jobsite conditions