Many essential operations and some of the most unique careers can be found in the remotest parts of the world. For example, drillers extract valuable resources on oil rigs in the middle of the ocean while miners search for precious metals that are used to make chips for smart devices.
While these operations are valuable, they pose significant safety challenges. If someone gets injured on the job, the nearest hospital could be hours away. Teams need to develop hospital transportation plans but also need to have procedures in place to stabilize the injured worker.
Your organization can take steps to improve emergency response efforts, no matter how remote your teams are. Create safe work zones with staff who know how to react when something happens. Use this guide to prioritize safety and prevent disruptions to your operations.
1. Conducting Risk Assessments
A risk assessment is an evaluation of all potential hazards on a jobsite. Every job comes with risks, whether your team member trips when walking down the stairs or spills chemicals that cause severe burns. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OHSA) has a guide for conducting these assessments to help you identify potential hazards.
Performing routine assessments in remote sites can help your team work in a safer environment by allowing you to identify areas where safety could be improved. Prevention is always better than reaction when it comes to keeping your remote teams safe. Small upgrades, like investing in additional visibility gear or fixing broken railings, can significantly improve jobsite safety.
2. Getting a Second Opinion
When conducting your risk assessment, hire an objective third party to review your jobsite. You might not notice certain risks or overlook creative fixes to hazardous problems. Hiring an expert safety specialist can give you a clear view of potential risks.
Search for industry-specific inspectors as you look to hire one of these objective auditors. They will understand how your remote jobsite should operate.
3. Assessing Efforts by Similar Organizations
Learn from others in your field when improving your safety standards. You can reactively follow safety updates after a major crisis or proactively learn what similar organizations are doing by keeping up with the latest trends.
OSHA is a good place to start. It regularly hosts webinars and live events to cover various safety topics. You can also look into industry-specific conferences that have safety-centric discussions.
Every accident in your industry is a learning opportunity. A July 2024 accident on an Oklahoma oil rig injured four employees and was considered rare for the county. Local fire teams and company leadership are working to implement safety standards so it doesn’t happen again.
4. Identifying Unique Hazards
Every jobsite has unique hazards, which means your organization cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach. A mining company in the Arctic Circle will have to worry about hypothermia while a similar operation in the desert will have to protect staff from extreme heat.
Consider your jobsite’s unique challenges and the steps you should follow to protect your team. If you have a global company with jobsites in different remote environments, you might need to create dedicated safety processes for each location.
5. Understanding Local Response Capabilities
As you establish your remote operations, get to know your local medical and fire teams’ response times and capabilities. This will help you determine whether you need to keep your own response teams on staff if the local departments are too far away or their resources are inadequate. Here are a few questions to ask:
- How far is the nearest hospital and how will your team get there?
- Does the nearest hospital have an adequate emergency room, ambulances, and a helicopter response service?
- How long will it take the nearest fire department to arrive when called?
- Does the fire department have the right equipment to address large fires or chemical fires?
For example, airfields and oil and gas facilities need foam-based fire suppressants, which means water will not suffice. If your local fire department doesn’t have a foam system in place, you will need to supply your own.
6. Create Clear, Specific Standards
Not only do you need to develop thorough safety standards for your remote sites, but they also need to be easy to understand. Every employee or contractor, regardless of their native language or education level, should be able to understand how to stay safe.
OSHA can assist with this as well. The organization has worksheets and best practices for communicating safety expectations. A few ways to better communicate include:
- Share information with images and diagrams to clarify statements.
- Create videos that reinforce any in-person training.
- Produce safety materials in multiple languages and content types to accommodate employees with disabilities.
- Make sure employees always have access to safety training information.
Additionally, make safety a core value. When management prioritizes safety, employees will value it as well.
7. Regularly Train Employees
Your leadership sets the standard for employee training. By regularly scheduling safety training, you can keep information fresh and help your employees work responsibly. OSHA says safety training should occur annually, but you may want to schedule quarterly or monthly reviews during your team meetings. Whenever an employee gets promoted, like moving from a fleet driver to an offroad driver, they should receive safety training related to their new role.
Properly training workers in remote sites is challenging, especially if you hire contractors and temporary workers. However, safety training needs to be a priority for anyone who sets foot on your jobsite, no matter how long they’re there.
8. Develop Site Self-Sufficiency
Remote teams are self-sufficient when they respond to problems on their own, like an onsite medic responding to an injury instead of waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
There are multiple ways to run a self-sufficient organization. For example, you can invest in diesel-powered onsite emergency vehicles that transport injured workers if the nearest hospital is far away. This way you won’t rely on local EMS response. Investing in quality engines like Cummins 855 engines can also extend the life of your emergency transport and fire trucks.
Self-sufficiency is essential for remote sites because they don’t have access to resources like hospitals and fire stations. If there’s an emergency, your team has to respond on its own.
9. Be Aware of Useful Resources
There are plenty of resources you can tap into if you want to improve remote site safety. Several OSHA resources have been mentioned in this guide, many of which are free. You can also attend industry conferences that discuss safety best practices and opportunities.
If you have access to local EMS and fire services at your jobsite, consider conducting training sessions with them so they can respond quickly during an emergency. If medical and fire teams know exactly where to go and what to do, they can respond faster.
10. Implement Backup Energy and Communication Options
Evaluate the potential to lose energy at your remote site and what it could mean for your staff and external communications. For example, if a hurricane hits an off-shore oil rig, the power could be out for days. If someone gets injured, there’s no way to call for help.
Communications are a key part of your safety efforts. A few useful resources to invest in include:
- Backup generators to support communications and essential systems.
- Walkie-talkies for onsite communications.
- Satellite radio systems for external communications.
In the same way that you run fire safety drills, test the emergency response systems for when the power goes out. A backup generator without fuel and walkie-talkies with dead batteries are useless to your team.
Several small steps add up when it comes to remote jobsite safety. This is why safety starts as a core value and becomes an everyday practice, whether you are protecting teams in the main office or across the globe.
