July 3, 2018 Construction Firms Urged to Upgrade Safety

One of the UK’s leading suppliers of two way radios is advising construction companies on how to improve health and safety protocols.

Brentwood Communications believes that with recent advances in technology, two way radio can now play a bigger role than ever in boosting safety management, both in terms of accident prevention and coordinating effective responses in emergencies.

Brentwood’s managing director James Miller said: “We have been supplying two way radio to industry for more than 40 years and we have seen a lot of progress in the technology. However, the changes we’ve seen in the past few years have been unprecedented.

“This is great news for operators in construction and other heavy industries, as today’s feature-rich digital radios provide an excellent range of tools for safety management.

“The drawback is that the speed of change has been so rapid it has been hard for businesses to keep up. Many firms are still running legacy systems perhaps not even aware that there are new options that would help them run more efficient, safer operations.”

Brentwood is the two way radio supplier of choice for high profile UK construction firms including Taylor Wimpey, Costain, Barratt Homes and Mace. They have installed communication systems on a number of major projects, including the building of The Shard in London, Europe’s tallest building.

The company is highlighting four areas in which modern digital two way radios boost health and safety management on construction sites:

Better coverage

Construction sites can cover large areas. To be sure you are monitoring the well-being of workers at all times, you want to be certain that your radio network provides a clear signal across the site

As well as having a more powerful output than traditional analogue radios, which increases coverage area, modern digital two way radios offer a number of options for extending range even further. Like analogue radios, they can be linked to a repeater unit to improve signal efficiency. Using IP technology, it is also now possible to link separate networks into one using WiFi, offering a solution for ensuring coverage across even the largest sites.

Audio clarity

Construction sites can be busy, noisy places, with lots of heavy machinery in operation and vehicles moving around. Machinery and vehicles are two of the main reasons why it is important that messages can get through loud and clear first time, every time, for example to warn a work team that a crane is about to unload in a certain area.

To make sure every message is clearly understood, modern digital handsets come with intelligent audio features as standard, which ‘clean’ the signal of interference from background noise, and also adjust volume in response to environmental noise levels.

Alert features

The latest two way radio models come packed with features designed specifically to help with health and safety monitoring, and also with emergency response protocols. An emergency button is now more or less standard on every industry-class model, instigating a network-wide alert with a single touch.

Other common features include Man Down, which uses motion sensors to detect if an operator has a fall and issues an automated alarm. Lone Worker is a monitoring system requiring workers who are working in a particularly high-risk area to check back in with base at fixed intervals. If they fail to do so, an alert is raised.

GPS tracking

One of the biggest jumps forward in the safety protocols included with two way radio is GPS location tracking. Combined with the alert features discussed above, this means that not only can alarms be raised quickly / automatically in an emergency situation, the source of the alert can also be pinpointed accurately. This ensures help can reach a stricken colleague as quickly as possible.

James Miller, Managing Director of Brentwood Communications.

Contact:
Phone: 01245 403528
Email: info@brentwoodradios.co.uk

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