Electrical Contracting News (ECN) May 2017 | Page 42

SPECIAL
FEATURE
TOOLS & WORKWEAR
SAFE AND SMART
David Clark, managing director of the Hultafors Group UK, which owns Snickers Workwear,
looks at how health and safety issues on site are influencing the development of ‘smarter’
working clothes and heralding a revolution in wearable technology.
E
ven though modern
working clothes were
invented back in the
1970s by a Swedish
electrician called Matti
Viio, the most significant
technical development
in workwear before that
was way back in the 1850s. Jacob Davis,
a Latvian Jewish immigrant living in San
Francisco started buying bolts of denim
cloth from Levi Strauss to reinforce and
repair denim clothing.
After one of Davis’ customers kept
purchasing cloth to reinforce torn trousers,
he had an idea to use copper rivets to
reinforce the points of strain on trousers,
such as on the pocket corners and at the
base of the button fly. He and Strauss went
into business with a patented rivet design
that is now part of clothing history.
It was a significant development in clothing
design at the time – a product development
that was influenced by functionality and
durability needs of their customers.
Now, 160 years on, workwear design
and development is still being driven by
the need for functionality, durability and
comfort, but perhaps more so now by the
demands of health and safety on site.
Do workers care about
their own wellbeing at work?
Our working lives are governed by
occupational health and safety legislation,
but while such laws act as a framework for
ensuring employees’ wellbeing at work, it’s
often the workers themselves who tend not
to take enough care of their health on site.
Workplace injuries are commonplace.
But while employers have an obligation to
ensure health and safety at work, some
responsibility for overcoming occupational
injuries does require a change in the
behavior among workers themselves. They
ought to be more attentive and perhaps
prioritise their own health and personal
safety on site.
A recent survey among professional
craftsmen in Scandinavia* reveals that
six out of 10 suffered an injury at their
workplace in the past year. So 60 per cent
have or are suffering from physical health
issues or pain as a result. However, the
same survey shows that more than one in
two workers agree that personal protection
equipment is not used on site as often as it
should be.
Surprisingly, given that most of the
respondents work in environments where
42 | May 2017
The most common
ongoing pain a
worker suffers is in
the knees and back.
‘More than
one in two
workers
agree that
personal
protection
equipment
is not used
on site as
often as it
should be.’