When you are constructing a building, you are creating something that will be special to many people.
You might be building homes in which individuals and families will fill with memories, hospitals in which medical professionals will save lives, schools in which generations will prepare for their futures, or commercial spaces where many will embark on challenging careers and provide vital services to their communities.
In many ways, general contractors are essentially giving life to previously inanimate objects. Consider the construction of a new high-rise in Charlotte, NC.
Builders will begin with extensive planning; then, they will lay a solid foundation, construct the building’s frame, fill in that frame with infrastructure, then add decorative elements and vital amenities.
What was once a construction zone, upon completion, begins teeming with life and becomes part of the city’s skyline.
To say the Carolinas are growing is an understatement. Charlotte, Raleigh, Charleston, Columbia, Wilmington, Greenville, the Triad, and essentially every urban region in our area has had some of the highest influxes of new residents and businesses for decades. The Queen City has recently cracked the top ten in overall population.
That kind of rapid growth is exactly why it seems like metropolitan areas in North and South Carolina are perpetually under construction. It’s not just the largest cities that are welcoming new people and companies, especially since the pandemic began. Asheville, Boone, Spartanburg, Greenville (North & South Carolina), Rocky Mount, and other small and medium-sized cities are growing as well.
With the growth showing no signs of slowing down, you can expect to continue to see construction throughout our region. Here are some of the construction trends, for better or worse, we can expect to see in the future.
When it comes to crane operation, there’s a lot that can go wrong when operators and crew members are not properly trained in safety protocols. To counteract this, both the signal callers and operators of a crane need to be versed in proper OSHA hand signals in order to make sure that there is no confusion when the machinery is actually being operated.
It’s not going to end well if the signal-caller is signaling “EMERGENCY STOP” and the operator interprets this as “SPEED UP!” Below is a list of essential crane signals which every operator and signal-caller must know, straight from OSHA’s handbook.
Cranes are incredibly useful pieces of machinery, allowing for the transportation of extremely heavy materials to heights and levels which would be impossible for workers to ever perform by hand.
However, when operating a crane, one of the most important things to remember is that you are controlling a very large piece of equipment that is able to cause a great deal of damage if used irresponsibly and incorrectly (here are just a few examples).