Ergonomi vid armeringsarbeten : En studie om möjliga förbättringar i arbetsmiljön vid armeringsarbeten

Sammanfattning: Injuries and sick-leave is a common feature for reinforcement workers today. This is mainlydue to the fact that reinforcement work is done in an exposed environment with many stressfactors and highly repetitive work. These operations are often carried out in unsuitableworking positions, these positions creates a major burden on the bones and joints and causesmicro- damages on muscles. With repetitive work these injuries are not given time to healproperly and will gradually become worse.The body will not be able to handle the stress of working in a work environment such as thisand musculoskeletal disorders can be a result of this. The injury will make itself known aspain in the musculoskeletal system and causes reduced movability; the injured worker willtherefore not be able to perform the same work tasks as before. The worst case scenario willbe long sick-leave that result in early retirement of the employee.In the current situation early retirement is something that affects 630 construction workers andthere is nothing to suggest that reinforcement workers would be under-represented in thiscategory, on the contrary. This issue will become worse now that the next generation ofreinforcement workers will have a lower basic physics than those before them. Therefore theyare more sensitive to just stress related injury such as musculoskeletal disorders. That is whyit is important now more than ever to find the problem areas and identify them. Failure to doso can lead to reinforcement workers not being able to work until their full retirement age. Itis in the employees, the company and the state's interest to ensure that all workers are able towork to full retirement age when sick leave results in high costs for all parties.The authors have therefore investigated if the use of precut and bent reinforcement and extraservices improve working conditions in the construction site. The authors have alsoinvestigated how the reinforcement process should be designed to prevent work-relatedinjuries and aids that are available at the workplace. To investigate this, the authors startedwith a literature study that included reinforcement, ergonomics and work-related injuries.When the authors felt that they had a sufficient foundation was Thomas Eriksson at CelsaSteel Service contacted and site visits booked. Workplace observations were carried outaccording to the PATH method with complementary interviews.The authors have concluded that the workplace provides aids so that work can be performedin an ergonomic way. However the reinforcement workers choose themselves to perform thework without the aids provided because they say that some aids slow them down. The authorshave perceived a low level of knowledge about ergonomics among the reinforcement workers,this leads to that the workers don’t consider the consequences of bad ergonomic which resultin improper work execution and work-related injuries. The authors also concluded that ahigher degree of prefabrication of reinforcement used results to improve the workingenvironment, even the use of extra services such as color-marked reinforcement, color-sortedreinforcement and timed deliveries contribute to a better work environment.