Understanding the Hierarchy of Controls: Engineering Controls

The ultimate goal of every safety and health professional is to ensure a safe and healthy work environment by identifying potential hazards, eliminating or mitigating them and implementing preventive measures to protect workers. This involves continuous monitoring, risk assessments, training and adhering to safety regulations and standards.

This past June, we kicked off a series on one of the most important health and safety tools: the hierarchy of controls. In this series, we’re doing a deep dive into each control to provide a better understanding of how to best use this system to protect workers. Last time, we covered elimination and substitution. Today, we’re diving into engineering controls.

“In order to ensure that every worker returns home safely from the job, everyone must play their part,” said LHSFNA Management Co-Chair David F. Rampone. “For employers and supervisors, that means doing everything they can to remove recognized risks and hazards from a workplace.”

What Are Engineering Controls?

When elimination or substitution aren’t possible, engineering controls are the next best practice. Engineering controls protect workers by isolating or minimizing the hazard at the source rather than relying on an individual’s behavior for prevention. This often includes modifying equipment or a work area to keep workers separate from hazardous conditions. Some examples of engineering controls include:

• Using protective barriers to separate workers from the traveling public on highway work zones
• Using local exhaust ventilation to remove hazardous airborne emissions from the jobsite
• Using guardrails or barriers to prevent workers from falling off scaffolds, roofs or elevated platforms
• Redesigning workstations and tools to minimize strain, repetitive motion injuries and musculoskeletal disorders
• Using reflective shields to redirect radiant heat away from outdoor workers

Engineering controls can be extremely effective at protecting workers as long as they are well-designed, used and maintained properly. They generally don’t disrupt productivity or comfort like personal protective equipment (PPE) can, and do not require human input so workers can stay focused on the task at hand. Keep in mind that in some cases, a combination of engineering controls, administrative controls and/or protective equipment may be necessary to provide the best protection for your employees.

While the initial cost to implement engineering controls may seem higher, they often save employers money in the long run, as they decrease workers’ compensation costs and help prevent injuries and fatalities. According to the National Safety Council, the average cost per medically consulted injury in 2022 was $40,000, while the average fatality totalled more than $1.3 million.

According to NIOSH, the most effective engineering controls fit the following criteria:

• Are part of the original equipment design
• Remove or block the hazard at the source before it comes in contact with the worker
• Prevent users from modifying or interfering with the control
• Need minimal user action for the controls to work
• Operate correctly without interfering with the work process or making the work process more difficult

NIOSH maintains a directory of engineering controls, which provides examples of real world hazards addressed through the application of engineering controls. OSHA also has a hierarchy of controls worksheet that identifies hazard control options. These can serve as useful resources for employers.

LIUNA signatory contractors that need additional assistance should reach out to our Occupational Safety and Health Division and check out our publications catalog for a variety of toolbox talks, pamphlets, pocket guides and more that address occupational hazards you might encounter on a jobsite.

[Hannah Sabitoni]