David Jasinski

David JasinskiJul 27, 2026

Fresh concrete is not a solid. Welcome to #MondaySafetyCheck #12 🧱 Concrete is a liquid that weighs 2.5 times more than water. That single fact explains what you see in this video. A vertical wall pour, and the formwork starts to give way at the bottom. First a leak, then a bulge, then the whole system breaks open and the concrete pours out, tearing the shuttering apart. Why at the bottom? Physics. Freshly placed concrete behaves like a dense fluid with a unit weight of around 24 kN/m³. The lateral pressure grows with depth, so the highest load always sits at the base of the wall. On a tall pour placed quickly, that pressure can exceed 50 kPa: roughly 5 tonnes pushing on every square metre of formwork. And here’s the part many crews underestimate: the pressure depends heavily on how fast you pour. Concrete stiffens over time, and stiffened concrete stops pushing. Pour faster than it sets, and the full liquid head builds up. Cold weather, retarders, and over-vibration near the base all slow the stiffening and drive the pressure even higher. What keeps a pour like this safe: → Formwork designed for calculated pressure, not for “it held last time” → A maximum pour rate defined before the truck arrives, and respected → Ties, walers, and bracing inspected before the pour, especially at the base → Someone walking the forms during placement, watching for deflection, leaks, and creaking, with authority to stop the pour A blowout gives almost no warning. Slurry leaking at a joint is often the only signal before sudden failure. Formwork is temporary. The consequences of getting it wrong are not. Have you ever had to stop a pour because the forms didn’t look right? What did you see?

David JasinskiSep 15, 2026

An 85-foot deep soil mixing rig tipped over in Miami yesterday. In 2026. Monday, 8 a.m., Brickell Bay Drive. A 26 m (85 ft) rig, blending cement into the ground to form columns for the foundations of a 54-story tower, came down across the site boundary. It landed on a site container with two workers inside, 27 and 29, and on three vehicles. One SUV caught fire; the driver saw the mast coming, reversed, and climbed out the back. The operator, 47, jumped clear as it went over. Four people in hospital, all stable. Zero dead. The fire chief called it a remarkable day. I call it luck. The cause is under investigation and I will not guess. But anyone who has stood next to a tracked rig knows what keeps it vertical: → A ground investigation that covers the top 2 to 3 m, not only the bearing layer deep below → A working platform (the engineered ground the rig stands on) designed for real track pressures, including the mast-up case → A platform that is inspected and re-checked after rain, excavation or trenching → A crew that is allowed to say "stop" BRE 470 is over 20 years old. The EFFC/DFI working platform guide has been out for years. Knowledge is not the gap. Applying it every single day is. This is Brickell's second heavy equipment collapse in about six weeks. Someone will carry responsibility here, and it should be significant. Four people walking away is not a safety outcome. It is a fluke. What is the hardest part of getting working platforms taken seriously on your sites? 🎥 by teodorathompson (IG)

David JasinskiSep 14, 2026

Falls kill more construction workers than anything else 🪢 This one didn’t. #MondaySafetyCheck 16 This worker in Brazil is alive because of a few straps and a metal ring. Watch what happens after the harness catches him. The footage shows a man dangling at height after a fall. From what you can see, without the harness this ends with a funeral, or at best months in hospital with multiple fractures. Instead, he’s hanging there, shaken, waiting. Falls from height remain the single biggest killer in construction worldwide. In most countries with reliable data they account for roughly a third of all construction deaths. Brazil’s own regulation, NR-35, treats anything above 2 m (6.5 ft) as work at height for exactly that reason: the ground doesn’t need to be far away to kill you. So the harness worked. But here’s the part most crews never plan for: what happens in the minutes after. A worker suspended motionless in a standard harness is in a new emergency. The leg straps compress the veins in the thighs, blood pools in the legs, and the brain starts losing supply. Loss of consciousness can begin within minutes. It’s called suspension trauma, and it’s why every fall arrest plan needs a rescue plan attached to it. What this video should make you check on your own site tomorrow: → Is the anchor point rated for the load, and is it above the worker, not at their feet? → Does everyone know how to get a suspended colleague down, and in how many minutes? → Are workers trained to move their legs and push against a wall while they wait? The harness caught him. The crew’s rescue plan decides whether that was a save or only a delay. Have you ever seen a harness arrest a fall on your site? How long did it take to get the person down?