Top FOD Hazards to Be Aware of When Upgrading Your Facility

Facil­i­ties require ren­o­va­tion and expan­sion for any num­ber of rea­sons. As excit­ing as these devel­op­ments can be, they’re also rid­dled with poten­tial haz­ards. Take F.O.D (for­eign object debris ), for instance. 

Any build­ing upgrade will fea­ture its fair share of debris – dust will crop up from cut­ting and sand­ing, new mate­ri­als will be set aside in loose fash­ion until need­ed, and oth­er tools and equip­ment will be on stand­by. All of this stuff, no mat­ter how use­ful it may be, can do real dam­age when mis­placed or neglect­ed. Facil­i­ties hav­ing to do with avi­a­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, ship­ping, and mil­i­tary con­tract­ing must take these F.O.D con­cerns very seri­ous­ly, as they can con­tribute to health and safe­ty prob­lems, equip­ment fail­ure and oth­er safe­ty issues. These F.O.D con­cerns are only more press­ing dur­ing a major build­ing upgrade.

Let’s go over some of the top F.O.D haz­ards to be aware of when upgrad­ing your facility.

Con­struc­tion Materials

Any mate­ri­als used to con­struct or ren­o­vate your facil­i­ty can pose sig­nif­i­cant F.O.D haz­ards dur­ing an upgrade. These mate­ri­als include wood­en boards, cement/​concrete, brick and mor­tar, plaster/​drywall, steel, fas­ten­ers and much more. In many cas­es, these mate­ri­als require fur­ther adjust­ment (e.g., cut­ting, sand­ing, fit­ting) on the site, which can throw copi­ous amounts of dust and small­er debris into the air. Large pieces left on the ground are trip­ping haz­ards, too. Facil­i­ty man­agers and ven­dors must take stock of all con­struc­tion mate­ri­als to ensure that every­thing is in a safe loca­tion before, dur­ing, and after work is being performed.

Tools and Loose Hardware

The tools and hard­ware used in costruc­tions and upgrades are con­sid­ered F.O.D haz­ards, too. Con­sid­er how tiny cer­tain pieces of hard­ware can be. With­out care­ful over­sight, any num­ber of nails, screws, bear­ings, drill bits, etc. can wind up some­where they don’t belong – this can result in equip­ment dam­age, trip­ping, foot injury (such as step­ping on an upright nail), and more.

Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE)

The very cloth­ing and gear designed to pro­tect per­son­nel from F.O.D‑related harm can become F.O.D in its own right. Safe­ty gog­gles, masks, gloves, and foot cov­er­ings are some of the most com­mon types of PPE that end up some­where they’re not meant to be, in large part because they’re small­er and easy to remove. And since every­one should be wear­ing PPE dur­ing a facil­i­ty upgrade, the risk of PPE turn­ing into FOD is high with­out care­ful train­ing and con­tin­u­al oversight.

Oth­er Forms of For­eign Object Debris

The for­eign object debris exam­ples don’t end there, of course. Office sup­plies, food wrap­pers, bev­er­age con­tain­ers, cloth­ing, clean­ing sup­plies, etc. can become F.O.D in the right (or wrong, rather) con­text. Put sim­ply, if some­thing or some­one is in a loca­tion they’re not sup­posed to be at a par­tic­u­lar time, the label of F.O.D applies.

How to Best mit­i­gate F.O.D in Your Facility

At this point, you might won­der how it’s even pos­si­ble to pre­vent FOD haz­ards while still get­ting any­thing done. Like most things, con­text is key. While just about any­thing can be deemed F.O.D, it’s only such in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. If, for instance, a fas­ten­er escapes a des­ig­nat­ed work zone, it becomes F.O.D. Know­ing this, prop­er con­tain­ment is the pri­ma­ry solu­tion to mit­i­gat­ing F.O.D haz­ards. Con­tain­ment ser­vices effec­tive­ly wall off every inch of a par­tic­u­lar area to ensure that any­thing that’s meant to be inside that domain remains there. Con­tain­ment mea­sures also serve as excel­lent sight­line man­age­ment bar­ri­ers, so those work­ing out­side the zone don’t have to deal with sig­nif­i­cant distractions.

Oth­er meth­ods for mit­i­gat­ing FOD with­in a facil­i­ty include reg­u­lar sweep­ing (such as air­field sweep­ers that peri­od­i­cal­ly clean run­ways), pur­pose-built tool kits to store all items, wheels cov­er­ings to pro­tect rolling equip­ment from F.O.D and oth­er haz­ards, prop­er dis­pos­al con­tain­ers for F.O.D stor­age and removal, and FOD detec­tion devices (e.g., radar-based or cam­era-based) that effi­cient­ly scan areas for F.O.D, wildlife, and more.

Upgrade With­out the Haz­ard, Mess, or Damage

Don’t let F.O.D slow down your next facil­i­ty upgrade. Prop­er train­ing, over­sight, con­tain­ment, and facil­i­ty main­te­nance prac­tices will great­ly reduce F.O.D risk at your facil­i­ty. Here at Kaloutas, we take safe­ty and con­tain­ment seri­ous­ly and pride our­selves on hav­ing an eye for detail and a thor­ough process for safe­ly iden­ti­fy­ing and neu­tral­iz­ing F.O.D issues and con­cerns. As a F.O.D con­tain­ment ser­vices con­trac­tor, we facil­i­tate clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion between our pro­fes­sion­al painters, floor­ing installers, your staff and any oth­er ser­vices that may be at work on your project.

To learn more about us and all that we do, con­tact us online or give us a call at 978−532−1414 today!