Talking About Sanitation Services

While construction was once a fairly gender segregated field, the most recent figures from 2014 show that women now make up at least 9% of the industry. This has effects throughout the workplace, including altering the facilities you need in order to accommodate the health and hygiene needs of your workforce. Find out what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) require and what's best for worker safety and satisfaction.

OSHA Requirements

The OSHA regulations regarding bathrooms on the construction site only state that there must be private facilities for all employees to use safely. The codes specifically state that gender specific bathrooms are not required as long as there's only a single employee in each locking stall or unit at a time. Portable toilets with stalls or individual structures definitely allow you to meet this requirement. Of course, OSHA also allows for urinals to take the place of seated toilets for small numbers of employees. These urinals don't count towards the total when you have female employees working onsite.

Cleanliness

Not only do the bathrooms need to offer locking doors and privacy in order to remain unisex, they must remain clean enough not to pose a health hazard to the employees using them. Women have more opportunity to become ill after using the restroom, so you may need to increase cleaning intervals on all bathrooms or designate just some of them for female use only. As with accessible portable toilets, restricting use to the right employees allows for a cleaner and safer environment without the added expense of extra cleaning visits for the entire site.

Privacy

OSHA regulations do require that toilets are either housed separately as individual units, as with most portable toilets, or at least surrounded by high partitions. If you choose to rent bathroom trailers, consider designs with complete rooms. Solid walls go a long way in helping women feel more comfortable using the bathroom while on the job site, which is essential to their health when working in a hot and stressful environment.

Accessibility

Finally, make sure that the bathrooms for all employees are located equally close to the actual work area. OSHA states that employees must not be required to walk longer than 10 minutes to reach a bathroom, and most employers keep toilets much closer to reduce wasted time. If you separate toilet areas by gender, don't make one group walk farther than the other or you may find employees using whichever units are closer regardless of what's on the door.

To browse construction site toilets that will work for your crew, contact companies like Portajohns.