Thursday, 10 June 2010

Hard hat site

At the entrance of our building site the signs indicate that this is a “hard hat site”.

Therefore all people entering the site should wear a hard hat.

This obviously applies first of all to our dedicated engineers and workers.

It is of course a matter of health and safety and thus we should all observe this rule.

The hard hat concept comes from Bullard, a hundred-year-old, family-owned manufacturer of personal protective equipment. A hundred years ago, the hard hat didn’t exist. And fifty years ago, head protection wasn’t widely required for workers. But, thanks to advances in safety, the hard hat has evolved over the decades.

The Bullard Company was established in San Francisco in 1898. In 1915 they began work on a helmet that could protect miners from falling objects.

In 1938, Bullard designed and manufactured the first aluminium hard hat, which was considered very durable and reasonably lightweight for the time.

Bullard’s distinctive three-rib, heat resistant fibreglass hard hat was developed in the 1940’s. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, thermoplastics replaced fibreglass because the newer material was less costly and better suited for the applications. Bullard was one of the first manufacturers to inject thermoplastic into a mould to produce a hard hat.

In 1982, the standard hard hat changed again. Later on Bullard redesigned the 3000R and introduced the C30, which has become known as today’s standard yellow hard hat.

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