Author: svalente

June 2025 Safety Focus: Trenching & Excavation

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This month’s SPS Safety Focus is all about Trenching & Excavation.

#DYK: Two workers are killed every month in trench collapses. In trenching and excavation work, trench collapses, or cave-ins, pose the greatest risk to workers’ lives.

When done safely, trenching operations can reduce worker exposure to other potential hazards including falls, falling loads, hazardous atmospheres, and incidents involving mobile equipment.

In general, an excavation is any man-made cut, cavity, trench, or depression in an earth surface, formed by earth removal. A trench is an excavation that is made below the surface of the ground. In general, the depth is greater than the width, but the width of a trench (measured at the bottom) is not greater than 15 feet. Proper precautions should be taken to protect workers and the public from hazards created by trenching and excavation.

 

Check out SPS’s Safety Orientation video segment on this topic…

May 2025 Safety Focus: Fall Protection

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This month’s SPS Safety Focus is all about Fall Protection.

Falls from one level to another are among the leading causes of severe injuries and deaths among workers in the United States. And to add insult to injury, no pun intended, many workers who were injured or killed were wearing a full body harness as part of a personal fall arrest system, but their full body harness was not properly worn or adjusted, and it failed to work.

You’ve got your full body harness on and properly adjusted, and you’ve attached the proper end of your lanyard to the back D-ring on your harness. The next step is to attach the other end of your lanyard to an anchor point. But selecting the wrong anchor point could have some painful, or even deadly, ramifications. That means you must put some serious thought put into what you hook off to with your lanyard.

 

 

Check out SPS’s Safety Orientation video segment on this topic…

MassDOT Bridge Project over the Saugus River Includes Tricky MWRA Water Main Replacement

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From UCANE’s Construction Outlook Magazine | April 2025 Issue

“UCANE Contractor SPS New England floats 350 feet of 20-inch ductile iron pipe across tidal river before sinking it into a trench below river bottom.”

The SPS Story
Based in Salisbury, MA, SPS New England, Inc. recently celebrated their 40th Anniversary in 2024. From a small family business, the company has steadily grown into one of the most successful and dependable public works contractors in the Northeast when it comes to highway, transit, marine, and bridge work.

The Capolupo family – siblings Wayne, Phil, and Karen started SPS with a simple philosophy…offer the customer quality workmanship at competitive prices while completing projects both on-time and safely. Company integrity was also very important from the beginning, and SPS was a sought-after employer where construction professionals and craftsmen alike knew their work would be respected and recognized by the company ownership.

In the early years SPS bid mostly on small municipal road jobs running with about 20 employees. According to company CEO Wayne Capolupo, “Much of our early work was done as subcontract work, but it wasn’t long before our expertise in building formwork and pouring concrete walls and structures was making us stand out, and we wanted to perform as a GC.”

The company’s first prequalification from MassDOT was received in 1988, which allowed them to bid up to $1.0M on road and bridge work. Throughout the 1990s the company grew at a manageable pace and could be seen doing roadwork and bridge deck rehab work throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. By 2000 SPS had grown to 50 employees and was doing a volume of about $20M per year.

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April 2025 Safety Focus: Respiratory Protection

Posted on by svalente

This month’s SPS Safety Focus is all about respiratory protection.

A respirator is a device that protects you from inhaling dangerous substances, such as chemicals and infectious particles. Respirators are among the most important pieces of protective equipment for working in hazardous environments. Selecting the right respirator requires an assessment of all the workplace operations, processes or environments that may create a respiratory hazard. The identity of the hazard and its airborne concentrations need to be determined before choosing a respirator.

In general, there are two types of respirators Air Purifying and Supplied Air. Respirators work by either filtering particles from the air, chemically cleaning (purifying) the air, or supplying clean air from an outside source.

 

Check out SPS’s Safety Orientation video segment on this topic…