Tools that weigh more than 5 lb are considered heavy and should be used with extra caution and more frequent rest breaks. Lowe says he currently is stressing the increasing advantages of cordless tools and lasers. Labor cost savings is one factor, but there also is the safety issue of having cords in water, being run over by other equipment and maintaining ground fault interrupters, he says. Cordless tools are especially helpful in remote fields and jobsites where there is no power available, says Lowe. The cost is relatively insignificant compared to the productivity of that individual.
Claims also tend to relate to more basic injuries.
The push for better tools in the future will be fueled mainly by the ferocious competition among tool manufacturers and their quest for increasing market share, driven partly by customers and partly by Wall Street. Cordless tool batteries that only a few years ago maxed out at 9 volts now have almost tripled in capacity as contractors accommodated the technology in work methods and demanded more. The dilemma for construction is that tool users are not the purchasers, and the purchasers are not the users, say tool company executives. This often causes a disconnect in calculating costs. TDI thinks it has the solution.