Construction Industry Safety and Health

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• Has the most suitable equipment been selected to ensure safety, including for access and evacuation? • Are ladders only used when other equipment is not justified in view of the short length and low risk of the task? •Is the scaffold erected on a firm foundation?

According to OSHA, falls can be prevented and lives can be saved through three simple steps: plan, provide and train. OSHA has partnered with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) - Construction Sector on a widely publicized nationwide outreach campaign to raise awareness among workers and employers about common fall hazards in construction, and how falls from ladders, scaffolds and roofs can be prevented and lives can be saved.

Falls from heights are the most common cause of injury and death. Causes include: working on a scaffold or platform without guard rails or without a safety harness correctly attached; fragile roofs; and ladders that are badly maintained, positioned and secured.

From the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR): When we think about low-income workers, we usually think about fast-food cashiers or migrant farmworkers, not construction workers. And it's true that skilled trades employees steadily employed in commercial construction work can command respectable, middle-class wages.

More construction workers (849) were killed on the job in 2012 than in any other industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). That figure also represents the first increase in construction deaths since the country’s economic downturn.

The whimsically-named Water Color subdivision in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. turns out to be a dangerous place for the workers who are building it. According to OSHA investigators, workers were framing houses without required fall protection and lacked necessary PPE.

With workplace accidents always  a concern for roofing contractors, the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) has released Spanish versions of three of its safety compliance programs: Serving Up Safety: A Recipe for Avoiding Falls on the Job,  NRCA’s Material Handling Series: Overhead and Understood and NRCA’s Hazard Communications Program: Know the Signs.

 Gershenson Construction Co. Inc. has been cited by OSHA after a worker suffered a broken vertebra when he was struck by a partially suspended load of sewer pipe and knocked to the bottom of an unprotected 13-foot-deep trench. 

For the second time this year, OSHA has cited Pan-Oceanic Engineering Co. Inc. for failing to protect workers from trenching hazards at a job site at East 93rd Street and South Woodlawn Avenue in Chicago. OSHA cited the company for willful violations for again failing to protect workers from trench cave-ins while installing water and sewer lines in November 2013.

Lindamood Demolition Inc. and Texas Cutting & Coring were both cited by OSHA for a total of five violations, including two willful, following the death of a skid-steer loader operator during the redevelopment of Kyle Field Stadium at Texas A&M University.