Construction Industry Safety and Health

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Following a major hailstorm on May 18 and a resulting increase in construction, OSHA is extending enforcement activity and asks for Billings-area employers, workers and consumers to protect roofing and construction workers against fall hazards.

A special enforcement emphasis program launched by OSHA this month will temporarily bring additional investigators from throughout the U.S. to North Dakota, in an effort to reduce the high fatality rates in the state's oil and gas and construction industries.

"The cost of providing fall prevention equipment is nominal compared with the senseless loss of life.” Casey Perkins, OSHA's area director in Austin, made that comment in reference to an accident at a condo construction site in Canyon Lake, Texas in which a worker fell 29 feet to his death.

A construction company honored last year for its safety program has banned seven of its workers from a New York City worksite, after a flying jack hammer chisel from the project shattered a window in a neighboring building and injured a woman.

A construction worker helping to demolish a Blockbuster Video building June 20th in New Jersey was trapped and killed when the last standing wall collapsed on top of him. Six months earlier, a 25-year-old construction worker in Chicago was struck and killed by pieces of falling concrete while conducting renovations on a shopping mall.

A company whose employee was critically injured in a trench collapse repeatedly ignored warnings that the excavation was unsafe – including one on the day of the incident. An employee of R.E. Arnold Construction Inc. was trapped when the wall of an excavation he was working in collapsed around him as he was removing dirt from a storm filtration system.

Workers demolishing a three-unit, three-story residential building in Brooklyn's Prospect-Lefferts Gardens section were exposed to potentially fatal falls due to their employer's failure to provide and ensure the use of lifesaving fall protection. As a result, OSHA has proposed $45,200 in penalties against Brooklyn contractor US Demco of Brooklyn Inc. for one willful and seven serious violations of workplace safety standards.

The employer of two workers who died while working on a freeway overpass has been cited by OSHA for four safety violations. R.R. Dawson Bridge Co. LLC exposed workers to fall hazards, failed to provide employees working near the bridge's edge with required fall protection and failed to inspect employee fall arrest systems before use, according to OSHA investigators.

Fall protection (1926.501) was the most frequently-cited OSHA standard in fiscal year 2013 – specially the period October 2012 through September 2013. OSHA conducted 7,900 inspections involving the fall protection standards, a very high number compared to almost any other agency rule, and due to the fact OSHA devotes about half of its inspections to construction sites.

The June 2-6, 2014 National Safety Stand-Down was a resounding success, according to the Center for Protection of Worker Rights (CPWR). Here are three case studies: