Gasoline Vapors

Augie Rincon, ConocoPhillips

"That's impossible!"

 

The other day I talked about the new crane standard and about the General Contractor’s duties and responsibilities in front of a bunch of project managers. I reviewed the overall responsibilities and preparation of ground conditions, actually performing JSA’s (horror!), power line safety and work control radius. The crane company representative said the safest way would be a 360 degree work radius clearance around the crane and adding an extra few feet to the radius to be on the safe side. One of the project managers immediately spoke up and said: “That’s IMPOSSIBLE!”  Really?

It seems there are always people who don’t get it. I realized that it was not enough to simply present the new standard and leave it at that. For the second overview session (for other project managers and superintendents) I approached one of the attendants of the first meeting and told him that I needed a “partner in crime”. After the overview, I will act as if I was a lawyer presenting a crane accident in court and will “pick” my partner, asking him (as well as the attending VP) a number of questions. Hopefully the group will understand that a good lawyer (which I am not pretending to be!!) will take them apart and crush them in a heartbeat and that the notion that safety is “impossible” is not an option.

Here are some questions I will ask:

1. How long have you been in the construction industry?
2. Are you aware of the new standard and the regulations and do you understand the provisions?
   Have you been informed about the responsibilities of the General Contractor?
3. Did you have a preconstruction meeting with the superintendent and the crane company to discuss the plans and conditions?
4. Where is the documentation?
5. Did you perform a JSA? Why not? Do you know how to perform a JSA?
   
6. Mr. VP, it is your responsibility to make sure that your employees follow the regulations. We have just heard that the employee stated that he understands the regulations and knows how to perform a JSA. Can you explain why – although project managers and superintendents have the tools and knowledge available and are aware of the regulations, the JSA was not performed, the work control radius was set up improperly, the sidewalk was not closed, the suspended load was swinging over the public sidewalk, injuring a pedestrian and a worker on the jobs site?
7. Mr. VP, to my knowledge you were a safety manager in one of your previous employments. Is that correct? How long have you been in that position?
8. Mr. VP, you stated before that you are part of the job site start up meetings. A pre-task risk assessment form is available. However, I do not see any documentation that you addressed job site specific hazards in general and crane safety in particular. In addition, I was informed that you visited the job site to review site safety, but you failed to point out the hazard.

 Ah – before you wonder whether I will still have a job after I am done with that session – the VP is part of the “game”….

 Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

 

OSHA’s Crystalline Silica Rule Close To Publication

Washington – A proposed rule for occupational exposure to crystalline silica is scheduled for publication in April.
In the works since at least 1997, the rule was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for review on Feb. 14. It would update OSHA’s current crystalline silica standards, which have permissible exposure limits for general industry, construction and shipyards based on 40-year-old formulas – some of which are considered obsolete.
Crystalline silica is a component of soil made of minerals that can be found in many industries. Exposure to it can cause silicosis, a fatal respiratory disease.

(As seen on the National Safety Council's Website: http://www.nsc.org/safetyhealth/Pages/OSHA%E2%80%99scrystallinesilicaruleclosetopublication_2.16.11.aspx)

Skyjack - What you should NOT do....

"I chose to look the other way..."

February 8^th, 2011: Two construction workers died Tuesday after falling 65 feet down an elevator shaft at a building on the Upper West Side, police said. Emergency responders were called to 150 W. 83rd Street on Tuesday morning after two men who had been welding steel beams inside the shaft fell from the fifth floor. The identities of the men, ages 51 and 49, were not immediately released pending family notification. The commissioner of the city’s Department of Buildings, said it appears the men were not wearing harnesses or using other safety measures, such as netting. “This accident serves as a reminder to everyone who goes on the construction site every day that experience alone is not enough and they must take precautions and they must be safe,” he said.

Every day people get hurt at their workplace or on construction job sites. Every day I get “Construction Accident Reports” through Google.  And this is a prime example of accidents that don’t need to happen. I have tried to use these accident reports in training – also the NIOSH FACE reports – but it seems to me that if an accident does not take place in the home town, it will always be “the other guy” that it happens to. Folks, it is NOT always the other guy somewhere in New York State or Indiana or California. And in this tragic example, safety regulations and precautions were bypassed like in so many other occasions. When will we ever learn? And these guys, 49 and 51 years old, were certainly workers with a lot of experience – like so many others. It is not always the young workers that have accidents. Without knowing the background of this accident it is difficult to speculate why the two workers were not protected. Was it because they have done this work unprotected many times before and did not believe an accident could happen to them? Didn’t they have the proper fall protection equipment? Were they told to “just” do the job?

Two men are dead. They are now part of a cold, faceless statistic. And it should not have happened. The road to hell is not only paved with good intentions but also with the “should have’s”. Also the “should have’s” of management ---- “I should have said something when I saw that the workers were not wearing heard hats, but I had more important things to do”.

Here’s a poem (part of it) from Don Merrell that I found a while ago.

I could have saved a life that day, but I chose to look the other way.

It wasn't that I didn't care, I had the time, and I was there.

But I didn't want to seem a fool or argue over a safety rule.

I knew he'd done the job before, if I spoke up, he might get sore.

The chances didn't seem that bad, I’d done the same, he knew I had.

So I shook my head and walked on by, he knew the risks as well as I.

He took the chance, I closed an eye, and with that act, I let him die.

I could have saved a life that day, but I chose to look the other way.

Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

Residential Fall Protection

Tightening the fall protection requirements for residential construction was long overdue. Frankly, the interim guidelines were a joke. I have never seen so many unsafe actions and heard so many excuses by subcontractors as to why fall protection in residential construction is not feasible. It strikes me as odd that in their mind obviously a fall from a 15’ residential building hurts less than a fall from a 15’ commercial building. Most annoying for me was always the painted warning line. I just never understood how a painted line on a flat roof was in fact warning someone that the leading edge was really, really close by, especially if material was conveniently stored on the deck or roof and partially covered the painted line.

It will take some rethinking and adjustment to quite a number of residential construction companies or subcontractors on buildings that fell under the residential “standards”. There is such a variety of fall protection equipment that can also be used in conjunction with wooden rood truss work – if assembly on the ground or from elevated work platforms is not an option. It’s all about changing attitudes. Especially the attitude that safety is expensive, time consuming and inconvenient. It’s not. But we are all creatures of habit and changing a bad habit is hard work, means that we have to work to overcome the habit and adopt a new one. If you are a smoker and try to quit smoking, you probably know what I mean. It is time consuming and often times inconvenient to change ourselves. That’s the whole point.

Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

Safety Links

Drop Tests with PPE
http://www.dguv.de/ifa/en/pub/rep/rep05/bgia0206/index.jsp

Construction Photos
http://myconstructionphotos.smugmug.com/gallery/2213775#57213264_wMFzA

MSA Safety Links
http://www.msanet.com/prism/links.htm