OSHA Intensifies Residential Checks

Paul Hansen spoke to a full room at the Fayetteville Clarion Inn for more than three hours on Aug. 24. Although the area director of the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration barely had a voice left, he eased the minds of many residential contractors there for the meeting sponsored by the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders Association.

Hansen said he had planned to talk and then answer questions, but the talk quickly turned into a heated question- and-answer session.

Jan Skopecek, executive director of the NWAHBA, said it eliminated repeat questions, because a large number of people were able to hear each response.

“I had four or five calls today from people in Northwest Arkansas, from consultants to owners to safety equipment people,” Hansen said.

His office has sent out more than 200 information packets in the last month or so.

Hansen encourages anyone with questions to call the Little Rock office.

In June, the OSHA Region 6 Dallas office issued a release about the “special emphasis” program that would focus on improving worker safety in the Arkansas residential construction industry. In addition to Arkansas, the program will be implemented as needed in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

On Sept. 1, OSHA was set to begin random statewide inspections of residential construction sites — a check Hansen estimated was performed no more than five times last year. He estimates OSHA performed about 300 construction-related inspections in 2003, but most of them were planned or referred inspections.

There are only six safety and six health inspectors employed by OSHA statewide.

“We’ve never done many inspections in residential construction, but because of the number of fatalities, our national office felt like we should do more residential,” Hansen said.

The state has seen five residential construction fatalities in the last four years, and up until Aug. 12, when a residential worker in Rogers died, it had been a year since a fatality, Hansen said.

From October 1999 through July 2003, there were 458 construction-related fatalities in OSHA’s five-state Dallas region. About 13 percent (59) involved residential work, the OSHA Region 6 office reported. The region covers Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

In 2003, OSHA completed about 23,000 inspections in the construction industry — a 7 percent increase over 2002.

“If you wanted to pick a single industry, construction has more accidents than any other single industry,” Hansen said.

The September date was determined by the Little Rock OSHA office, as 60 days will have passed since OSHA began offering free compliance classes around the state and all those classes will have been completed.

Skopecek said the NWAHBA held two 10-hour safety classes on Aug. 11-12 and Aug. 18-19. Due to the demand for classes, it scheduled six additional 10-hour sessions, Skopecek said. Classes in fall protection and scaffolding were also added.

“This is the first time they [OSHA] started doing residential construction inspections,” Skopecek said. “They put the rules into effect in 1971, but they haven’t inspected in residential since that time, except for the area of injury or death.”

A fatality inspection can take several weeks to complete, Hansen said, because witnesses have to be interviewed and the site has to be researched. Eighty percent of fatalities, result in an OSHA citation, Hansen said.

OSHA has pulled 90 days worth of building permits statewide and will randomly select residential sites. OSHA will also get “drive by” referrals for random inspections.

“If we see a violation we can stop,” Hansen said. “We are counting on making people more aware of what the hazards are and protecting people from those hazards.”

Hansen could not speculate as to how many random residential inspections the state hopes to perform, only that the program will be reevaluated after the fiscal year runs from Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, 2005.

TAB CHART

Arkansas Work-related Injuries*

Even in the construction industry, the number of work-related fatalities since 1998 represents only about 1 percent of all injuries:ttttt

tConstructiontAll Industries

t Non-fatal InjuriestNon-fatal Injuriest

YeartFatalitiestFatalities

2002t1,300t12,200tt14t80

2001t1,500t12,700tt8t68

2000t1,700t14,300tt20t106

1999t1,200t14,700tt15t76

1998t1,200t15,600tt16t86

Totalst6,900t69,500t

t73t416

*Injury totals for all private industries, including construction. Construction totals are for all construction categories. Non-fatal injuries are those that resulted in days lost from work.t

Source: United States Bureau of Labor Statisticsttttt