New OSHA Focus on Enforcement

I was privileged to attend Safety 2009 - this year's ASSE PDC - in San Antonio. As always, a great event. In a previous blog entry, you may have watched a portion of the new Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis' speech delivered at that event. I was there. What you didn't hear was Solis tell us that Texas has taken the lead from Florida in construction workplace fatalities. What you didn't hear was Solis tell the crowded room of safety professionals her intention to send OSHA "SWAT Teams" into Texas beginning this month to correct the problem.

I spent twelve years dealing with the construction workplace safety issues in Florida when OSHA denied the use of "Blitz teams" in that state - they called it "saturation" then. But, they were "Blitz teams." Groups of OSHA compliance officers from outside the state descended upon a county with the charge of driving by as many construction sites as possible and stopping to inspect should they find something that was not safe. If your site was easily visible (like on a major roadway, or with a tower crane high in the air), your site was at risk of a visit. One year, a "saturation" team hit five of my projects in five days.

The interesting thing about those visits, is that the teams drove by many small projects with many more uncorrected hazards, to get to our larger sites. I know about the smaller projects because I drove by them too. Interestingly, we received only one citation in those five visits, and that was vacated. The "Blitz teams" left a very bad taste in our mouths. The OSHA compliance officers from our area office were not allowed to visit our "touristy" area during the season because accomodations were too expensive. But a five person "blitz team" could spend a week there during the season.

Interestingly, Florida's fatality numbers in construction were largely due to the fact that a huge amount of construction work occurred in Florida. Since the bottom fell out of that market, Texas has a larger amount of work than Florida. Instead of looking at the raw numbers, OSHA should look at the numbers in comparison to the number of manhours worked. They might see that the death/injury rate is not that different in Texas (and in Florida before) than in many other parts of the country.

Anyway, in Texas, OSHA is not dancing around the issue this time and calls this new initiative "SWAT Teams." Fortunately for me (yeah, I'm now in Texas) my company has good superintendents who pay close attention to jobsite safety and are backed by management commitment to safety. For those who haven't yet found that safety is important - watch out! You're in for an education.