Welcome back to the blog for contractors. As we prepare our programs for this run of continuing education classes, we like to focus on safety hazards that keep on plaguing our work force. Falls claim too many lives in construction and it needn’t be so. The #1 violation cited by OSHA is in residential construction where employees are not protected from falls of greater than 6′ to a lower level. Why does this happen? And of course, I saw it again, today. A worker installing doors on a second floor balcony – new construction – no guardrails on the balcony … and it wasn’t really that big either. In 2006 OSHA cited contractors 1887 times for this exact violation. Since 2004, fall protection or scaffolding violations have been the #1 & #2 or #3, most-cited, violations, every year running. Falls usually end up causing major injuries and guess who’s responsible for that? Protect your workers from falls. Train them. Supervise them. Reward them for compliance. It doesn’t matter HOW many times they’ve done it their way – gravity never fails. Humans, on the other hand, regularly fail.
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