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04/01/2005
OSHA Relations Committee Update
The NATE 2005 OSHA Relations Committee met on Monday, February 14, 2005, and addressed a number of ongoing projects. Perhaps most significant was that I was re-elected Chairman of the Committee.
North Carolina Tower Standard
We are aware some aspects of the NCDOL (North Carolina Depart-ment of Labor) Tower Erection Standard will be approved. We believe there are five areas of the Fall Protection Standard that require further attention. Most important among NATE’s concerns is the issue of when an employee is prepared to receive and effectively utilize rescue training. We have hired a local representative to move this issue forward within the framework of the legislation.
National Partnership Program
The draft agreement was almost complete. We do know the verification process is going to be a little more demanding. In particular, OSHA would like NATE to develop procedures beyond current site safety audits for obtaining verification data from 5% of the partners. NATE is being asked to conduct these verification inspections to amount to one partner per OSHA Region. On the surface these may appear challenging, but I am confident we can work out a mutual arrangement to meet the intent of the underlying need.
ANSI/ASSE A10.48 Communications Tower Erection
(Under Development)
Recently I became aware of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) efforts to address communication tower erection under their development program given the designation A10.48. ASSE, in conjunction with American National Standards Institute (ANSI), have cooperatively developed the A10 Series for safety standards in industry. Almost 50 standards are existing or proposed by the Accredit-ed Standards Committee on safety in construction and demolition operations. Gordon Lyman and I have been accepted as participants in the ANSI/ ASSE effort, which should begin later this year.
FCC Action Against a Radio Station for RF Incident
In January, 2005 a small group of radio stations were fined for not properly protecting a worker from RF exposure when the “remote/ local” switch for transmitter control was not locked-out/tagged-out so the studio operator did return the transmitter to full power while a worker was in the RF aperture. While this may be an isolated incident, continued vigilance on behalf of our training efforts must include some level of understanding the protection protocols that local engineering personnel must observe regarding lock-out/tag-out.
Antenna Mast – A Safety Climb Design
John Hettish and Sterling Smith have been providing me with information about a system for antenna mast safety climb devices that are meant to be permanent installations. There are a host of questions and further investigations that are needed and, hopefully, further progress to establish this as a viable alternative can be made. A set of questions and concerns are under discussion.
OSHA’s “Dirty Dozen” – A Discussion
Thanks to a note from Jim Goldwater, we discussed the most-often cited OSHA violations for general industry and construction, euphemistically known as the “Dirty Dozen.” Not surprisingly, NATE’s Safety Program and OSHA’s Partnership criteria address all the applicable areas. Copies are available from the NATE office.
Mil Spec – A Reporting Measure
One of our committee members suggested we address the quantity of NATE/OSHA Partnership inspections and the representative sampling could be addressed using available US Department of Defense Military Standard 105E or more commonly known as Mil Spec. The reason this was suggested was to help determine the need for inspection and safety audit intervals. A close review has indicated a trend to suggest this type of measurement tool would be effective. The need to modify future inspections and audit samplings was suggested as trends point to compliance, which reduces the need to verify compliance. The NATE/OSHA Partnership has shown that through time the sites require longer and longer intervals to correct needed processes. Of course this is a two–way street, when incidents are found, then inspection intervals must be correspondingly increased. All in all, I think we’ve found a process to defend and guide our inspection and audit intervals, though application of this may be challenging.
Don Doty serves as Chairman of the NATE OSHA Relations Committee as well as Vice Chairman of the Association. He is the Vice President of Doty Moore Tower Services, LLC of Cedar Hill, Texas and can be reached at 215-631-1300 or don.doty@stainlessinc.com
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