May 2011
BuilderNews Magazine
News Feature

 

Safety First

OSHA Rescinds Exemptions for Residential Fall Protection

 

We’ve all seen it before: A group of workers up on a roof, scrambling up a 10:12 pitch, a ladder leant against the eave, a smattering of staging planks scattered here and there, with, perhaps, a line of 2×4 toe kicks closer to the peak. No harnesses. No safety nets. Nothing, in fact, between them and the ground save for a few 2-by-boards, work-site bravado and a lot of good fortune.

Dangerous? Definitely. Illegal? Well, that was always a little harder to tell. Not even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) knew where to draw the line. And, for the last 16 years, the agency has left a great deal of residential construction and fall protection safety up to the judgment of the employer, the employees and the OSHA compliance officer on case by case basis. According to a 1995 OSHA directive (STD 3.1 – Interim Fall Protection Compliance Guidelines for Residential Construction), OSHA’s enforcement policy allowed for a considerable amount of “compliance flexibility” on certain residential construction activities, including, among others, a roofing tear-off, shingling and/or repair.

Late last year, however, OSHA drew that line. A new directive (STD 03-11-002), issued on December 16, 2010, rescinded the 1995 directive allowing “compliance flexibility,” reinstated all pre-existing standards prior to 1995, and effectively imposed far stricter fall protection safety regulations for all residential construction projects. The new directive (STD 03-11-002) gives builders until July 2011 to comply or face the possibility of hefty OSHA fines.

As of July 2001, contractors are again required to provide and/or ensure the use of guardrails, safety nets or personal fall arrest systems for all workers, employees and subcontractors, working six feet or more above the lower level. If “conventional” fall protection cannot be used, the contractor or roofer must then provide an alternative method, or methods, of fall protection and must also maintain, on site and available to all workers, a written document explaining why conventional fall protection was not feasible and what alternative methods would be used.

When these standards were established, in 1994, both the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) argued that the standards failed to account for safety measures commonly used in the industry, such as roof brackets and 2x6s, which, opponents argued, provided adequate slide arrest protection for workers. Industry professionals also argued, as they still do, that on many residential construction activities, the use of conventional fall protection systems is either infeasible or poses a greater threat to worker safety than many alternative methods.

OSHA, recognizing the need for further consideration, then issued STD 3.1 as a temporary directive intended solely to give OSHA officials time to review the existing standards. Under STD 3.1, OSHA allowed for “compliance flexibility” for four, specific groups of residential construction activities. Taken, verbatim from a 1999, plain-language revision of the directive, those four groups were:

GROUP 1: Installation of floor joists, floor sheathing, and roof sheathing; erecting exterior walls; setting and bracing roof trusses and rafters.

GROUP 2: Working on concrete and block foundation walls and related formwork.

GROUP 3: This group consists of the following activities when performed in attics and on roofs: installing drywall, insulation, HVAC systems, electrical systems (including alarms, telephone lines, and cable TV), plumbing and carpentry.

GROUP 4: Roofing work (removal, repair, or installation of weatherproofing roofing materials such as shingles, tile and tar paper).

One of the most important, and somewhat trouble of provisions of 1995 directive, was that it also allowed contractors and roofers to simply ignore the existing OSHA standards, for those activities listed, and to use alternative methods, without having to document why conventional methods were not used or what alternative methods would be used instead. What all this essentially created, explains Bob McLeod, the manager of the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration (VOSHA), was a considerable amount of ambiguity and confusion for builders and roofers. “It looked like it might be a good idea,” says McLeod, referring to the ‘95 directive, “but in actual practice it was so confusing and it created so many problems that it just wasn’t worth it.”

One significant point of confusion, McLeod notes, was determining what activities were, or were not, covered under the 1995 directive. If, for instance, a worker went from roofing in the morning to installing siding in the afternoon, the required fall protection not only changed, but the contractor’s compliance and documentation responsibilities also changed.

More importantly, though — and the main reason why OSHA has rescinded the STD 3.1A directive — is that with this confusion came an unacceptable level of worker risk. US construction workers, while comprising only five percent of the US work force, account for nearly 20 percent of all worker deaths, reports OSHA. And, among the leading cause of deaths in the construction industry, most are from falls, and the vast majority of hose fall take place in residential construction. Consider the numbers:

There are roughly 6.7 million construction workers employed in the US, and every workday of every year, one of those workers will fall to his or her death. Factor in the number of reported worksite injuries resulting from falls, and one in every 20 US construction workers will endure death or serious injury, this year alone, from a worksite fall. And, contrary to common opinion, the US census reports that older workers (45 to 54-years-old) are far more likely to be killed on the job than any other age group, with the number of 45 to 54-year-old worker deaths outnumbering all 16 to 34-year-old worker deaths combined.

 What Builders Need to Know

As of June 16, 2011, all residential contractors and roofers must now adhere to OSHA’s fall protection safety standards 1926.501 and 1926.502, on all residential projects.

What this means is that for any worker on site, either as an employee or subcontractor, who is working six or more feet about the lower level, the contractor is required to provide and/or ensure the use of one of three conventional fall protection systems — guardrails, safety nets and/or personal fall arrest systems. If such systems are deemed either infeasible or to present a greater safety hazard to the worker, an alternative method of fall protection may be still be used. But, unlike in the past, the use of alternative methods of fall protection must be accompanied by written documentation that explains why a conventional system was not use and what alternative system is to be used instead. This plan then must be left on site and made available to all workers.

It is also important to note that OSHA requires written documentation for each individual use of alternative fall protection systems, and for each occurrence. A production builders, for instance, cannot not use the same plan for all homes of a similar design within a development, but must instead produce a new plan for each new work site and construction activity.

To sum up OSHA’s new directive: If you can use one of the three conventional fall protection systems, use it. OSHA has intentionally sought to discourage, and make onerous, the use of alternative methods in the interest of improving worker safety. As the directive clearly states: “OSHA is not persuaded that there are significant safety or feasibility problems with the use of such equipment for the vast majority of residential construction activities.”

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Side Bar:

Federal OSHA’s Top Ten Standards cited for violation by general contractors in the construction of single-family housing (from October 2009 to September 2010) and the average fine imposed:

#	Standard Cited	Standard #	# of Citations	Average Fine Imposed
1	General Requirements	1926.451	462	$747.00
2	Duty to have fall protection	1926.501	395	$1051.00
3	Ladders	1926.1053	162	$557.00
4	Training requirements- Fall Protection	1926.503	102	$376.00
5	Hazard communication	1910.1200	95	$193.00
6	General safety and health provisions	1926.020	95	$873.00
7	Head protection	1926.100	81	$578.00
8	Eye and face protection	1926.102	73	$658.00
9	Training requirements: Scaffolds	1926.454	65	$424.00
10	Wiring design and protection	1926.404	63	$498.00

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Link: http://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/citedstandard.sic?p_esize=&p_state=FEFederal&p_sic=1521

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For information on OSHA’s fall protection standards and the conventional fall protection systems, see the links below:

OSHA “Fall Hazards: Participant Guide,” at www.coshnetwork.org/sites/default/files/1%20FallsParticipant.pdf

Directive STD 03-11-002 http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=4755

OSHA standard 1926. 501 – Duty to have fall protection: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10757

OSHA standard 1926.502 – Fall protection systems criteria and practices: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10758

 

Spring 2011
Norwich Record: Norwich University Alumni Magazine
News Feature

 

Lessons in Collaboration

A New University Program Integrates Disciplines in Pursuit of a National Honor

 

In every way possible, Norwich University works hard to prepare its students for life beyond the classroom. The school boasts one of the most rigorous academic environments in the county and holds, as its written mission, the education of students “to make moral, patriotic, efficient, and useful citizens.”

Since 2009, Management Professor Dr Michael Puddicombe has led yet another effort in pursuit of this goal. Dr. Puddicombe is the director of the University’s Center for the Integrated Study of the Built Environment, or CISBE. CISBE’s main objective, as the name denotes, is to integrate the diversity of Norwich’s academic disciplines into one collaborative center of study. More specifically, CISBE stems from Puddicombe’s own experience in the construction industry and his recognition that along with a student’s mastery of one discipline, cooperation between the disciplines is as equally important to learn.

Puddicombe, it might be said, is a man with a past; a past, it so happens, perfectly suited for his work with CISBE. Prior to obtaining his PhD in Operations Management, Puddicombe worked in construction, doing, as he says, “everything from digging ditches to owning and developing projects.” It was through this experience that Puddicombe faced, firsthand, the construction industry’s often debilitating lack of cooperation. “Architects, engineers, and contractors, like George Bernard Shaw said of England and the US, are people separated by a common language,” Puddicombe said. “We really don’t know each other. So we started the construction management program with the idea that we’d get everybody working together.”

Now, under the auspices of CISBE, students from Norwich’s three construction disciplines —architecture, engineering, and construction management — have collaboratively completed one project, are working on a second, and next year will begin a critical third.

The first project, the Energy Mobile Building Arts Research Center (EMBAC) was completed in the summer of 2010 and stands in Disney Field, near the Armory. The rectangular, box- like structure is a solar-powered research lab designed to be transported by trailer and to serve as a promotional tool for both Norwich and the project’s focus on sustainable design.

The second project, the RAE(V) house, pronounced ‘rave,’ is a solar-powered house that architecture Professor Matt Lutz expects to start building in early 2011. The design of the home was Norwich’s 2011 entry into the Solar Decathlon, a biennial design competition hosted by the US Department of Energy. Through the competition, 20 US schools are chosen to design and build a cost-effective, energy-efficient, solar-powered home, which, to make it even more challenging, must be transported and erected on the National Mall in Washington DC.

Norwich’s 2011 entry was not selected, spurring students and faculty to set their sights on 2013 and to use their work on EMARC and RAE(V) to influence, inspire and inform the 2013 entry.

“In the long run, we are going to come out much stronger as a result of what we are doing,” said Puddicombe. “When you have an architecture student, an engineering student, and construction management student actually working together on a physical project and realizing how their decisions impact each other, it is a learning experience that just can’t be replicated.”

 

January 2008
Stowe Reporter
Public Policy: Economic Analysis

 

Old Is Gold

How Graying Populations Brings More Money to Vermont

 

Joe Mooney, 63, of Stowe, bought a house in Vermont in 1999 to “escape the scorching Florida summers.” Three years later, he and his family moved here full time. Mooney works as a government manager and securities consultant for Florida municipalities, and he realized that the nature of his work allowed him to live anywhere. For Mooney, that anywhere was Vermont. The reason they moved, Mooney said, was for their quality of life. “Better medical care, better air quality, better water quality, lower crime rates — that all went into it.”

This is a familiar refrain. Quality of life is one of the main attractions for people—young and old—who move to the Vermont. But for some state officials, this appeal has a few worrying consequences. Joe Mooney, like so many Vermont transplants, demonstrates Vermont’s appeal to an older and often wealthier demographic, which, accompanied by an apparent decline in school age children and early adult populations, has caused a sharp increase in average age of the state’s population. Vermont, as is often cited, is the “second-oldest” state in the country.

Gov. Jim Douglas, in 2006, quoted these statistics and suggested that Vermont’s rank as the second-oldest state in the nation indicated a looming economic crisis. The assumption is this: With more and more young people leaving the state and a rapidly aging population, Vermont faces a progressively shrinking tax base. The population figures “painted a fairly grim picture,” said David Mace, communications director for Vermont’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development. A report from the Ethan Allen Institute, a conservative policy research facility in Concord, VT, paints an equally dire scene. “It is clear that, as the number of senior citizens grows and the number of workers decline, there will be a significant reduction in the growth rate of total income earned by Vermonters,” the report says. It cites a projected rise of the “dependency ratio” — the number of working adults in relation to children and seniors— and asks, “How will state government raise the revenues needed to pay for public programs?”

Tom Kavet, a consulting economist to the Democrat–led Vermont Legislature, said that this assumption—that Vermont faces a looming economic crisis— is entirely unfounded. Recent studies have supported Kavet’s assertion. “One of the silliest ideas,” Kavet said, “ is that somehow there is a brain drain of 20-something-years-olds that we’re losing, and we have to somehow keep them. For 40 years, Vermont, and almost any small rural state that has a demographic profile like Vermont, has had losses in the age group of 20- to 35-year-olds, and in-flows from about 35 to 50.”

Research conducted recently by the New England Public Policy Center in Boston added even more nuance to these numbers. The center’s research found that the actual number of young adults in New England, including Vermont, was neither decreasing nor increasing, but rather had remained fairly stable. The perception that the population was aging, it found, was not due to a mass exodus of young adults but rather due to those adults aging out of one demographic cohort and into another. The baby-boomer generation, in short — the largest demographic bubble in US history— had entered middle-age and was, for statistical purposes, no longer counted as young adults. Seen merely through the eyes of demographer, this change might seem alarming, while on the ground the actual population shift might only represent a few, albeit statistically significant, years.

And so: Is Vermont’s population growing older? Yes. Vermont’s 65 and over population by 2030 will increase by 112 percent by 2030, according to projections from the U.S. Census. But, this is only marginally higher than the nationally projected rise of 104 percent over the same period of time. While Vermont’s is indeed growing older, so is the rest of the country. What has aided in the slightly higher rate in Vermont is both its appeal to older residents, as well as its statistically low birth rate. What all this means for the state, however, remains a bone of contention.

Pursuing Vermont

The Douglas administration, not convinced by the findings of Kavet and others, continues to maintain a number of policies directed at staunching the state’s loss of young adults. Keep the workers — maintain the tax-base, the administration contends. One key initiative, “Pursue VT,” under the direction of Vermont’s Department of Economic Development, plans to spend $100,000 this year alone on efforts to attract young people to Vermont. The department has also offered million of dollars in tax incentives to businesses looking to expand in or move to state. And, said Mace, it is also seeking ways to add more affordable housing.

Kevin Dorn, secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said there remains this telling fact: Vermont is ranked No. 1 in the country with 50- to 54-year-olds per capita, but is also ranked No. 51 with 25- to 29-year-olds.“You cannot ignore the lowest birth rate. You cannot ignore the second-oldest state,” Dorn said.

True, said Kavet, you can’t ignore the numbers, but what those numbers say is a matter for debate. To offer tax incentives to businesses, Kavet said, is playing to state weaknesses. The state, he adds, should emphasize its strengths. “Our comparative advantage in Vermont has to do with quality of life, not necessarily paying off a company more than another state is going to pay them off. The tendency is for (young) people to go to big cities and urban areas. Then, when they get a certain level of professional skill, independence and flexibility, they are looking for quality of life.”

Again, Kavet said, it is these fairly consistent losses and gains that naturally trends Vermont toward an older population. “The idea that somehow that’s bad or wrong or needs to be changed,” he said, “is almost laughable.”

Bigger Tax Base

The key question in this debate, no matter what the population statistics reveal, is if, indeed, Vermont faces an economic crisis as the state’s population grows older. The key assertion from conservatives is that as the population increasingly ages into retirement, there will be less and less workers paying taxes. This, argues Kavet, is a fallacy, and a recent report from the Public Asset Institute, a liberal think-tank in Montpelier, bolsters Kavet’s position.

The Public Asset Institute studied the average income of Vermonters leaving and entering the state in 2005. It found that the average income of those entering Vermont was almost 20 percent higher than those leaving. An approximate 16,637 people left Vermont in 2005, the report found, taking with them a cumulative, adjusted gross income of $410 million. At the same time, 16,279 people moved to Vermont, bringing in a cumulative income of $473 million. Despite a migratory loss of 358 people, Vermont added more than $60 million of personal income, which means bigger tax revenues for the state government.

“The net economic impact of having people with high skill levels, high productivity levels, and high levels of assets moving back into the state is much more beneficial than having 20-something-year-olds staying,” Kavet said. “And that’s the kind of dividend that we get from having a high quality of life.”

As for Vermont’s rapidly aging population and its impact on the state’s tax-base, Kavet also takes issue with the reasoning. “This idea that somehow wealthy old people — and if you look at the mix in Vermont, we have a lot of wealthy older people — represent a burden, and that the workers in the state are floating them, is completely wrong,” Kavet said. “The people who aren’t (working) often have savings that are substantial. They have wealth that is substantial. Sometimes, they are supporting the people who are working.”

According to Vermont tax record, Kavet is right. The average, per-capita income of Vermonters 65 and over was $33,000 in 2005, according to the Vermont Department of Taxes. And those Vermonters paid an average of $1,086 in income tax. Inversely, the average income for Vermonters under 65, during the same year, was only $25,000, with an average income-tax burden of $794.

“If they have kids and the kids are in school, that’s expensive,” Kavet said, “but none of these folks have kids. And most of the health services that are provided are (provided) at the federal level. It doesn’t look like it is a net fiscal negative at all.”

A further look into the numbers supports Kavet’s assertions. Of all state revenues in 2005, just 3 percent were obtain through corporate taxes, while 78 percent were earned through income, property and sales tax — all of which Vermont’s 65-and-over population continue to pay, even after they retire.

Population Diversity

Mike Quinn, commissioner for the Vermont Department of Economic Development, said the state, along with other concerns, is looking to not only maintain an available tax base, but also needs to maintain the diversity of that base. It is for this reason that the department has developed the “Pursue VT” campaign, along with state tax incentives for businesses.

According to the U.S. Census, the median age in Vermont is projected to rise from 39.5 in 2005 to 43.9 in 2030 — an increase of 4.3 years. This is what has given the state the distinction as the “second-oldest state” in the country. The national median age is expected also to climb but only from 36.2 years old in 2005 to 39 years old in 2030. Based on these projections —as the New England Public Policy Center found — the majority of this shift in Vermont demographics will be due to a sharp increase in the 45 and over populations, coupled with very minor declines in the population under 45. The baby-boomers, in short, are getting older.

Another concern facing the state, however, is its slow rate of population expansion— a selling point to some; a concern for economists. Vermont’s population is projected to rise only 12 percent by 2030, representing one of the slowest growth rates in the country. Quinn contends that this will, again, put pressure on the state’s tax base, and it is for the reason that the state needs to spend what it does on tax incentives and other programs designed to attract both workers and business to Vermont.

Once more, Kavet disagrees. He estimates the statewide business tax credits will amount to $5 million to $10 million per year, with nearly $100 million distributed so far. “It is a lot for a small state,” Kavet said. “If you’re granting $100 million in tax credits, that’s a big chunk of money.

“If you believe that none of the investment would have taken place but for the subsidies,” he adds, “if you really believe that, then you could say, ‘Well, the thing pays for itself, because we wouldn’t have gotten anything without it, and with it we got some income and jobs. But, the fact is, a lot of these things would have happened anyway, and it is just sort of gravy for the companies and represents an expense for the state.”

The Vermont companies Husky and IBM are a perfect example of the type of businesses Vermont attracts, Kavet said. “It wasn’t business incentives that got them to come up here. Both of those major corporate investments, which are beneficial to the state, came because senior executives were reacting to quality of life.”  Tom Watson of IBM and Robert Shad of Huskies, Kavet notes, came first to vacation in Stowe, and then later, only after they experienced and grew to appreciate the state’s “quality of life” did they decide to move their companies here.  “So maybe,” Kavet joked, “what we should do is give free ski passes to CEOs, or free ski packages.”