Reduce the Cost of Safety

by Jonathan McGaha | 9 February 2014 12:00 am

By Paul Deffenbaugh

Gary T Smith New

Those of you like me, who are … ahem … of a certain age, well remember the risks we took back in the day.

Consider the iconic image “Lunch atop a Skyscraper.” The photo, taken by Charles C. Ebbets during the construction of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932, shows a number of steel workers sitting on a girder dangling above New York City. There was not a harness in sight. This was typical. Many of us remember scurrying over I-Beams and testing the limits of physics and gravity as we stretched to tighten a bolt. Many of us also have the scars, aches and pains to prove it.

In the mid-1970s I took a contract to erect four 40- by 200-foot steel buildings for Rabiah Nassar, a company located in Saudi Arabia. They gave me a crew of 40 men from various countries; only three spoke a little English. We had no equipment, and the only electric tools were one grinder and three screw guns. Not only did we unload the trucks by hand, but we erected all the buildings using handmade wooden scaffolding in 110 F heat. We had no cranes, no lifts and certainly no safety harnesses- just raw brute strength and a desire to git’r done. Somehow we survived. But before we get too nostalgic let’s not forget that back in the day many did not survive.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the earliest systematic survey of workplace fatalities focused on Allegheny County, Pa. From July 1906 through June 1907, 526 workers died in work accidents in that one county. Of those, 195 were steelworkers. From 1933 to 1997, deaths from unintentional work-related injuries declined 90 percent-from 37 per 100,000 workers to four per 100,000-according to data from the National Safety Council. During the same period the annual number of deaths decreased from 14,500 to 5,100. And, during this same period, the workforce more than tripled, from 39 million to approximately 130 million.

I am proud of the strides our industry has made to improve safety, but as a small business owner I sometimes feel overwhelmed at the time and money involved to do it right. My point is not to cut corners but rather to draw attention to the high cost of implementing and maintaining a proper safety program.

The first cost, of course, is figuring out what should be included in your plan. My buddy, Craig Shaffer of SafetyWorks Inc., Dillsburg, Pa., and I re- cently debated what should be included in a good general safety and training program for the average erector. Rules vary by state, by job and even by personal preference. We agreed there are many topics on which OSHA requires employees to be trained. Exactly which topics are emphasized, and how stringently they are enforced during an OSHA inspection, depends largely on a variety of factors.

These factors can include your geographic region, which active emphasis programs OSHA is targeting, the occurrence of recent high-profile events and even the inspector’s own personal points of emphasis based on his/her experiences.

In the metal building industry, safety and training topics of particular interest are:

General contractors and certain projects require some or all of these, and in some cases even more.

What does all this mean to the average erector? Time and money! Add the costs of these training programs to hours spent not working and multiply by the number of employees and you only scratch the surface. A business also needs to keep track of which guy has received what training, when he needs to be renewed or retrained, who has what training, who needs what training … the recordkeeping makes my office manager’s head spin. You also need to decide whether to pay for time spent training and where/how to access training.

This is where belonging to an association such as the Metal Building Contractor and Erectors Association is crucial. The MBCEA is dedicated to the support of the professional advancement of metal building contractors, erectors and our industry.

They have produced one of the preeminent training tools for our industry-the “Quality and Craftsmen Training” series.

Perhaps even more relevant is the subsidized training available through the MBCEA. For example, the Southeast Chapter is offering a full day of Rigging and Signal Person Training in January for $25 per member. An individual company would easily pay in excess of
$500 to access such a quality program. In addition, MBCEA Chapters frequently invite manufacturers to provide training and information on new products and techniques.

We have certainly come a long way from those 195 steelworker deaths in Allegheny County, Pa., in 1907. There will always be room for improvement; always be new, better and safer techniques and ways of working. Today’s smart contractors and erectors have a well-developed safety plan that is not just words on paper sitting on a shelf but an actual program put into practice every day. They know that it is a necessary and important cost of doing business, and they know that joining forces with their peers and colleagues through membership associations such as the MBCEA is a great way to control costs and access quality programs. But what do I know? I’m just an old steelworker.

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Gary T. Smith is president of Thomas Phoenix International Inc., Eastampton, N.J., and an outspoken supporter of Apprenticeship, Training, Safety and Education for the Metal Buildings Institute. He is one of the original founders of the MBCEA-MAD and trustee of the MBI.

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