By Daniel C. Brown

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In January 2003, two construction workers, brothers aged 15 and 16 years, died when the trench in which they were working collapsed. The laborers were installing conduit in a trench 8 feet deep and 2 feet wide, reports the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When work started, the job-site foreman instructed the crew leader to operate a backhoe to dig the trench. The foreman then left the site to check on another job. About an hour later, the trench caved in, killing the two workers. Co-workers uncovered the teens and removed them from the trench as the rescue squad arrived. The workers could not be revived.

No protective measures—such as a trench box, benching, sloping, or shoring—had been taken to prevent the collapse, according to an investigation by Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation, a program run by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The two workers were employed by a company with 65 employees.

Sometimes the excavator operator hits a worker. In May 2003, a pipe layer, age 23, died after being struck by the teeth of an excavator bucket while he was working in a trench. The pipe layer worked for a company with 95 employees.

Those are not isolated incidents. Recently, OSHA released trench fatality numbers for 2003, and they're not good. Trench fatalities in calendar 2003 represented 6% of total construction fatalities—a whopping 61% increase from 33 in 2002 to 53 in 2003. And OSHA believes the raw number could still increase.

Most of the fatalities, or 36 of the 53, were due to trench collapses. Other trench fatalities last year included five workers who were struck or crushed by a pipe, and five who were struck by a backhoe. Trench-related fatalities were concentrated among workers who were 20 to 39 years old (60%). Fully three-fourths of those killed were laborers. Others were supervisors, heating/ventilation workers, and plumbers.

Union workers appear to work more safely than nonunion workers. Ninety-two percent of the 53 trench fatalities investigated by OSHA were experienced by nonunion workers.

How Safety Pays

We recently had a chance to talk with Thomas A. Broderick, executive director of the Construction Safety Council and Chicagoland Construction Safety Council (CCSC) in Hillside, IL. Prior to his work at CCSC, Broderick was safety director at a multiplant division of James River Corporation. Currently, Broderick is a public representative on the Secretary of Labor's Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH). Additional info on the committee is available at www.osha.gov.

ACCSH has a work group that addresses excavation issues, but a new OSHA excavation task force is separate and apart from that work group. OSHA officials are expectant that the ACCSH work group will support the work of the task force and the Secretary's focus on excavations as a "national emphasis program."

GX: What is OSHA currently doing about trench safety?

Broderick: Any violation of OSHA standards that is in plain view is fair game for any OSHA compliance officer to stop and take action. Much trenching work is near roadways—and compliance officers will pay attention to the condition of the excavation and any protective systems that may be in place. The compliance officers will usually determine whether there is a required "competent person" for the excavation site.

The compliance officer will ascertain that the competent person has both the knowledge and tools to test and classify the soil and install an appropriate form of worker protection such as trench boxes, aluminum hydraulic or pneumatic shoring, benching, sloping, or other effective means of protection. Also, the compliance officers will ascertain whether the competent person has the authority to take "prompt corrective action" to respond to changes in conditions by removing crews from harm's way, if necessary, or to do whatever is necessary to ensure the safety of the workers.

GX: Please discuss what is meant by a competent person.

Broderick: A real misconception that some contractors have is that a card issued after an eight-hour class and an exam for competent persons actually makes the student a competent person. Our stock answer is no! Only the employer can create that designation by ensuring that the competent person is knowledgeable about the excavation requirements found in OSHA 29CFR1926, Subpart P. The person MUST be given the authority to make independent decisions about taking actions to protect workers, up to and including halting the job if necessary.

GX: What is the most common situation that causes a fatality in trenching?

Broderick: Although workers can be killed by falling into an excavation or by getting hit or crushed by a piece of heavy equipment, the scenario that we usually hear about is a trench collapse, where the worker is buried alive when unprotected trench walls collapse and the earth traps and crushes him or her. People don't always realize that the cubic yard of dirt that could break off of the wall of an excavation and fall on a worker weighs about the same as a car and that death often is instantaneous.

GX: Can you explain how "safety doesn't cost, it pays?"

Broderick: In this day and age the slogan "safety pays" has never been truer. Here are a few reasons:

• Prior to allowing a subcontractor to bid on work, many owners and general contractors are now looking carefully at the safety record, previous OSHA citation history, written safety policies and procedures particular to the type of work at hand, insurance experience ratings, etc. Negative records are now keeping some contractors from doing work, and in some cases the client is dismissing contractors [with which it has] had a working relationship for years.
• A serious accident can shut a job down for an extended period of time as OSHA, insurance companies, client representatives, and other affected parties examine the scene in order to fulfill various recordkeeping and reporting functions.
• Serious trench accidents/fatalities, after a complete investigation, usually have OSHA penalties attached that are classified as willful. This is often true even if there hasn't been an accident but where there are workers at risk in an unprotected trench and a compliance officer initiates an inspection. In fact, OSHA has issued multiple willful citations, one for each employee in the hole. This can bring a $70,000 fine and six months in jail for the employer for a single willful, but multiply that by the number of willful citations where multiple exposures are involved.
• Insurance coverage is loss-sensitive. The more frequent the contractor incurs a loss, the higher the insurance premiums. In some cases, contractors have gone out of business because they can't afford coverage; also, the high cost of coverage for a poor-performing contractor compared with very safe contractors—with low premiums makes it difficult for the poor contractor to compete.

Daniel C. Brown is the owner of TechniComm, a communications business based in Des Plaines, IL.

GEC - September/October 2004