As the dog-days of summer are upon us and the local temperatures will commonly be in the upper 80’s and 90’s throughout the rest of the year in most locations of the state (CA), if you haven’t already, please review your Heath Injury Aware Program and review the details with your Supervisors and employees. Please keep in mind CalOSHA’s “Heat Standard” (CCR §3395) applies regardless of current temperatures or seasonal temperatures.
Please take heed to this advice. The requirements of CCR §3395 is a state wide, year round requirement (must have a written formal program). I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with an “out-of-state” (Kansas) Construction Management Contractor working in the Bay Area for California’s largest public utility. Their Safety Manager was explaining to me …. that all of their safety programs are based on “OSHA” (aka Fed OSHA) implying the federal rules and his company’s rules were in “compliance” with everything they needed. Furthermore … he stated that the “it never gets hot enough here (the SF peninsula) for CalOSHA rules to apply”. Arrogantly or naively he is wrong! As most of you know his understanding of safety and compliance in California is incorrect and misguided.
Please keep in mind CalOSHA’s “Heat Standard” (CCR §3395) applies regardless of current temperatures or seasonal temperatures. If you are working with a contractor based out of California, you may wish to remind them the rules that apply in California are that of the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) or better known as “CalOSHA”.
Tailboards are good but ……
As a reminder “tailboards” are a requirement for theConstruction Industry (as well as Oil & Gas, Agriculture and most service-maintenance providers) §1509. Injury and Illness Prevention Program (e) Supervisory employees shall conduct “toolbox” or “tailgate” safety meetings, or equivalent, with their crews at least every 10 working days to emphasize safety.
Keep in mind as tailboards do not address all a requirements of a Standards, they do not qualify as formal “training”. Additional training with be required to meet the training requirements found in CalOSHA CCR §3395.
If you are rusty with the details of how the Standard affects you, please review the following information from the CalOSHA website. Additional resources and heat illness publications can be found online at this link:http://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/HeatIllnessInfo.html
If you do not have an updated Heat Illness Prevention Program or need formal training for your staff and employees, let’s schedule time to get this done.
Also, as this is a high profile issue for Cal/OSHA, we will no doubt see “Heat-sweeps” enforcement inspections the next few weeks and into July. I will also be sending out reminders and additional information regarding Heat Injury Awareness and Prevention repeatedly over the next few months.
“Are you compliant or complacent?”
HEAT ILLNESS AWARENESS & PREVENTION_SAFETY MESSAGE_JUNE 2018
TIPS ON HEAT ILLNESS AWARENESS & PREVENTION_SAFETY MESSAGE_AUGUST 2018
