---

MOFFITT REPORTING ASSOCIATES
(301) 390-5150

PRESENT

Advisory Committee Members Present:
 

Stephen D. Cooper
Executive Director
International Association of Bridge, Structural
& Ornamental Iron Workers

Larry A. Edginton
Director of Safety and Health
International Union of Operating Engineers

William C. Rhoten
Director of Safety & Health Department
United Association of Journeymen & Apprentices of the
Plumbing & Pipe Fitting Industry of the
United States & Canada

Mark Ayers
Director of Construction and Maintenance Dept.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

Stewart Burkhammer
Vice President & Manager of Safety and Health Services
Bechtel Corporation

Stephen Cloutier
Vice President
Safety/Loss Prevention Manager
J.A. Jones Construction
Felipe Devora
Safety Director
Fretz Construction Company

Robert Masterson
Manager, Safety and Loss Control
The Ryland Group

Owen Smith
President
Anzalone & Associates

Harry Payne, Jr.
Commissioner
North Carolina Department of Labor

Danny Evans
Chief Administrative Officer
OSH Enforcement Division of Industrial Relations
Nevada Department of Business and Industry

Jane F. Williams
President
A-Z Safety Resources

Michael Buchet
Construction Division Manager
National Safety Council

Marie Haring Sweeney, Ph.D.
Chief, Document Development Branch
Education and Information Division
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Staff Present:

Berrien Zettler
Deputy Director of the Directorate of Construction

Bruce Swanson
Designated Federal Official

Jim Boom

Sarah Shortall

 

AGENDA

 

AGENDA ITEM

Special Presentation: Report on Certifications Available in the Construction Industry
Dr. Roger Brauer, Executive Director, Board of Certified Safety Professionals

ACCSH Workgroup Reports Continued
Safety and Health Program Standard for Construction
Steve Cloutier, Committee Member

OSHA Form 170
Jane Williams, Committee Member

ACCSH Guidelines
Jane Williams, Committee Member

Directorate of Communication - Update
Noah Connell, Directorate of Construction
Berrien Zettler, Deputy Director, Directorate of Construction

Public Comment Period

ACCSH New Business and Discussion Period

PROCEEDINGS
8:30 a.m.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Good morning. A quick review of the agenda today if you all would get out your agenda. We have two items to add this morning. One is the 170 follow-up from yesterday. The other one is the review of the current workgroups that I asked you to take a look at yesterday, Jane's discussion. It is in your green folder.

(Pause)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The workgroup form, that is in your packets. So we will have - we will start out on our agenda with Dr. Roger Brauer from the BCSP, the certification presentation. Steve Cloutier will follow with the Safety and Health Program Standard Report which you should have a copy of. It was passed out this morning. Then, we will insert Jane's 170 discussion, followed by the workgroup review. Then, we will have our public comment which we still have a public comment. Good. Okay. Charlie Maresca will be speaking before us. And then, we will follow -- no. Prior to Charlie, we will have Bruce and the Directorate of Construction Update. And Bruce is also going to talk about the action item list that is in your green folder. So when we get to that, you will be able to get that out.

With that, I would like to introduce Dr. Roger Brauer who is the Executive Director of the Board of Certified Safety Professionals who I have asked to come today and talk to us about certifications in construction. For those of us that we did the work, I think I can speak for our company and maybe some others also that I am aware of, when we get the request for a proposal in from customers, we are seeing a lot more requests asking for the safety, health, and environmental professional depending on what type of person the RFP is asking for or a combination of persons to be certified. And BCSP has done a lot of work developing the certifications. We have lots of different types of certifications for the construction industry. And I thought this would be an appropriate time for Dr. Brauer to come before us and explain all this stuff to us. Roger.

DR. BRAUER: Thanks a lot, Mr. Burkhammer. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this group. I have provided you with a copy of my presentation slides that I will be working through this morning, as well as a packet of literature about some of the programs I will be talking about. I am going to be using transparencies. Hopefully, you can turn that on.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Some of us may have to move.

DR. BRAUER: I will try to save a little time at the end for your questions. Okay. If we can flip to the next slide, a quick overview of the topics I am going to discuss this morning are: who is the Board of Certified Safety Professionals? And I also represent another activity that is a joint venture with the Board of Certified Safety Professionals and the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. It is called the ABIH/BCSP Joint Committee. And I will explain that group as I go along. I want to talk about certification quality because there is a lot of choices on certification. I want to talk about certification value. How does it add value to employers and people who rely on practitioners? And also, what are some of the trends and certification? To set the stage a little bit, this slide is a little bit small on the screen, but the general concept is: what is certification all about? It is trying to assess competency. When somebody goes to hire an individual for a position, somehow you hope through the process, whatever it is that you use to select an individual that they can perform the duties associated with the job. So at the top of the chart, you have functions and tasks that might be associated with an activity or job. And you have individuals, the individual who fills that. And you are trying to project their performance. And you hope that they are competent at what they do.

Now, it depends on several things. You try to assess their knowledge and skill. And normally, in employment, you look at their education or training. You look at their experience. Those are two common elements. But as we did move down the middle column, the education and training is represented on the left side of the chart, experience on the right side. And down the center is various formalized ways of evaluating individuals. And generally, in certification, you deal with all three areas. The certification program typically evaluates education or training. It evaluates experience. And it evaluates people's knowledge and skill through examination. And most certification programs involve all three of those components. And so if the individual meets the standard associated with the certification, they get to use a title that is awarded. It is a completely volunteer program as opposed to licensing that is offered by states. And the employer or contractor or whoever, depending on the individual service can rely on the certification as an additional way of screening the competency of the individual. There is no perfect way to identify that everybody is going to perform 100 percent correctly and very efficiently in any kind of job. That is impossible, but certification plays a role in helping people make decisions about individuals.

Okay. The next slide. Who is the Board of Certified Safety Professionals? It was established in 1969. It grew out of an activity with the American Society of Safety Engineers. It was chartered in Illinois as a not-for-profit corporation. It has 13 directors. We have one public director who has no involvement with the profession. We have 12 directors who must hold a certified safety professional designation to serve. They serve as volunteers for no more than two to three year terms. And the represent the profession at large, different kinds of job settings. And many of them are nominated by the six sponsoring organizations in the right column which include the American Society of Safety Engineers, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the National Safety Council, the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the System Safety Society, and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. BCSP is not a member organization. It is strictly a credentialing board. The only members we have are the 13 directors. And they serve as the officers and directors of the activity. And our function is to promote the certification and protect it as well, but we don't provide member services. That is what sponsoring organizations do.

The next slide. To date, we have had about 27,000 applications since 1969. About 16,000 certificates have been issued for this program which is a professional level program. Currently, we have 9,900 people who hold the certificate. And we have about 5,500 roughly in process. The ASP, Associate Safety Professional, is an interim title designating that they have passed the first of two levels of examinations.

The next slide. In general, the certification process, and this is typical, an individual has to apply. They have to meet some standards of the certifying board. Incidentally, certification is a fairly simple business in one sense. The certification board sets standards and evaluates people against the standards. And generally, the standards involve the three areas: education, experience, and demonstrated knowledge by examination. For the CSP, there is a two-tiered exam process, safety fundamentals and comprehensive practice. And another feature of the certification programs is many of them require recertification with certain frequency. And we require it every give years. And it involves 10 categories of activities. We will talk about the process a little bit later. And also, with the CSP program, we offer specialties. We used to offer it as an option at the second level as a choice between comprehensive practice, but we have now moved it after the CSP to be consistent with other professional fields like medicine and law. An M.D., for example, you go to school, get a state license first, then go and do a residency in a specialty area, and get a certification from a peer certification board in that specialty. And that is the way we are structuring our specialties now. The specialties include a construction safety specialty. The education requirement for the CSP, the minimum is an associate degree in safety and health or a bachelor's in any field. Traditionally, many people have entered the safety profession from a variety of backgrounds. We have seen a major shift to people coming out of safety degree programs in the United States. So the majority of people applying now have degrees in the safety field. We award credit for the degree on a varying scale relative to a curriculum standard for safety practice. And some people who would be short because of their education background can gain the additional credit through extra experience. If they meet the academic requirement, then they can sit for the fundamentals exam. And graduate work counts toward experience, not the minimum education requirement.

The next slide. Experience, we have a point system. That is equal to one month of professional safety practice. We give them one point for each month. The minimum is four years, but they may have to make up some for a deficiency in the academic requirement. We use six criteria to determine whether somebody's experience meets a professional standard. And they are briefly outlined there. The minimum is 50 percent of their job has to be safety. It has to be the primary duty. The focus has to be on prevention on harm rather than response to dangerous situations which is what we would typically assign to public safety, fire and police protection. It has to be at an appropriate level and has to have a breadth of responsibility rather than strictly one kind of activity related to safety. If they meet this requirement, they can sit for the comprehensive practice exam.

The next slide. Continuance of certification, they have to gain 25 points every five years. And as I mentioned, there are 10 categories of activities. There are upper limits in certain areas. It is unrestricted on continuing education. The main focus is getting people to keep up with change in their practice. The next slide. Specialty exams are optional. There is no additional title except that an individual has demonstrated competency in the specialty. They have to hold a CSP. And the first one we have on line is ergonomics and construction safety. And system safety will be on line in the next couple of months. Other ones are possible. We have some groups that are interested in other areas of specialty, but we haven't made a decision on whether we will set those up.

The next slide. The ABIH/BCSP Joint Committee began in 1985. It's a joint venture with two parent certification boards, the American Board of Industrial Hygiene and BCSP. The focus of this group is on technician and technologist certification and safety and health as well as worker/supervisor kinds of programs. Currently, we operate three. The joint committee is open to work with groups and other kinds of needs. The one that has been around the longest is the occupational health and safety technologist. It's a fairly general certification. The qualifications at this level are less stringent than they are for the professional practice. Another one that was started in 1995 at the request of representatives of the construction industry was the construction health and safety technician. I would consider it very equivalent in level to the OHST program. The other one that was requested by the construction industry was a safety trained supervisor program in construction. And both of those are in operation. To give you an example of the models of these programs, the OHST is the oldest. It requires, the model for this program is, five years experience in occupational safety and health. The minimum is 35 percent of job duties. So this program allows for adjunct positions and roles of that sort to qualify. The exam has 200 questions. We allow five hours. It is currently there are about 1,800 individuals who hold this certification. And again, it has a recertification requirement on a five-year cycle. It is patterned similar with a point system under a different activity.

The next slide. The construction health and safety technician, the model is a little bit different. It requires a combination of training, education, and experience. And it is very flexible. So an individual with a high school education and safety and health training, I think the minimum is 30 hours can combine it with construction experience and qualify it for this program to sit for the examination. At the other extreme, we have people who may come out of an associate degree program in a community college in safety and want to work in construction safety. They would qualify. They have to have a little less experience because they have a stronger background in safety and health. So I hear some examples of combinations of qualifications. Under training and education, high school plus if somebody went through an OSHA 35-hour course, they would qualify. For high school and 40 hours of safety and health training or high school and three years in a safety and health position if they don't have academic training course work in safety and health or a degree in safety and health, all of those would qualify. Plus, they have to have experience in construction. And they either have to have experience as a supervisor or in a safety and health position to qualify.

The next slide. But it provides a lot of flexibility. Here is a chart of what we would call an exam blueprint. It lists the subjects and the distributions on the exams. We always make this information public so people can be prepared. And I will explain a little bit later under quality how you arrive at an exam blueprint. It is not arbitrary. There are formal procedures that are appropriate in the test and measurement business.

The next slide. The safety training supervisor in construction is targeted at first-line supervisors. One point, the concept was included in draft federal legislation. And that is kind of the model that was requested of us. And the focus of the program is on job site safety rather than safety of a particular craft. And we assume that an individuals know safety about their craft that they are in, but many times, they don't have a broader picture of the kinds of hazards and activities across crafts that might create a hazard for the crew they are responsible for or vice versa. And so the focus is on a broader perspective of construction safety on a job site. It does not depend totally on regulations, but a significant portion of this exam is based on regulations. When you move to a professional practice examination, there is very little on regulation because the professional practitioner relies on principles and practices to deal with situations when they are no rules. Obviously, the rules in compliance is the foundation, the minimum that an employer has to deal with, but the professional practitioner very often has to go beyond that. So that is one form of difference as you move up the scale. The examination for this program has 75 questions. We allow two hours for the exam.

The next slide. All of the exams that we offer in all of our programs are delivered by computer. Currently, we have a contract with Sylvan Cometric a branch of Sylvan Learning Systems. They would venture that they own about 85 percent of the computer delivered exam capability in the United States. That is slowly changing. Currently, the exams are available every business day at about 350 locations in the U.S. and Canada. And people call an 800 number after they register with us and take their exam at a location of their choice. They have to make an appointment. They get their results immediately after logging off the computer system. The questions are presented one at a time on the screen. And all you have to do is be able to push A, B, C and D on the keyboard or operate a mouse. It is a fairly simple procedure. There is a practice session that they use to familiarize themselves with the procedure. They can go back to items. There is a screen at the end that shows items you mark to go back to or ones you skip. And you just click on the item number and it jumps back. And you can go back to it. So it is fairly easy to move around within the exam. All of the questions that we use are multiple choice so that they are objective. Okay. I am going to talk about passing scores later, but passing scores on all of our exams are based on the difficulty of the items themselves. And I will explain that procedure. The questions are written by practitioners. They do not come from somebody in an ivory tower, but they go through a lot of work. And we will talk about that. And the contents, the blueprints for the exams are based on what people do in their jobs.

So we will go to the next slide, please. Now, I want to switch to quality. Those are the programs that we run. And quality is a very important issue because people have a lot of choices in certification. Now, in the United States, there are two general organizations that set standards for peer operated certifications. There is the National Commission for Certifying Agencies, NCCA. It was started in the 1970s with the grant from the Department of Education. The other one that is generally open is the Council of Engineering and Scientific and Specialty Boards, CESP. And it grew out of a national symposium on credentialing in the engineering and science and related fields because the states don't always license all the areas of practice that fall out of those areas. All of the programs that we operate are nationally accredited. And the CSP is nationally accredited by both of those organizations. It is the only safety and health certification that is dual certified, dual accredited.

Next slide. How does accreditation work and what are some of the standards that one has to comply with? I am not going to go into a great deal of detail. I will focus on some of these to give you an idea of what is involved in accreditation. First of all, independence and governance. Example, membership cannot be a requirement for certification because it is not fair to the individuals who are not members. So it is a fairness issue. So certification has to be open to anyone who would qualify. Governance has to be operated in an open manner. It cannot be completely self directed. So there has to be a nominating and election process that the sitting organization cannot operate totally independent. So in our programs, we have nominations from outside organizations, nominations from the profession at large. Election is normally held, well, within the organization for the joint committee. Certain positions are elected by the parent boards as opposed to the joint committee board. So you have a mix so there is not completely internally controlled governance. And one position in each of the organizations under national accreditation has to be a public director, someone who is independent of the profession and represents the interests of the public at large in practice. It has to be financially sound and stable. And so one issue is, is the certification going to be around for awhile? Or is someone just creating it to generate some funds and disappear? That becomes important. And so in our programs, we have public audits that meet national accounting standards. And you make those things public so that people can see the financial status. Nondiscrimination, you have to meet federal qualifications in nondiscrimination. You have to have due process. You have to publish the nondiscrimination qualifications in your literature and things like that. Fairness in testing, and that gets involved in three areas. And I will talk about those in the next slides. Security, if you don't have a secure exam, the certification is in essence worthless. And so security all the way through draft, editing, item bank management, use of the exams becomes a very important issue. And national accreditation looks at your practices with regard to protecting the exam materials. Recertification is a requirement in national accreditation. You cannot achieve a certification and hold it for the rest of your life. You have to stay up with practice that is represented by the certification.

Next slide, please. Examination validity, well, what is that? In essence, when you put together an examination to test somebody's competency, the issue is, are you testing what they actually do on their job? And does that, the subject material really represent what the certification is issued for? And so you go through a series of activities that really stem from a job analysis. You get people together who work in that area and develop some consensus over a one-three day activity to identify what it is that they do. And you identify it in multiple tiers. You do job function and maybe tasks or responsibility. And within each of those, you identify the knowledge and skill that is required to be effective in those. Then, very often you convert that information from the initial group into a survey. And you go out to people in practice and ask them how important are these things in your practice? How much time do you spend on them? And how critical are they? Because if somebody fails to know that subject and it would have a severe consequence, that becomes an important criteria in including it on the exam. So then, there are procedures based to evaluate the survey responses and convert it into an estimate of what portion of the exam ought to be devoted to each subject. And we rely testing measurements, experts to help us with that whole process. We contract currently with Columbia Assessment Service. They are located in Raleigh, North Carolina. And they provide testing services of various kinds for several professions. The result of that whole activity is an examination blueprint like the chart we had up there. The subject is on the exam and the distributions. We just went through that with the CSP. It costs us $100,000 to go through that procedure. And all we ended up with is a new blueprint for the future, the next five-year period for our CSP exams.

Next slide. Question development, it is not a simple process. I was at a presentation. And one certifying body was required to ensure their question bank. And when they did their analysis, they ended up ensuring each question for $2,500. You say, well, that is pretty high. By the time you go through the process of getting quality questions, questions that measure what they are supposed to and are effective at it, it's a lot of work. And you can't have poor quality questions. I am not going to go into all the details of question development, but it goes through a lot of stages. We get people in practice to help us draft the questions. Then, it goes through at least three edits: a technical edit to make sure it's technically correct. It has all the components required to present the material. If it requires illustrations, we always identify a source for the authority for the answer for every question, a published source. Then, it goes through an English edit which looks at style and grammar and reading level. Psychometric edit, psychometricians are testing measurements experts. They look for flaws, things that might give away the correct answer or the incorrect answer. And the way you write them can influence that. Then, we in our procedure, we send them out to people in practice to have them look them over after they are fully edited and say from your practice point of view, can you find anything that may be flawed? And we give them five criteria to evaluate against. And if anybody says no to any of those five criteria, it doesn't meet my personal test, we ask them to explain why. And we evaluate them. And a procedure that we now use is pretesting. The exams that are delivered to the individuals contain a few items that do not count toward the score, but we can evaluate do they really contribute to the cut score? Do people meet a minimum competency level? And we get statistics on them, get performance data before we ever include them in an exam. At that point, they are accepted into the item bank, the question bank. And when we do revisions to the exam itself, we draw on the question bank to create the new edition and then put it in use.

The next slide. Oh, I want to talk about passing scores a little bit. I do not have a slide on it. When you set passing scores for a certification exam, it is different than what most of us have experienced in school, as a kind of reference. And in school, there are two kinds of testing. If you take a course in, say, high school or college, most of us are familiar with 70 percent as passing. Well, that is totally arbitrary. I know I have taught in college for 20 years. And I could set the score wherever I wanted to. I was the only individual who determined who passed or failed my course. And nobody in the university ever questioned what standards I used. I could set them any place I wanted to while you want to be reasonable. But people had to turn in papers. They had to do other things than just the exams. And if you had an exam and you looked at the result afterward and you said, well, people did not get this question right. I said I must not have done a good job of teaching. So you give them a little extra credit. You've made some adjustments. Well, on a competency exam, you cannot do that. It is not an arbitrarily set scale. You do not make adjustments afterwards. You set a standard. And people have to meet that standard. The other one that most of us are experienced with is achievement tests. Your kids go through school. They take tests. And they come out in the 95th percentile. And you think Johnny is really a great kid. They are really smart. But what you did was you evaluated on a scale of all of the other kids that took that exam. So maybe, there were a lot of poor test takers that took the exam. And Johnny was at the upper end, but you didn't know it. The other kids influenced where your child came out on that scale. You cannot do that on a certification exam. It is not fair because if I sit with a group of good test takers, I am going to fail the exam. If I sit with a group of poor test takers, I will pass the exam. And what their score was influences whether I met the competency standard. That is not a fair procedure. So what we use is what is called the Enkoff procedure. And that is fairly common in certification exams. You have a panel of experts in the subject evaluate each question in terms of what portion of the individuals who meet the qualifications for competency should know the answer. And you essentially do an average across all the raters, across all the questions, and come up with a passing score. The net effect is if you have difficult items, you expect fewer people to get them right. The standard is adjusted to the difficulty of the material that is included on the exam. And each edition of the exam has some different questions. So there should be some variation in the passing score under that philosophy. The other one is every individual who sits for the exam has exactly the same chance of passing it as anyone else. And so that kind of procedure is essential in competency evaluation.

The next slide. Here is some data about the CSP. We don't have as rich a data for some of the other programs as yet. But, for example, the average pay for the CSP from the 1998 data was $68,000. And based on some other data sources, the differential between somebody who holds that certification compared to someone who does not, the average pay differential is somewhere on the order of $16,000 based on several studies. From the American Society of Safety Engineers membership data, they compared if you compared that salary to the average member salary, there is at least a $10,000 a year pay difference. So in terms of the individual as a return on investment, it is fairly large for their career.

The next slide. So one of the values of certification is it does affect pay. Here is some other data. The top two show the $16,000 pay differential from the Industrial Safety and Hygiene study and ASOC membership data. We just got some new data in with our evaluation survey of 1,000 people. And that just came in a couple of weeks ago. But currently, the average pay for CSPs is around $75,000. And so it does affect pay. We have several sources that show that. So one value at least to the individual is it affects pay. It affects opportunity for work as they compete with other people. They certainly have a personal satisfaction because they have met a standard of their peers. That is always a result. The employer may depend on it in various ways in hiring and selecting people for certain assignments. And let's go to the next slide. Another way that employers recognize it is in their job ads. And this if for the CSP. Over the last two decades, the portion of job ads appearing in professional safety identifying the CSP has grown to around 50 percent from around 20 percent. Normally, you ask for education and experience, but more and more certification is coming up in the requirements for certain positions.

The next slide. And many times, we have no knowledge when a government organization at the federal, state, or local level chooses to use certification as a qualification either in a standard regulation or in contracting. Let me take the local, for example. In Chicago, the Deep Tunnel Project requires that the safety officer for the contractor be a CSP. In New York city has adopted that for certain kinds of construction projects. We had no knowledge of it until they called up and asked for some guidance on, did they set their policy correctly in terms of the availability of people? So we provided some information to them to help them fine tune their policy perhaps, but we do not help them write it. We do not lobby as a certification board. That is not our role. States, one of the active areas in states is changes in worker comp laws. And very frequently, they incorporate certification qualifications in who can serve as a loss control representative for an insurance company or a self funded program. Again, we do not -- very often we do not get any information. I found out recently Nevada passed a law in construction that requires certification for certain kinds of responsibilities in the construction work. And I did not know about it until after the law was in place. They do not ask us. So more and more, employers and government agencies at various levels are starting to rely on certification as a qualification to help ensure competency in certain kinds of activities.

The next slide. I want to talk about a few trends in certification. The next slide. In the United States, I heard a statistic that since 1990, the certifications available to people in a variety of fields has more than doubled. And one asks the question, well, why would that be true? There are a couple of reasons. States are very reluctant to expand licensing. Generally, the rule of thumb for states to get involved in licensing is if a professional practice of some kind serves the public directly as customers. So we have licensing for everything from barbers and beauticians up to professional practice. physicians, but in most of those cases the individuals provide services directly to the public. And the state has a responsibility to ensure that the public is protected. For other disciplines where people primarily work for employers, the liability attaches a little differently. And in most cases, the expansion in credentialing, assessing competency is a volunteer program through certification because the states do not want to deal with licensing or liability that attaches to an employer. So it is growing. The other one from the employee's point of view is a change in employment model. When I graduated from college, the majority of the engineers that I graduated with would get a job with a company and expect to stay with that company their entire career. And the company took care of your progress and your professional advancement. Not true anymore. There is no profession where the individual can expect to work for the same company their entire career. And most people are projecting that people graduating today will have at least six employment or career changes during their lifetime. The number keeps growing. So how can the individual go to an employer and say I know this field? Certification and competency testing help answer that. So the individual takes charge of their professional development or their career development through certification. So in addition, there is proliferation as a result. We recently did an evaluation and identified 150 titles available to people in the United States in safety, health, environment and ergonomics. Of those 150 titles, 10 are nationally accredited. The four I talked to you about today are nationally accredited. They are four of those 10. We think that the national standards are a way for whether it is employers or government agencies to evaluate the quality of a certification program. They are public standards. They are well established in theory. Many derive from testing standards of the American Psychological Association.

So one way to deal with that is to look at what standards the program meets. But we see an expanded use in certification by employers, by owners, by governments. It is not the total answer to everything, but it does play a role. There is also a growing interest in the United States following the lead of some other countries in identifying the skills required for people in all kinds of jobs. So we have the National Skills Standards Boards. And one of the interesting things is the procedure that you follow to identify what skills are required for whether it is retail work, a craft, a profession is exactly the same procedure. You start with a job analysis. You identify what people do and what knowledge and skill is required in that, what are the core competencies to be effective in those areas. And you use the results to do training, to do education. And certification uses it on the other end to validate that the individual has achieved the knowledge and skill. You go through a training program, you do not always have an evaluation process at the end. So certification can compliment those validated training programs in many cases. The other thing that we see in safety is the distribution of safety responsibility. The general trend is to continually move safety responsibility lower and lower in the organization. And how do you help ensure that wherever the responsibility lies that the individuals involved are competent in dealing with safety and health issues that fall in their area of responsibility? Certification can play a role there in those kinds of programs. And the demand for certification is starting to appear as the safety and health responsibility is pushed down. Another one is outreach to smaller companies. One of the statistics that I recall is in the United States there are 4.5 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Most companies are not going to hire a safety and health specialist until they have probably on the order of 400 employees. It just does not -- it is not the kind of specialty that you can afford within that kind of business structure.

So one of the things happening in safety and health is an increase at least at the professional level in consulting. We see it in our statistics. We have seen it in industrial hygiene statistics. And it creates the opportunity to provide outreach services that were normally left to large companies. They can outreach to smaller companies. And so we see that as a trend. So as a small company buyer of services, the question is, how can I determine that the individuals providing services are competent in the safety and health field? And certification plays that role. So those are some trends. So in the last slide just as a quick summary, there is growing interest in certification, in safety, health, environment, and ergonomics. Certification if it is done well is linked to the job skills, the job knowledge. It is value added for employers and owners. It is value added for employees and practitioners. Quality in certification is essential. It is easy to create a program and give somebody some letters behind their name, but does it really mean anything? And is the program a quality one? And national accreditation standards are emerging as the point of reference to measure quality of certification programs. I appreciate the time. And I will take any questions that you might have.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Roger. Questions? Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Roger, do you have in this packet, I didn't have time to go through it, a listing of your review centers for testing?

DR. BRAUER: We don't operate any. We leave that to member organizations or private companies. We think it is a conflict of interest for us to be doing the preparation for certification and be the certifying body. We do provide practice exams for some of our programs.

MS. WILLIAMS: What are -

DR. BRAUER: The practice exams. We have for the CSP, yes, we have two new editions. And we will have one off the press for OHST this week or next week.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Bruce.

MR. SWANSON: I was intrigued actually by this issue of the insurance on each question.

DR. BRAUER: Well, 2,500. Did I say 2,500?

MR. SWANSON: Yes.

DR. BRAUER: $2,500.

MR. SWANSON: Then, I am not as interested.

(Laughter)

DR. BRAUER: Okay.

MR. SWANSON: What would be the proof of loss that your insurance company would be looking for?

DR. BRAUER: If you had a breach of security on an exam. And there are ways to tell particularly in paper and pencil. You have to distribute them by courier or some way if it gets lost, where did it go? You get feedback that somebody copied it who had responsibility for it and distributed that which sometimes happens with paper and pencil. We think computer delivery is much more secure. Sylvan operates over a private network. The computers are diskless work stations. So somebody cannot copy from that. They are all encrypted. And they are encrypted at a level where it probably takes somebody 300 years to encrypt one item. So the security in computer delivery is much, much higher.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.

MR. EDGINTON: One thing I was thinking about during the presentation that would be a great partnership for contractors in the building trades would be certification of a form and a general form in the safety training supervisor category. Or maybe even get it to where when the apprentices graduate, upon graduation from apprenticeship school, they can sit for the safety training supervisor exam.

DR. BRAUER: My comment, particularly for the safety training supervisor, a worker level program, one of the things that we have been watching is the technology for Internet based delivery engines that can be operated securely. You have to set up a proctoring system somewhere with paper and pencil, but you can deliver to any point. And I was just at a certification conference, a national conference. And there are vendors that have some very nice programs now. And I will be doing a RFP to see what kind of price we can get for that program in particular. But with credentialing the exam, you have to have proctoring because you have to know that the person who logged in on the exam is the one pushing the keys and that there is nobody else assisting them while they are completing the exam. So proctoring is essential. There is no way around it no matter what level of identification you use.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: It would be fairly easy for apprenticeship graduation.

MR. EDGINTON: Pardon me.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: That would be fairly easy to set up for apprenticeship.

MR. EDGINTON: I think you are right. We are starting to look at that ourselves.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Michael.

MR. BUCHET: What kind of controls have you got to identify the individuals?

DR. BRAUER: We have they have to present identification, a picture ID, signature. They have to log in and log out of the Sylvan Testing Center. The testing center is videotaped, audio taped in the testing room. So there really is not too much opportunity to substitute somebody. And very often, we will use a Social Security number. Because the credential attaches to an individual, you know, people are concerned about the privacy of Social Security numbers. But we required it on our applications so that we could identify where you have the same name across individuals who the individual really is.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: No further questions?

(No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much, Roger. We appreciate you coming and sharing with us.

DR. BRAUER: I might point out that we just completed a salary survey for the CSP. It involved 4,300 people. And there breakouts, 170 breakouts. So it is really benchmarking data that has never been available before for professional safety practice. And we will be announcing new blueprints as a result of the major study. That study of professional safety practice is the most comprehensive study of what practitioners do since the NIOSH study of the early 1970s.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much.

DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.

DR. SWEENEY: This is not directed at Roger. Thank you very much. This is what -- this is a comment that Roger made relative to certification. The National Skills Standards Board is moving along quite quickly on manufacturing standards. At least, I know that. And NIOSH has played a heavy role in developing the safety, at least some of the safety standards. Where is construction on this? And is there -- and is OSHA moving, participating on that because I know we have not been invited to participate in terms of developing safety standards, safety and health standards?

(Laughter)

DR. SWEENEY: And we all probably should be inputting into that activity. Nobody knows?

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I don't know. I'm not involved. Michael.

MR. BUCHET: I served for awhile as the council's representative on the construction industry coalition which was one of the first phases of the construction industry cluster's efforts under that National Skills Standards Board. We got to the point where we had elections for the controlling council. And at that point, the funding I think ceased. And the effort is in hiatus waiting more funding. The original grantees were the building trades and one of the umbrella contractor associations. And largely, it was made to invite as many people as possible to participate. And I know I submitted OSHA's Directorate of Construction's name myself several times. We never got around to doing a great deal of talking about the core skills, but certainly there were a number of us there who were championing the idea that safety had to be considered one of the core competencies in construction. When the funding comes back, we will see what happens.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Was that that joint program between the building trades and NCA, the coalition? Is that the one that McCormack and Charles Green co-chaired?

MR. BUCHET: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Okay. Next, we will hear the Safety and Health Program Standard for Construction Report. Mr. Cloutier.

MR. CLOUTIER: I will provide a copy for all ACCSH members. But the Construction Safety and Health Program Workgroup met on Wednesday, December 8th. There were 14 members and interested parties, stakeholders, and ACCSH members present. The group reviewed the March 14th, 1997 ACCSH recommendations to OSHA for revisions to 1926 subpart (c). The group agreed that there would be no changes to this document at this time. Berrien Zettler, Deputy Director of Construction, reported that the directorate has developed a revised subpart (c). And he will provide this document to the workgroup in early 18 January, 2000. The workgroup is eagerly awaiting the distribution of the document. The workgroup discussed the directive that will accompany this revised standard should be in plain English. The workgroup would also like to review the directive. The workgroup discussed the use of the word "frequent" in the existing standard. Currently, there is no definition for frequent and perhaps seen in the new standard of the directive would include the definition for that word. We also talked about the multiemployer policy since Part C. And the term, we would rather wait until the new multiemployer policy is issued before discussing it further. The workgroup is going to reconvene in Chicago, but it looks like we have been ousted for the sanitation. And we will have another meeting prior to the May meeting. That's all.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Discussion? Larry.

MR. EDGINTON: No.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Steve, Jane, 170.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, we are going to review the 170 Workgroup meeting of two parts. Michael is going to assist me. We had two meetings. That's our last ACCSH meeting on this issue. The first was held in November. And at that point in time, we were really trying to contemplate what issues we would be facing in the review process of the 170 document. We wanted to confirm our positions and its need. And we also wished to talk specifically with the directorate as to their support of those activities. We did accomplish all of those items. Because there was so many concerns of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it, it was recommended that we have a joint meeting with data collection. At our last ACCSH meeting, data collection had very specific questions on our directions for the 170 revision. So we scheduled this November joint workgroup meeting. It was very, very successful because it did in fact put us all on the same page. The director of the construction, Mr. Zettler. He offered some specific insights to us. He had some very good recommendations. And it was easily determined that we were all on the same page. The minutes for that November meeting I believe is in your packet as well as a flow chart that we created to more or less highlight to the committee our internal process work with this issue. After that meeting -- it was also suggested in that meeting that we have Janet Macon from the Department of Energy who has had some specific research and advances that they had made in their coding process for fatalities. And also Dr. William Schriver from the University of Tennessee was suggested to also meet with us who has done some very specific work in the fatality investigations.

So we invited both of those persons to come back with a more detailed presentation to us at our December workgroup meeting which in fact they did. The Form 170, to just briefly give you a background on it, is a document that is being utilized for the reporting of fatality information in construction. But what has been evident from the information is that it is randomly used. It is not a required mandate for its use at this point in time. And data is not as accurate as it could be to depict the entire scenario of what we are trying to find, the incident causes and contributing causes so we can, one, target or, secondarily, that we can look at the issue and try to determine where we need emphasis on regulation and/or standard enhancement. At the conclusion of our December 7th meeting, we looked at the specific items that we wanted to do from this point forward. And that is the part of which I will cover with a motion on one of those items. And then, we will go into an outline of where we are going with this form. Michael is going to do that part for me. The first item in the multiple questions that we did in fact respond to was that the joint workgroups confirmed their previous commitment of all of our prior multiple workgroup meetings for recommendation to OSHA that the Form 170 revision be a priority for OSHA. We think the sooner that we can get the form, the sooner that it can be implemented and the sooner that we get the training for the CSHOs to do this. OSHA would be served in its targeting efforts for the fatality data that they truly need to assist them. With that first item, Mr. Chairman, I move that ACCSH recommend to the agency total support of resources to assist the workgroup to revise the Form 170 in a timely manner.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I have a motion. Do we have a second?

MR. BUCHET: Second.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The motion is seconded. Discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Hearing none, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye.

VOICES: Aye.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Opposed?

No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Motion approved.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you. The other items we looked at upon revision completion of Form 170 will be highly recommended to be a mandatory form for the CSHO's completion. It indicates the fatality. CSHO training must be a vital part for the appropriate use of the form. The Form 170, we are desiring to be user friendly and standardization of the input that we need for it. The Form 170 maximize the narrative data from the reports that we are receiving from the University of Tennessee. It is very evident that the use of the narrative was extremely important in really depicting what was happening in the area of the incident to begin with. The employee and employer representation be included for completion. We need to ensure that all avenues of an incident are evaluated both by interest of the employer as well as the employee, that the form not be subject to one way or the other. At our next meeting, Janet Macon will provide, they are, history questions. This is the Department of Energy, the history questions that they have developed to date for the CSHOs to put in and respond to specific fatality information. Our staff liaison who is Camille Villanova will create a new working document Form 170 incorporating all the workgroup recommendations accepted to date. This form is a 37-page document at this point. And we have had multiple, multiple meetings and recommendations that we have accepted as an internal workgroup process. And we have been trying to show the various recommendations by italics, by underscore, by bold letters.

It is becomingly an extremely complicated document to work with. We are just going to take the document at this point and call it our next phase 170 interim working document number two and utilize that so everybody has the same document to work from in our next meetings. The use of the Form 170 when issued will include validity checks of the data and audits for a period of time to determine accurate input. That will be very essential to the completeness of the form. And then, the co-chairs will work with Dr. Schriver to assist in the development of data questions to review regional fatalities for targeting, are targeting, and meetings with CSHOs to input into the development process as soon as the co-chairs' schedules permit us to do that. The co-chairs of Marie Haring Sweeney, Michael Buchet, Steve Cooper, and myself. What we are saying in that, we feel it is very important to get CSHO's input into the form that they will need to be completing. And we want to hear from them what they feel will work, what they feel ill not work. So when we do develop a recommended form to OSHA that it has all the inputs that we need to make this a successful document for its use. And needless to say, we are working very closely with Mr. Zettler and Liz Kanel and all of OSHA so we can more or less mirror the process we went through with the success of multiemployer and come out with a conclusive document that would be hopefully be able to be instituted in a rapid manner. I think that basically covers everything that I had. Marie may have comments. Michael, I am sure, will then go into a brief review of the target areas in the form that we were looking at to give you some background.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.

DR. SWEENEY: Just reiterate what I said yesterday to Charles, this form is really important in collecting appropriate data or relevant data so that we can -- OSHA can be able to use it more effectively in intervention prevention activities and for education and outreach. So by making it more user friendly by standardizing the data with BLS. Then, both of the places have the same stuff. By making the narrative more usable, we might be collect correct data and more user friendly data.

MS. WILLIAMS: We just had included among the workgroup participants -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Microphone.

MS. WILLIAMS: I'm sorry.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: No, microphone.

MS. WILLIAMS: We have concluded in the workgroup meetings and today we believe that the BLS coding system will be very appropriate for us to incorporate. They have already worked closely with us and told us that we can extend the digiting in their code system to pick up more specific information that we would like to see to help target other information. I have a meeting next week with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And we will be working four to five hours to look at what do we need to recommend five digiting or six digiting characters to pick up the extent of the information to demonstrate. It is all on their system. So I will be working with them so we can see that. And then, I will report back to the workgroup meeting whenever yur next one is going to be.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Thank you. Marie.

(No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael.

MR. BUCHET: For the ACCSH members, you have this sheet in your packet. This sheet is the 8th and 9th of November version modified on the 6th of December. And it appears to be a form that is actually a block diagram and flow chart. We took the hard information that is required, the current information that can be filled out on the so-called Form 170 and broke it into what we thought would be useful blocks that showed some sort of a flow for the person doing the investigation and for the person who enters the data if they are not the same person. We then, if you look at the back of this document, you will see, took out three blocks worth of information that we felt were hard to collect, misleading, of limited use, or all of the above, yes, subjective also. You will see in the block, and I am not going to go through each one, that there are footnotes on certain types of information. In the first block, most of that we suggest should be filled in automatically on this form as the compliance officer fills in other required forms by OSHA. So that there is not a replication of effort and so that we reduce the chance of misentry because if you have to type the same information in four or five different places, I guarantee you will get it wrong one or two of the places. So we are suggesting that automated fill in will greatly speed the process and improve accuracy. In the second block, and by second I mean following the arrows, site information. We had a considerable discussion on the types of construction. It was noted that the earlier draft version seemed very much tilted to vertical construction or fall incidents.

So we have suggested we are going to have to do more work on finding descriptors of different types of construction so that it will not drive the person doing the investigation or the data entry to consider only falls. And that again Jane is going to visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The big push with using BLS coding is that as the information is currently collected by OSHA in many cases it cannot be compared to any bigger sample. The coding is not standard. So there is no way to look at this, for instance, and compare by SIC code the experience that OSHA is seeing directly against some of what BLS is seeing in their annual survey, for instance. So we have a blanket recommendation that BLS coding or extensions of BLS coding be used in all the places that are possible. And that will give this information the ability to be compared against much greater and much greater concurrent data and much longer term historical data. If you follow through the blocks, and I'll let you do this, we are soliciting your comments if you think the flow is ill advised or if you think that going from investigation to site based information to the information identifying the deceased worker. And this form can also be used in cases of catastrophes. So it may be the injured workers. Please let the workgroup know. Task information is another place where we thought we had to expand the collection of data and again use some sort of coding system that allowed comparison against bigger data sets. There was considerable concern that what is currently being captured does not tell you what the person being injured or killed was doing at the time of the incident. We also think there should be some way of capturing what the people around that person was doing. If it was my action that killed Mr. Devora, then what is doing may not be all that important, but it may be what I was doing that is really important. And we get to that a little bit further down. The inventor exposure, we wanted to -- we moved some data into this as the result of the last workgroup meeting. And I think those are self explanatory.

Type of event, the event type is a conflict. We need to do research within the current framework to find out why OSHA has listed two of these, apparently the same piece of data under two titles. It may not be, but we are not sure. Then, you go up to the part, the body, That is fairly simple. And the BLS coding does a good job of that. The nature of the injury or illness, there may be some problems with that. BLS coding does not speak plain English. And there, the process of educating ourselves and educating the compliance officers and whoever fills this form in or enters it into the data system is crucially important because I don't think we want to reinvent a coding system for the nature of the injury or illness because you lose the ability to compare it against much bigger data sets. Source, and here we had some discussion. How many sources of injury or illness do we need? The Department of Energy currently has four sources of injury in their report structure. In our discussion up until the workgroup we had this week, we thought that three might be able to cover the narrative -- not narrative, the description of the event in a coded format. In our last workgroup meeting, we had a fairly strong discussion on whether if you identify a primary source and a secondary source, if you could reach a third source without doing a root cause analysis. And where are we going to educate the CSHOs on doing root cause analyses? We didn't come to an answer on that. We would love suggestions. And one of the things that we worked up, we didn't have enough time to do with this form, Susanne Marsh from NIOSH worked through a series of scenarios that she pulled out of the census of fatal occupational injuries and had developed a way to go through this diagram showing how we could code those. And we were going to work through a number of those with the workgroup to see if we became comfortable with what we have outlined as a process to see if the process actually worked or worked relatively well. And we will try to do that in future meetings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you.

MR. BUCHET: And Mr. Masterson has a question.

MR. MASTERSON: Actually, it's two. One of them that struck me is on the nature of illness and injury -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Microphone.

MR. MASTERSON: I'm sorry. Marie, you might be better able to help me here. There is I believe they are called IC-9 codes that the medical profession uses particularly as it relate to types of injuries. It is fairly standardized across the United States. Would it make more sense rather than using the BLS code in that particular field because then it would be relating right back to other medical fields?

DR. SWEENEY: I would have to go back and see whether or not this is the occupational injury codes. They in fact may be consistent with the ICD-9. And actually, we are going to ICD-10 in the next year and a half. So let me get back to you on that question and see whether or not they are the same. I think the ICD coding and the BLS coding are a little bit different and they have a little bit different information in it. And if you would give me the luxury of a week, I might be able to find out. I will talk to Susanne.

MR. MASTERSON: Okay. You see the reason I am asking that question because, you know, the doctors and medical professionals that are in a lot cases going to be determining what the entry is whether it has been a sprain injury or whatever. They are going to be using those codes. And if what we are reporting relates back to those, it might make it easier on the CSHO to actually document accurate data.

DR. SWEENEY: The ICD codes may not even be available to the CSHOs. This is an area, the nature and the sources are two parts that we have to go back into anyway. So we will be getting back to you on those questions.

MR. MASTERSON: Okay. And the other thing I wanted to bring up is as you are moving more and more towards standardized coding, the BLS coding, it would lend itself to multiple choice lists. And in that fashion, it would make sense because one of the issues that I have heard is that there has been a lack of completeness in the forms that we have been getting back. Would it make sense to computerize with a variety of hand-held type systems that are available today to computerize the data entry so that you cannot skip the field?

MR. BUCHET: Yes. We appreciate both your comments. And crucial to the effort that the joint committee is doing is, one, is to make this data very useful and comparable to the biggest universe of data. So whether it is the BLS codes or the ICD-9 codes, that is one of the intents. The other thing is we keep talking about a form. And in fact, that is simply a shorthand fore what we hope is going to be a seamless process on a computer both hand-held and desktop with drop down boxes so they can either do a check box for - because nobody is going to remember all these codes. It will have built-in logic that will say if you get to source one, hit this button if you think there is another source. If you don't think there is another source, then it will allow you to go on to the next field that you have to fill in. So we appreciate the comment. And please come and help us because that little palm deal you've got, speed.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.

MR. EDGINTON: Thank you. I've only had the opportunity to attend one of the workgroup meetings. And I've got to tell you that the level of detail was making my head hurt, but at the same time, clearly it is the kind of thing that needs to be understood. But the thought that occurred to me at that meeting and sort of floated around with me and came back again yesterday when I heard the assistant secretary talk about the agency's investment in technology, I can't help but think about whether or not the agency has the technological capabilities to utilize the system that you are talking about devising. And it would seem to me it might be fair if we don't know that there is a sort of parallel track that there is an assessment as to whether or not within the agency they can either utilize existing technology or alternately what technology they are required to have or purchase.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael.

MR. BUCHET: The workgroup is working closely with Camille Villanova and Berrien Zettler. And we have some sense that what we are trying to create is not without a great deal of possibility currently and should much easier to do with a new system.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Felipe.

MR. DEVORA: What Larry talked about a little bit yesterday and Mr. Jeffress talked about culture and about changing behavior in the construction culture. Well, and at this workgroup meeting, it was very interesting to me that the gentleman from Tennessee pointed out that of the 640, I don't know, narratives that they went through, I think it was like 80 percent were wrong, really didn't - the narrative, really didn't describe the incident correctly. And then, also the other comment I heard in the workgroup meeting that, you know, this is a CSHO out in the field that is having to change his whole schedule to go out here and fill out these boxes. And the comment was made. I don't know by whom, you know, that these guys, they really don't care about them. They just want to get this form done and want to get on down the road. So before, you know, this is great, the technology we are inventing, but I think that my comment is that the culture of the CSHOs at that level really needs -- that educational process needs to begin before we get into these palm readers with this new technology.

MR. BUCHET: We are merging a lot of steps. Another component of what the joint workgroup has, has spent a good deal of time and energy on as we heard recommends to OSHA is that there is a training program. One piece that we haven't talked about so much is getting the input from the people who will use these processes in the field to help design it. I think what we heard from the University of Tennessee was that there was some inaccuracy in the coding. And the way they proved it was by looking at the narratives. And the narratives themselves are fairly accurate as far as they could tell. One of the things that this process will do is to make the information at least logically sequential. And we will get input from the field to make sure that our understanding of logic is their understanding of logic. We can also create teachings.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie. Jane, go ahead.

MS. WILLIAMS: We also were talking. And I hope I get the name of this department, Information Technologies. I guess are the people, I think are the people who are working with updating your system and everything. And me and Mr. Zettler, we are going to be interfacing with them, meaning him to ensure that our path and their path are in fact on the correct road that we all need to be on. And the other issue is we realize that we are going to have to work very closely with Bruce's shop to make sure that we end up with a product that is going to be useful and that it does in fact help the CSHO do the job that we feel is needed.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: When we first started this workgroup with Jane and Steve, I think the impression was that this was a slug effort, you know. And they were going to get into this. And we are going to get bogged down in the minutia. But the more this group and the data collection group have come together, I think that this is one single item that ACCSH could give OSHA that could be a tremendous boost in helping them do their jobs better and more efficient. So I think this workgroup has done a tremendous amount of work. And if you haven't had an opportunity to participate in this group and you are not technologically challenged like me, it is phenomenal for what they have accomplished and what they are doing. So Marie.

MS. WILLIAMS: There is excitement at the end of workgroup meetings these last two.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.

DR. SWEENEY: I just want to respond a little bit to what Felipe had to say the problem with the original form are some of the things that we are trying to do away with to prefab the errors that we are seeing and also to prevent the lethargy about filling in the form. We are also uncovering some other issues. And that is why we want to talk to CSHOs about this form and perhaps about other ones that they are filling out, that there are actually multiple forms that they need fill out in addressing a fatality. And perhaps, a lot of the data from the other forms can be merged. And then, you know, you can click a button. And if there is a Form 2000, that Form 2000 can be adapted from the information that we put in the 170 or vice versa. So there is really -- this is just I think kind of a tip of the iceberg in helping them get appropriate data.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Mr. Masterson.

MR. MASTERSON: One of the things that you may want to take a look at is the process you just described, Marie, is very consistent with most of the newer systems and risk information management systems that are used by insurance companies in worker's compensation areas. A lot of the data collection that you are talking about is going to be very, very similar. And the sharing of the data between fields is a real common practice between the system, payroll data base systems, and things like that. There are probably some products out there that get real close to meeting your need right now that is designed to go across either a mainframe or a large server.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Bear in mind that OSHA has met several times. And I know Joe Deer and Charles have met with the insurance industry on more than one occasion to try and come up with some kind of partnership of sharing data between insurance companies and OSHA. It has been a failed attempt at best. And the insurance companies continue to say that there data is proprietary and confidential to the employee. And I know that the unions also support that the worker's comp data is proprietary to the employee. And I think we need to find a way to break that barrier. And Dr. Peterson I guess had some suggestions on how the 170 Workgroup might look at that. So there is some things improving on that sharing of material.

MR. MASTERSON: Yes. I just want to make sure. I wasn't talking about using the insurance company's data base. There is a lot of outside vendors that create these systems for this data collection. And it is freestanding system that would be OSHA's system. I happen to support the confidentiality of that same information that you were referring to. But all I am leading to is there are systems out there that might already meet the data collection need and sharing the fields as far as all the information. So you only enter it one time.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Michael.

MR. BUCHET: I just want to make sure that while we are discussing the 170 Form and the usefulness of this data and how is it collected that we not casually assign a fair amount of fault to some of the problems with it to the people in the field. It is an incredibly cumbersome tool. And we have absolutely no idea how the process is done. We suspect that somebody takes notes in the field when they stacked up in an input box in the office. And then, somebody is left to put in the information in the computer in the best way they can. We do know that the data itself is problematic, but I do not think that we should jump to the conclusion that certain groups of people are the reason for its being problematic.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Let's take a 10-minute break. And then, we will come back and Jane will lead a discussion on guidelines.

(Whereupon, at 10:05 a.m., the meeting was recessed.)

 

AFTER RECESS
10:15 a.m.

 

 

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yesterday, Jane had made a motion on the ACCSH Guidelines Task Force that she chairs. And we had some discussion and we made a decision to leave that motion on the table until today. So we are ready to bring that back up now. Jane.

 

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It became apparent yesterday in talking with various co-chairs that there is definitely confusion on what our guidelines currently say, the content of some of the language in our guidelines and how to get this issue accomplished to the end goal. It is true that our guidelines allow us to post our meeting notices. We have chosen to do that as a committee because we do wish to get as much information to the public to attend our workgroup meetings as we possible can. We value their input. So that process is not intended to be changed. What the motion was and what the concern was was the method and manners of software that the workgroups use to get the information to DOC so something else can happen. But I don't think that this is an issue, Mr. Chairman, that we are going to resolve here today. I think I need to work with our chairs and Mr. Swanson and yourself, when we originally did the guidelines, and Mr. Cooper who was the co-chair on this. And then, we can review what they need and the software manner in which they need it and also ensure we clarify the intent of our in-process working document. So that is a graceful to lead in to ask you to please withdraw my motion of yesterday to amend the advisory guidelines and that I will continue to work with DOC and the Guideline Workgroup Committee to achieve that goal.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael, do you withdraw your second?

MR. BUCHET: I withdraw my second.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Motion withdrawn. Thank you, Jane. Before we have public comment, I would like you to get out the workgroup assignments. I would like to go down the list and give you my thoughts. And we can discuss each one. I want to combine the Safety and Health Program standard and the training standard into one workgroup. Does anybody disagree with that?

(No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And where it says both co-chairmen are the same for both groups, we will leave that as is. Bob, on fall protection, there was a date batted around yesterday of May. Is that still a firm date for finishing?

MR. MASTERSON: That is a goal. I will not say it is a firm date. We are going to do everything we can to be done in that time frame though.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. So we will leave this workgroup as is with you and Felipe.

MR. MASTERSON: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Data Collection and Targeting -

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman, may I comment on your Fall Protection Workgroup?

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes.

MR. SWANSON: I understand that there was some conversation during the workgroup meeting about the Federal Register comment period. And anybody that was in that workgroup the other day, I strongly recommend that if you've got things to say if you want them part of the official record that you save them before the January deadline and put them on the docket. That does not mean, of course, that ACCSH is a different -- is another pathway or vehicle. It can't be used to make your comments. But ACCSH's comments will not be part of the legal document. It will be after the fact if they are made.

MR. MASTERSON: Bruce, at the workgroup meeting, that was explained. We would like their comments, but that did not substitute for a submission to the docket.

MR. SWANSON: Very good. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Data Collection and Targeting has basically combined itself with 170. And I would like to leave that, make that an official combination. Mr. Buchet.

MR. BUCHET: Would you care to reconsider? I think we have enough independent work to do on the separate issue of data collection. So that workgroup can stay separate. We will certainly continue to work together on the 170, but the Dodge Report has nothing to do with the Form 170. And that certainly has something do with data collection. Mr. Peterson's effort has all to do with data collection, nothing to do with the Form 170. I think it would just be counter productive for the Form 170 effort to bog it down with the greater question of data collection.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, I totally concur with Michael because the 170 Workgroup really can't support any additional work from those guys. We just need their input to us.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yielding to the committee chairs, we will -

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: To show you I'm not a dictatorial chairman.

(Laughter)

MR. SWANSON: In this instance.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: There will be no comments allowed.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Cranes, Larry, we are still good to go. And you are going to maintain your committee. And depending on the response to the motion that was approved, we will make a decision then.

MR. EDGINTON: Right. We intend to keep moving.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes. MSDs, that is a continuation.

MR. BUCHET: Certainly, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Hexavalent Chromium is now up and running?

MR. DEVORA: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Multiemployer is fading fast.

MR. DEVORA: It will die in Chicago.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Die in Chicago. Silica, Marie, can that go away?

DR. SWEENEY: I think we can -- we both, Larry and I, I am speaking for Larry and myself, we concur it can go away until such time OSHA needs more assistance on their proposed rule.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Let's delete that workgroup. And we can bring it back if the need arises.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: I have just a question, a clarification. If Marthe said yesterday they want to accelerate the track for this, would not the workgroup be involved with her to find out how fast they were going and where?

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Well, we have, this workgroup has supplied all of the data we've done in our full motion to that group. They have all of our stuff.

MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: If they want to continue to have any questions or response to the material we have provided them, Marie is available to do that.

MS. WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The Salt Lake City Workgroup, can we delete, Michael?

MR. BUCHET: I just consulted with our designated federal official and felt that we might it keep going for at least one more meeting. I would like to invite everybody in ACCSH to visit the -- if you don't know how to visit the web site, please talk to Camille. Visit at the web site and look at the draft advisory.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Powered Industrial Trucks, I talked to Steve. And Larry is in concurrence. That one can go. It is now a published standard. Diversified Construction Workforce, we continue with.

MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Construction Certification of Paperwork Reduction and Review is pretty well deleted. I think we can delete that.

MS. WILLIAMS: Deleted.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And the PPE standard, those of us who had comments have responded and as we were directed to do. So we can delete that group. We have two ones that we want to consider. One is Noise. And I would like Marie Haring Sweeney and Felipe to co-chair that. I think their expertise in that field speaks for itself. If there is no disagreement from ACCSH, we will leave that. We will bring that up as a formal workgroup. And they will be the co-chairs. And the other one was PSM. We think we need to have at least for a couple of meetings a workgroup on PSM to work with Marthe and to try to figure out what we need to do there. And Danny, if you would co-chair that one, please, along with Owen and just kind of get a feel for where you two think we need to go with this? And if you see us going nowhere, let us know in the May meeting and we will dissolve the workgroup.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: While you are in the process of deleting, I would like to bring one back, please.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Let me guess which one that might be.

MS. WILLIAMS: It might be -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And I think I was finished. And that's the next one.

MS. WILLIAMS: Oh.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Is the Sanitation Workgroup, the return of.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And if there is no objections, we will return the Sanitation Workgroup with the co-chairs of Jane and the esteemed Mr. Cooper. And the charge is?

MS. WILLIAMS: The charge will be, I noticed in your notice of long-term proposed activities, one of the items that you had listed in there was gender-specific toilets which the workgroup had some gender-specific concerns about.

(Laughter)

MS. WILLIAMS: So we would like to work with you on that issue and see what other additional efforts we need to help on.

MR. SWANSON: Thank you for that recommendation.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I also think this workgroup can continue its push to move sanitation to the forefront.

MR. SWANSON: I was always curious as to whether or not that was a political action committee that was being formed.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: No, I don't have that down here, PAC.

(Laughter)

MS. WILLIAMS: And if I may, Mr. Chairman, Bruce asked a very good unofficial question yesterday. Are there priorities? And we talked about priorities. And this might be something that we could start looking at to assist them with some of our information processes.

MR. MASTERSON: I appreciate you bringing that up, Jane. One of the things that I have noticed and I have really been conscious of at this meeting is every motion that we have made on almost every subject that has come up we have requested that OSHA put a priority on it. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. I think as an advisory committee, we have to be very cognizant that Bruce and his team have limited resources. And if we are going to start asking for priorities, maybe we need to do our own prioritization of what we think is the most important issues. I am not taking anything away from sanitation. I happen to agree with everybody else. I think it is one of the few things where labor and management always agrees. But I think we have to be cognizant of the issues that the OSHA team and our support faces. Five priorities out of five means nothing is really a priority.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Bob. Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Bob, I totally agree. And from my last comment, I was going to ask the chair if he would consider a workgroup similar to what we did with the guidelines which was a closed workgroup of persons to help review all of the issues that ACCSH has determined are priority because it is not fair to the DOC or anyone. And I thought that might be a recommendation that I wish to submit for your consideration.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: I think it is a realistic idea. Why don't we make that part of Jane's charge as guidelines? And you carry that torch with you.

MS. WILLIAMS: Yes, sir.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: And then, report back to the committee.

MR. SMITH: Does that mean that you guys are going to consult with -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Owen.

MR. SMITH: I'm sorry. I said, does that mean that this workgroup is going to kind of consult with OSHA to kind of get some kind of idea which way they are leaning to when you set these priorities?

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, contradict me if you don't feel this is an appropriate answer. My thought would be that the co-chairs of the ACCSH would have an input into what we feel is priorities, but then we would meet as we did with Bruce before in his office and see how realistic some of these priorities are so we get a true feel of what can be achieved and what might have to go to another priority level. Or it would be a group effort.

MR. SMITH: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Michael.

MR. BUCHET: We have discussed expectation management. And I thought we agreed that we were going to learn how the standard setting process works before we start.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: May meeting.

MR. BUCHET: Well, before we even start tackling the question of priorities. As I understand what we do is make recommendations. So we are only recommending a priority. We are recommending it from a relatively narrow standpoint at this point. And although we may have a high emotional content and a large frustration factor, in the real world, until we find out how the process works a little bit more, that is all we are expressing. And I don't know that we need to spend a lot of time on that effort.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Felipe.

MR. DEVORA: My only comment to that is as an advisory board, we advise. I mean, regardless, advice is advice.

(Laughter)

MR. DEVORA: Once you give it, it's out of your hands. What that receiver does with that advice and how he prioritize or they or she or whatever prioritizes that advice, I kind of think it is a circular argument. Once we give it to OSHA, we have accomplished our task.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Bruce.

MR. SWANSON: I appreciate the point on behalf of OSHA, the last two comments made. And I believe for all OSHA, certainly my own opinion is what I heard here in the last couple of days as we talked about sanitation and we have had prior conversations on the sanitation thing, I know Ms. Williams and some other people indicated some frustration. Why, you know? Why should we keep working at this high energy level in trying to produce advice for you folks if you are not doing anything with it? And I would really hate to lose the enthusiasm. I appreciate that it is only advice. You give it and you walk away, but that is really not the way human emotions work. And you have invested all this time and energy in it. And I am very sympathetic with Jane's view on sanitation. We do have to manage expectations because I would hate to see anybody on this panel or the panel as a whole lose any of its enthusiasm for the really great work you have been doing in the last couple of years. It is appreciated. Don't get frustrated with us being a governmental organization with very limited resources. And we just can't move as you would expect us or like us to do on some of this stuff.

MR. BUCHET: Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Bruce. I think we have kicked this around enough.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: We will accept all of the advice and the advice that you have shared with us. And Jane, would you just go ahead and take that as part of your charge and -

MS. WILLIAMS: I would just like to ask a question. Am I not correct that we could have more than -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The microphone.

MS. WILLIAMS: I'm sorry. Am I correct in that we can have more than two co-chairs for a group, workgroup, say, three if we thought that the process might need it?

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: No.

MS. WILLIAMS: No way?

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Two is company. Three is a crowd.

VOICE: It's dictatorial.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The next question.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Mr. Evans.

MR. EVANS: I think the committee that is looking into how to move things along need to take into consideration that federal OSHA has a five-year strategic plan built into that. They have a one-year performance plan. And what they are going to try to accomplish in standards is all spelled out in that. And I am sure that is going to be their main goals. And to substitute something else, I believe will be a breach of their internal agreement.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Mr. Buchet, you are chopping at your pencil.

(Laughter)

MR. BUCHET: Thank you for this demonstration of leniency and non dictatorialness.

(Laughter)

MR. BUCHET: Possibly, there as for some pitfalls to setting priorities. And that is if we set our own priority, then something comes along. And we have to change our own priority. Maybe, a device for us would be something along the lines of what goes on at Capital Hill every once in awhile. You get a vote of the sense of one of the bodies of the other. And the sense of this body without a doubt is that sanitation should have a higher priority. But if we put it as our first priority, then what happens to all the other stuff that we are pushing along? So I think when we look at priorities, maybe we want to change the word. We certainly want to be able to say this is something of vital concern to us. And I think Mr. Swanson recognized our emotions and the ability to express them, but maybe the priority device is the wrong one for expressing them.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Yes. I think that is an excellent comment. And that is why I would like Jane to take this with her when she goes to the guidelines comments and come back to us and kind of give us a better feel for what she thinks realistically, even though in her heart sanitation is, but what realistically we can achieve as a committee. And Bruce is absolutely right. I mean, we spent a lot of time and effort. You guys spent a lot of your valuable time doing a lot of hard work. And if the work is to no avail, I think we need to realize that and channel our efforts and directions to what is. I will entertain a finish comment from you, Jane, on why you think you need three co chairs rather than two.

MS. WILLIAMS: Well -

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Microphone.

MS. WILLIAMS: As we have seen on several occasions in workgroup meetings, sometimes the amount of work is great, is an awful lot. But secondly, not in all meetings do two co-chairs show up. And I am not saying this would be a standard process. But I think maybe if you had a very complicated issue or something and there was a possibility that one may not be available, it would lend some support to the other co-chair. And it would be totally up to the co-chairs if they felt that this was not a need. It was asked of me. And from my knowledge, there was nothing preventing a workgroup from establishing three cochairs if it thought it might facilitate their efforts in some manner.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: If the co-chairs feel that a third head would be worthwhile, add to the process, there is nothing wrong with that.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: The problem is for years and years, I would say probably the first 23 years, 24 years of ACCSH, there was one chairman. And then, we went to two so we could get a consensus chair to where we would try to have two different bodies represent as co-chairs. Either they were in management or public or labor. It doesn't always work out that way, but most of the time we have been very successful with that. And I just -- I don't want to set a precedent of going to three. If we have a situation that has occurred on a couple of occasions where both workgroup chairs are traveling or out of pocket or get some emergency that comes up that they can't attend, there is not a thing wrong with having a back-up that is knowledgeable in the workgroup. Just picking someone to come and show up as a body who is not knowledgeable in the workgroup operations is not a great idea. So we will leave it to each of you to select if you wish someone to support in case of.

MS. WILLIAMS: Okay.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Mr. Swanson, Directorate of Construction Report.

MR. SWANSON: Yes. We have a couple of folks from my shop who have joined us. And Berrien, Noah, however you guys have worked out the priority.

(Pause)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Berrien and Noah, welcome.

MR. CONNELL: Thank you. I guess I will start with multiemployer. I am pleased to announce that today the new multiemployer policy will be posted on OSHA's web site. You have received copies of it here today. We are very grateful to ACCSH and very grateful to the ACCSH workgroup and the chairs for all the help that we got on this difficult project. We thought long and hard about the modifications that ACCSH recommended to our initial draft. And I think that you will see that the final work product was influenced by a number of those recommendations. The final product is not a whole lot different from what you say earlier. We have changed it somewhat in its structure to make it flow a little bit better. We have also tried to emphasize the two step analytical process that we have been talking about for a long time. It is in fact those two steps are now reflected throughout the draft. We also tried to be responsive to what we felt was a concern that there would be more examples. We now have 13 examples. We thought maybe we should stop there. So thank you very much for your assistance on that. Next week on December 16th, OSHA will be meeting with the SENRAC meeting to consult with the committee on the steel erection final rule. That meeting is open to the public as our Federal Register notice indicated. Safety and health programs, we are planning to send out our latest draft text on the program standard amendment for construction to you in January. Confined space, we do anticipate a public release of our draft text very soon. I know I have heard myself say that before.

(Laughter)

MR. CONNELL: We have been spending a lot of time as you know on steel erection, but that work product is -- it really is ready to go. And we will be holding -- I anticipate that we will be holding a stakeholder meetings, probably four stakeholder meetings next year on the confined space standard. One other thing that I would mention since Mr. Jeffress mentioned it yesterday on our interpretation letter processing, I am pleased to announce that this past year, we have cut our processing time by about 15 percent. We still look forward to further improvements on that. We have also instituted a joint quality rating system on our interpretation letters. We rate our letters for quality in conjunction with the Solicitor's Office. And we also keep track of processing time in the department once the letter leaves our office. And I am pleased to announce that that processing time has dropped tremendously. So I think we have made some successful steps in that regard. And I would be happy to answer any questions about standards and multiemployer.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Marie.

DR. SWEENEY: Noah, thank you for your presentation. One of the things that we asked Marthe or suggested to Marthe that you in fact are going to be holding stakeholder meetings and it involves construction to come to the committee. And we can help you with perhaps the selection of sites as opposed to having four in Washington or in the big, you know, sort of chosen cities that always are hit. We would be more than happy to give you some selection options.

MR. CONNELL: Thank you. We appreciate that.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry.

MR. EDGINTON: Mr. Chairman, just a comment on the multiemployer. Over the last several months, I have received numerous phone calls from some of my locals, much along the lines of I know what the workgroup encountered is that at the state level now in many instances, there seems to be a belief that OSHA is in the process of changing its multiemployer citation policy. And I have been trying to put those rumors to rest as best I can, but I think, you know, it is very important and incumbent upon all of us to make sure everyone understands. And I think this clearly says this that if the clarification is really not a change.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Right. Right. Felipe.

MR. DEVORA: Recordkeeping, where are we at?

(Pause)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Danny.

MR. EVANS: A quick comment. We have a new facility in Las Vegas, Anderson, Nevada. The room is every bit as big as this I think. And as long as I get enough notice, we can use that at no cost to anybody for stakeholder meetings or whatever. And there is a couple other smaller rooms to use for breakout committees or whatever.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Well, Las Vegas is certainly one of the cities that is booming in construction. So-

MR. EVANS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Lock-out, tag-out or is that -- it is lock-out, tag-out?

MR. CONNELL: That status of it?

MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.

MR. CONNELL: Do you want to address that?

(Laughter)

MR. CONNELL: They prioritized the discussion.

MR. SWANSON: Yes. Let's get back to priorities. It is not being actively worked on.

MS. WILLIAMS: Okay.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments or questions for Noah? Bruce.

MR. SWANSON: Before we ditch Noah here, we never ditch Noah. One of the things, Noah, that I am not sure folks have a full appreciation for is really, you know, how many folks we've got in your office, professionals. You mentioned in passing that, you know, we have been spending an awful lot of time on steel erection here recently. Some on the committee here suggested we should less time perhaps. But your entire staff has really been working. I mean, everybody in your office is a member of a team that has a piece of the steel erection standard. And that has been time consuming, you know. Behind that, we have people who have other tasks. They are the primary folks on the fall protection issue. We have others that have another task on confined space, but those have been suffering also in the interest of steel erection recently. The one task that never goes away and that we get no let up on and cannot write ourselves any excuse letters is answering the mail, you know, the Assistant Secretary's mail and mail directed to our directorate for interpretation of standards flows through your office on a regular basis. I know it is painful for you to sit in that chair and tell folks that, well, I'm sorry. We just haven't been working on lock-out, tag-out, but that is the truth. And that is a quick and dirty rendition of what Noah's folks have been doing. And there is just no more time in the day to do some of this.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Noah, how many people do you have?

MR. CONNELL: We have nine professionals.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Felipe.

MR. DEVORA: Let me just say. I don't think the intent of these questions is to put Noah on the spot. It is just more of, you know, we come to these meetings. And we go back to our constituents or whatever, you know. And when they ask us about lock-out, tag out or recordkeeping, you know, that we don't tell them, no, they are not doing anything about it. We use Bruce's words.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Berrien.

Directorate of Construction - Update
(Continued)

MR. ZETTLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is not my intent to go into a detailed review of all the things that DOC has done. Mr. Swanson has given you an overview of the kinds of things that are keeping us occupied. One of the things I should note is that it is not only Noah's staff that is 100 percent engaged in doing the work that that office is putting out. It is also Noah. I think Noah is almost single handedly responsible for the multiemployer document. So I think we should not ignore that either. Going onto other things, I would like to address the action items that were left over from the ACCSH meeting. But before I do that, I would like to point out a handout which I think you all got. It is a single page with a reproduction of the old, what is now the old Internet construction page and on the other side, the new Internet construction page. I am pleased, extraordinarily pleased to announce that that page is now up. It is on the web. When you click on the construction word on the OSHA home page which is for some reason under outreach, when you click on that page, you will now see before you the redesigned construction page. This is an initial attempt for us to reorganize the stuff that is already on the web. The ACCSH page is now a tab on that page. I think that this will be -- this is an extraordinary improvement in the way the construction material is presented to the public. We intend to continue to make improvements on that page to continue to add items which are not now on the web or even if they are on the web are not immediately accessible through the construction page, but are of interest to the construction industry. So we intend to continue to make improvements. And I really am pleased and I hope you are, too, with the new Internet page for construction.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: This is a big, big improvement from the previous, the simplification, the drop-downs. And it is very easy to use and very user friendly. And Michael, I am pleased to see that on the ACCSH page, it does not say anything about we have to put drafts or workgroup reports or any of that stuff. So I would like you to check that out.

(Laughter)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Please continue there.

(Laughter)

MR. ZETTLER: Turning now to the action items that were from the last meeting, the first one, this committee has already dealt with yesterday. We have been working with the -- on the coordination side, we have been working with the Chicago Land Council. We will be paying for or we are in the process of arranging as we announced yesterday, we will be paying for the rooms on a purchase order. So it is absolutely essential to avoid our spending money unnecessarily that if any change in your plans come about between now and the February meeting that you let us know promptly. Number two, and I don't know if this is exactly what Felipe was getting at on the recordkeeping, but you all made a recommendation with respect to construction certification and paper work reduction some -- I don't remember whether it was the last meeting or the meeting before. But anyway, you made a recommendation on that. The safety standards, who is in charge of making these changes has decided to accept the recommendation of ACCSH and will not be making -at least for the time being will not be making any changes in the certification and paper work reduction activities that they were contemplating previously. Make the HAZWIC report available. That has been done. The HAZWIC report is on-line. It can be read by anyone in the public who wishes to read that. It is under the ACCSH tab. So I hope all those of you who are interested have indeed confirmed that that is true. Number four, we discussed this already. The agency has made a decision to publish the MSD Workgroup product. It is currently as we told you earlier in this meeting, that has been -- I think we told it here. It might have been in the workgroup. I forgot now whether it was the workgroup or in the meeting. But we are doing some editorial work. And we are also having the staff ergonomist in OSHA read through that document as well. We will be getting back to you on any changes that we make or that we suggest. We will be getting back to you before we publish that document. And I think I made a promise to the workgroup that we would have that done by the February meeting -- actually before. We will have it in your hands before so that you all can discuss at the -- the workgroup can discuss it in the context of the February meeting. We have talked already about silica. You all have established the workgroup. So I don't think we need to say any more about silica. I think all of you were provided passwords so that anyone who -- of course, the construction advisory has not been available. Even if you had a password, you would not have seen anything.

(Laughter)

MR. ZETTLER: But we hope that will be remedied shortly. It is still not available, but hopefully it will be available, the construction advisory will be available soon, but we are way ahead because you all have passwords. On the copy of subpart (v), I think you all got a copy of subpart (v), the draft subpart (v). I hope you did anyway. I have been told that you did. And if you didn't, we have those available if any of you are interested in it. And finally, schedule the joint meeting, well, we have taken care of that. That took place -- that has taken place I think twice since the last meeting. So there is nothing more I don't think that we need to say about that. The one thing that I would, however, in that context is that we talked a little bit about OSHA's capability, technical capability to deal with the 170 product which the work group is presumably going to recommend eventually to ACCSH and ACCSH in turn presumably to the agency, however that goes. If that should occur and the agency should -- the ACCSH should recommend a revised 170 Form to the agency, I have thought it appropriate to bring to future meetings of the ACCSH 170 Workgroup, I have thought it appropriate to invite and to bring staff members from our OMBS Section of the Information Technology. I have already discussed that with them. And they will have a person present at that meeting so that we can talk about not only the putting up or the putting on line the form itself, but also to discuss the coding issues, particularly the coding issues relating to the BLS codes. So we will have people present at those meetings in the future.

MR. BUCHET: Would it be instructive to ask Jane if she can bring her demonstration from DOE back to show to your technical people?

MR. ZETTLER: Yes. Actually, Camille already raised that to me. It may be -- I don't want to waste the time of the workgroup since you all have already seen that demonstration. But I did -- I do believe that Camille's suggestion that our people, our OMBS people look at that would be useful. And so we will attempt to set that up so that they can view that. That I think is all I have to say at this time. And I will be happy to talk about any issues which you all might raise. YThank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Larry. Thank you.

MR. EDGINTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Berrien, you had said that the directorate as I understood it had accepted the ACCSH recommendations with respect to no limitation of recordkeeping requirements. However, as I understand it and recently reminded items laying on my desk is, however, that it does not relieve the agency from Paperwork Reduction Act requirements when you continue to solicit comments as to whether or not you should be maintaining those requirements. I've got to tell you, the agency is wearing me out on cranes.

MR. ZETTLER: Yes.

MR. EDGINTON: It seems like every time I turn around, I am getting comments on maintaining inspection records on cranes.

MR. ZETTLER: The agency is still -- as you correctly observed, the agency is still under a responsibility to reduce its paper work burden. All I am saying is that at the moment at least for the time being, they are accepting the recommendation of the ACCSH on the topic of certifications and paper work reduction. That does not mean that forever and ever those issues will be off the table, but they are for the time being. And the agency is looking in other directions to meet its paper work reduction at the present time.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Michael. No. Thank you both very much.

MR. SWANSON: Let me -- well, let me ask you, Berrien, to tell these folks in 30 words or less about next Monday's signing ceremony down in St. Louis which I think is a landmark.

MR. ZETTLER: Yes. We have been -- for about two or three years now, we have been working with the organization called Pride in St. Louis, Missouri. This was originally brought to us by the area office which entered into discussions with Pride. Pride is an organization of contractors and unions in the St. Louis area. They -- it's practically -- I mean, it is the group of construction both on the union and on the company side for the St. Louis area. The St. Louis area office began as I said about three years ago began conversations with Pride for a potential partnership. The idea ballooned and grew like topsy. And it became a national office issue as well. We have now worked and debated and made changes and made changes to changes and the whole process which took an extraordinarily long time, but we have now reached the conclusion of that. And we have a document which we believe is an excellent example of the kind of partnership which OSHA would like to enter into with the construction industry in various areas. You heard Mr. Jeffress say yesterday that these partnerships seem to work best when they are worked at a local level. But we believe that the St. Louis document could very well serve as a kind of template for any other local groups that would like to set up a partnership with OSHA. Getting to -- now, my 30 words start.

(Laughter)

MR. ZETTLER: Next week, Mr. Swanson and Mr. Jeffress will be along with the regional administrator in Kansas City and the area director will be present for a signing ceremony for that Pride partnership. I am sure there will be a lot of local press on it. I think, again, it is an excellent document that will I am sure be used by other organizations around the country as a kind of example or a model partnership. We have already had at least two separate geographical areas come to us with an interest in seeing that document. And it will be available. We will put it up on the web. So it will be available to anybody who wants to look at it.

MR. SWANSON: I understand also that the local building trades council invited President Charles Green down there. I don't know if he is going. The president of the FAC is going to be down there and participate in the same ceremony.

So there is reason to believe that this might some prospect.

MR. ZETTLER: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Okay. Thank you very much.

MR. SWANSON: You're welcome.

MR. ZETTLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: With that, we have been -- go ahead, Larry.

MR. EDGINTON: I know I have been badgering Bruce about this off and on for the last several months, but I'm wondering if you have any additional knowledge or updated information as to how close the agency might be in finally releasing the compliance directive for the powered industrial forklift rule.

MR. SWANSON: I don't. Anybody from staff that can help me on that? Noah, do you have any information?

MR. EDGINTON: I mean, we continue to get phone calls almost daily. And the reason I say that is many of our locals have talked to local level OSHA staff. And they sort of say, we're waiting to hear.

MR. SWANSON: Yes.

MR. EDGINTON: And I think in all fairness to both ourselves as being a training provider and to our employers who are trying to be in compliance, I mean, there are a lot of unknowns. And I think there is a great deal of uncertainty about field staff being left to their own devices, so to speak, in knowing what to do.

MR. SWANSON: I honestly, Larry, thought we were beyond this point, but we will make a point in checking with our colleagues, seeing we are, and dealing with you directly.

MR. EDGINTON: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Could I also have a response to that because we are getting the conflicting concerns with the interpretations? So I am very interested in it.

MR. SWANSON: We will get an update and copy everyone on the committee.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: We have one public comment request. Charlie Maresca, are you prepared to talk now?

MR. MARESCA: Good morning. I'm Charles Maresca, Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Associated Builders and Contractors. With me is John Herzog, Director of Government Relations for the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. In the light of the recent unhelpful exchange of correspondence, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of my members concerning the brochure on musculoskeletal disorders in construction. It is helpful to know that the agency has agreed to the -- that the brochure will not be used in its current form as an enforcement tool and that the agency recognizes that in construction, a variety of intervention strategies are already being tried. Concerns remain, however, about the development of a standard for construction following the development of a standard for general industry. Concern also remains that although the agency is calling the brochure an outreach document, OSHA is not committed to any formal outreach program to obtain information on correct practices in construction. We recommend that this committee acknowledge the lingering concerns about the brochure and that the committee encourage OSHA to commit itself to a formal outreach program using the practices listed in the brochure as examples of strategies now being used in the industry. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Charlie, could you repeat, please, the two things that you are sking ACCSH to do?

MR. MARESCA: That the committee encourage, that this committee encourage OSHA to commit itself to a formal outreach program using the practices listed in the brochure as examples of strategies now being used in the industry and that the committee acknowledge the lingering concerns about the brochure as it is today.

(Pause)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Charlie, I appreciate it.

MR. HERZOG: Could I add one thing? One of the things that I notice -

MS. WILLIAMS: Microphone.

MR. HERZOG: Sure. That might be helpful since there is a disclaimer as you know. I saw it the other day in the hard copy in the workgroup meeting. Disclaimer is kind of buried in the preamble. I would suggest that maybe you want to take it and box it and put it big bold face, big bold type face. In that way, it will help alleviate some of the concerns. The other question I had, Michael, did you get the information from Tom Broderick on the meeting that we can distribute?

MR. BUCHET: It is not distributable, but I can give you the phone number.

MR. HERZOG: Okay. Great.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Thank you very much, both of you. Thank you. Jane.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, if I may respond to one of the issues. I know myself as a participant in this meeting and I think Berrien acknowledged just a few minutes ago. I am not sure there was anyone in our workgroup meeting or especially myself on this committee that does not acknowledge our lingering concerns, one, the document. And as you heard this morning from Mr. Zettler, as well as what we heard in our workgroup meeting, it will come back to ACCSH and the workgroup if the chair feels that that is the method for us to be sure that we are comfortable and that we have an end product that will meet the items of concern you are voicing.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Jane. Any other comments? Michael.

MR. BUCHET: The lingering concerns were addressed at the workgroup. The lingering concerns were addressed by Mr. Jeffress. They have been addressed here. And we will continue to address them. The form of the draft document is sort of problematic at this point because it was a draft recommendation that was passed onto OSHA in a four part motion. And the nature of the outreach itself is one of the provinces of the workgroup. The workgroup has committed itself to discussing and discovering other processes, avenues, and means of reaching the industry for two purposes. One is to find out what successful practices are out there and to pass them on. And the other one is to pass on what's been collected.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Michael. I think when the -- Mr. Jeffress and you have heard from others, once the brochure goes through, the technical writers and the English experts and all that within OSHA and it comes back to us, I think I made notes here of the concerns that have been expressed by Mr. Maresca and Mr. Herzog. And I think at that time we can retake a look at the document in a context with their comments to us today and make sure that their concerns are addressed.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Any other comments or new business anybody would like to bring up before we adjourn? Michael.

MR. BUCHET: Late yesterday, we got some information faxed to us from the Construction Safety Council in Chicago. And I am going to hold it up and show it to you, but it is so dark that we cannot reproduce it. However, I will read you the dates of their conference. Their conference runs the 15th through the 17th of February, 2000. It is at the Rosemont Convention Center. The ACCSH meeting is sandwiched around it. The ACCSH workgroups are on the 14th of 17 February and the full ACCSH meeting on the 17th at the Holiday Inn across the street from the Rosemont Convention Center. If you are interested in attending the Construction Safety Council's Protecting Our Future 2000 Conference, call the Construction Safety Council. They have an 800 number, 552-7744. They have a normal number, 708-449-0200. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: You're welcome. Any other new business, discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRPERSON BURKHAMMER: Thank you very much.

Meeting adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the meeting was concluded.)

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the foregoing proceedings of a meeting of the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health, Volume 2, held on December 10, 1999, were transcribed as herein appears and that this is the original transcript thereof.

SONIA GONZALEZ Court Reporter

MOFFITT REPORTING ASSOCIATES
(301) 390-5150