Advisory Committee On Construction Safety And Health
Occupational Safety And Health Administration
U.S. Department Of Labor

Volume 2
Friday, May 23, 2003

U.S. Department of Labor
200 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20210

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The meeting was convened, pursuant to notice, at 8:33 a.m., MR. ROBERT KRUL, Chairman, presiding.

Appearances:

Employee Representatives

Mr. Robert Krul
Mr. Manuel Mederos
Mr. Frank L. Migliaccio, Jr.
Mr. Joseph Durst

Employer Representatives

Mr. James Ahern
Mr. Dan Murphy
Mr. Greg Strudwick
Mr. David M. Bush
Mr. Mike Sotelo

State Representatives

Mr. Kevin Beauregard

Public Representatives

Mr. Thomas A. Broderick
Ms. Jane F. Williams

Federal Representative

Marie Haring Sweeney, Ph.D.

Designated Federal Official

Mr. Bruce Swanson, Director
Directorate Of Construction

Committee Contacts

Mr. Stewart Burkhammer, Director
Office Of Construction Services
Directorate Of Construction
Mr. Steve Cloutier
Directorate Of Construction

Committee Contacts

Mr. Stewart Burkhammer, Director
Office Of Construction Services
Directorate Of Construction
Mr. Steve Cloutier
Directorate of Construction

 

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Good morning. I am looking for Mr. Lott. He's giving testimony.

 

(Laughter)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: If he does not show up in a few minutes, Mr. Doty, would you be prepared -- and I'm not jumping out or X'ing out the public comment period. It would just be that Mr. Doty's here from the National Association of Tower Erectors, and we'll give him an opportunity to make a 5- or 10-minute presentation.

Somehow, we sent the list around for name, address, phone number, and e-mail check, and it disappeared. Let's try this again. It's going around. That's not a big problem.

One announcement that Steve Cloutier gave me yesterday that I should have reported on yesterday. It's that the semi-annual regulatory agenda was scheduled to be published May 19.

But on May 15, OSHA received word that the publication date would be May 27. So, for the information of this ACCSH group, the labor and OSHA's unified regulatory agenda should be in the May 27, 2003 Federal Register. That's FYI.

We have to take action on the minutes. We ask you to take a look at them. Does anyone have any corrections, additions, deletions, comments?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: If not, the Chair will entertain a motion for acceptance.

MR. SOTELO: So moved.

VOICE: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It is regularly moved and seconded to accept the minutes as they were presented to us. All those in favor, signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Opposed, if any?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: So moved.

MR. AHERN: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes, sir?

MR. AHERN: I have a confession to make. Durst passed me the sheet and it got in my papers, so I'll continue to pass it along.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: The culprit has been found.

(Laughter)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: We also have to take action based on part of Steve Witt's presentation yesterday on assigned protection factors and controlled negative pressure REDON fit testing protocol.

So the Chair would like to read this motion and then entertain a move from the committee.

"The Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health has reviewed and discussed the proposed standards for assigned protection factors for respirators and controlled negative pressure REDON fit testing protocol. We recommend to the Assistant Secretary that he publish the proposed rules as they are drafted and in their entirety as soon as possible."

Can I have a motion to put that forward?

VOICE: So moved.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: And a second?

VOICE: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: All those in favor, signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Any opposed?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Please let the record reflect that this recommendation reflects the unanimous opinion of those present and voting at this meeting. Thank you.

Mr. Lott, you are not in the room, I take it.

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: In the event he comes in later, we'll certainly allow him to come up.

Mr. Doty, would you like to come up? Even though Mr. Lott is not here, I will just preface comments, sir. And this is not an inquiry.

But the reason we invited Mr. Lott here is, in fact, I had recommended the last time that somebody from NATE, National Association of Tower Erectors, be present to rebut and give their viewpoints on I'm sure what you're aware of was, starting a couple of years ago, a terrible problem in your industry with fatalities, especially on falls in tower erection.

The reason we had asked Mr. Lott here was, about a year and a half to two years ago, he made a presentation at our Building and Construction Trades Department monthly safety and health meeting.

As a former tower erector, and now an OSHA 10-hour certified instructor, he was concerned where the industry was going with safety because he had given some fairly harrowing tales of several contractors that he had worked for where safety was just not an issue, some terrible riggings for ascending and descending while this tower erector was going on that resulted in some terrible tragedies, some involving families.

So Mr. Lott was going to come here and repeat those stories and, in his experience as a tower erector, what he saw as the shortcomings on safety training for those who work in the field.

I know you represent the erectors on the Contractors Association side. If you would, for the Reporter, please state and spell your name and give your affiliation.

MR. DOTY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Don Doty, D-O-T-Y, and I'm a member of the National Association of Tower Erectors.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I know you had a comment you wanted to make. Again, this is not an indictment. We will give you the opportunity to present whatever it is you'd like to present from NATE's perspective.

Tower Erection Presentation

By Mr. Don Doty

MR. DOTY: Well, as a welcome witness, I'd like to start off my comments by saying that there are problems in the industry from some perspective that there are serious issues that are going on for companies that are not taking safety seriously.

The National Association of Tower Erectors has been working for many, many years, directly with our friends here and the Department of Labor and OSHA, and throughout the industry to promote safe working environments for all the employees. We've had a great number of successes, including the tower partnership with Region 5.

We hope that that continued program will eventually grow into the national level and that will allow greater influence throughout the country for tower contractors that are not members of the national association who understand and have got all the tools in front of them to provide a safe work environment for tower people.

I did have three comments that I wanted to talk about today. The first, was to address Mr. Henshaw's question yesterday regarding the effectiveness of his open letter to the leaders of the communication industry.

The response, in a word, has been great. Many calls for more information, numerous industry trade publications with nationwide distribution have reprinted important segments or Mr. Henshaw's letter in its entirety, and requests have poured into the NATE office for more information. It's been a wonderful outpouring.

We intend to follow up with Mr. Henshaw's letter. We, I say on behalf of NATE, intend to follow up to get responses from the industry leaders that were the target of the letter in the first place to demonstrate the positive aspects and how that's been so very well received.

We appreciate Mr. Henshaw's taking the initiative to get that letter out to the industry. It's been very warmly received by the contractors that are affected by that industry.

The second one, is that through Mr. Ahern's and Mr. Beauregard's leadership, I'm sure that the Tower Erection Workgroup will complete their assignment this year. A timeframe has been set by the workgroup.

Lastly, I wanted to thank the committee on behalf of NATE for creating the Tower Erection Workgroup. Everyone here this morning, you have our profound thanks for the opportunity to work on that.

Does anyone on the committee have any questions of me?

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman, I have a question for the committee. Yesterday, the Assistant Secretary mentioned his letter and Mr. Doty has mentioned it several times already this morning. Are you all familiar with the letter?

MR. AHERN: Yes. And we did distribute it at the meeting.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Mr. Doty, could I just ask you one question? That is, do you have a handle from your association as to what percentage of tower erectors belong to your association and what do not?

MR. DOTY: The number various because, sadly to say, tower contractors, all it takes is someone to decide that they're an electrical contractor one day or a small outfit doing work for cable TV, and the next thing the one guy decides he's going to be a tower man and he goes and starts putting up antennas and small transmission lines on towers. So, that's the biggest problem in the industry.

Of course, the established companies that have been around for 20, 30 years, they're not necessarily the problem, although there's been education, questions about what part of the OSHA regulations are applicable to the industry. They've raised questions, and Mr. Swanson has been very supportive of all of our efforts to try to identify that information.

But at best, we can estimate that NATE probably represents somewhere over half of the tower erectors in the United States, somewhere maybe between 50 and 60 percent, but that it's over 80 to 85 percent of the employees, the workers that are working on towers these days.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I sort of knew the answer would be somewhere in that vein, because most of us in the construction industry find that same problem, that larger, established contractors have safety records and safety programs and policies in place, and the bad actors usually fall in that narrow band of, I don't want to call them mom and pop operations, but they're not big operations and they come and go quite frequently, but nonetheless give industry a bad name when it comes to fatalities.

Tom, first, then Mike.

MR. BRODERICK: The partnership with Region 5. I can't recall. Does that include a component of notification to OSHA of upcoming tower erector sites?

MR. DOTY: That's a good question, Tom. That issue was addressed in a manner that all the OSHA office had to do was call any contractor that they wanted to find out where they were working at that time, since creating lists of where a company was going to be, given the short duration--most jobs were between one and three days, and some of them as much as a week--that it would be hard, given weather constraints, that jobs would be postponed and shuffled.

But when they decided they wanted to inspect, all they did was pick up a phone and then they could find any of the contractors and they'd have that list available so they knew where they were working so they could go check on them.

MR. BRODERICK: Okay. Part two of the question is, have there been any discussions, since it seems to be a positive thing, viewed as positive from both sides of the partnership, to expand into a national alliance or partnership?

MR. DOTY: Yes. The discussions have taken place with, I guess I'd say, the partnership chairman, if that's what his title is, Rob Medlock, area director for Region 5.

Once we work the bugs out of the partnership program, from inspections to verifications, the auditing process, and then the follow-up, what information, what are we gaining from the system or the program, is it working, that we can establish some baseline measurements, then we can take it to a national level and offer it as a working piece.

MR. BRODERICK: Well, that's an excellent piece of news.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Mike Sotelo?

MR. SOTELO: Good morning. What is it that you are doing, or your association is doing, in regards to -- excuse me. I'm west coast so it's a little early for me right now. But what is it that your association is doing as far as motivating or talking to the owners as far as raising the bar in regards to coming up with a criteria for contractors to qualify to bid on these projects?

Is there any interaction with some of the big owners that could kind of raise the bar and set up something to where it's just not necessarily the lowest bidder that goes out on these projects?

MR. DOTY: Yes. That's a great question. Yes, that's been an ongoing issue with us. There is some reluctance from some members to address or try to raise the bar with an owner when that's the same person they're trying to get the job from. But it hasn't fallen on deaf ears.

Incrementally, we've seen involvement from the major carriers who have the right to be able to pick which contractors. And we're trying to make that distinction, just what you said, Mike, of the lowest qualified bid. It's an important distinction and I thank you for bringing that question up, because it is very important and we're always talking about that issue.

MR. SOTELO: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg Strudwick.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick. I'm from Dallas, the Dallas area, where you just recently, I guess, had your annual convention.

I know there are a number of efforts under way to work with OSHA as far as safety is concerned, but if I were going to go build a tower, where would I get information on what would be general industry standard as acceptable in the construction of my new tower?

MR. DOTY: You mean, the process?

MR. STRUDWICK: Certainly, the process. Where I can look out -- I just want a communication tower and I'm going to sell space on that tower to all of my buddies.

But I want to look out and I want to know my contractor is qualified, and I want to be able to identify what's going on out there with gin poles, or whatever it might be so that I would know that I have a quality contractor, and if I didn't, I would walk out and say, excuse me, I have a question or two. How do I know that?

MR. DOTY: The National Association of Tower Erectors has established what we feel is a comprehensive program for safety and education that identifies what a good contractor is.

MR. STRUDWICK: Best practices?

MR. DOTY: It doesn't actually say how it's to be done, but it establishes, like, from your point of view, if you wanted a tower, what constitutes a good contractor. What are the things that that contractor should -- how they should operate. What's their training program, their safety programs.

MR. STRUDWICK: Industry standards. How would I get that in one document? Would I contact you as a member of the association, or what?

MR. DOTY: Well, I guess, one document -- since there's different types of -- let me digress just a second. Communication towers come in all shapes and sizes, as I know this committee is aware.

Specifically, I work on broadcast towers so I don't have a great deal of experience with the cellular, the wireless towers, the small mono-poles and the little, self-supporting towers. So, broadcast.

But from a broadcaster's point of view, the National Association of Broadcasters has put out a document that says, this is what we think is supposed to be a responsible company. ANSI has a standard for tower construction.

ANSI TIA/EIA standard under the Workgroup TR14.7, which I'm also a member and I chair the Safety Facilities Task Group, and in those standards are what's a good structure. How is the ladder supposed to be accessed? What design is used? Safety facilities, climbing facilities are designed into these structures.

So ANSI decides how the tower is going to be designed and built that the workers are going to be climbing. We have also, through NATE, requested of ANSI to have a gin pole standard, since a large number of the accidents that have occurred in the industry over the last several years have been because of use of gin poles, which is a device that's unique to the tower industry on how the sections or pieces of the tower are assembled. The tower goes up to 2,000 feet in height, so you can't reach it, of course, with a crane.

So, through NATE, we've requested and received--I can't remember what they call it--a certification number for a gin pole standard, and it's currently in the process. It's through its draft work. It's currently being reviewed by the ANSI workgroup, and it's hopeful that that standard will be made public by the end of the year.

MR. STRUDWICK: Well, since this is all being recorded, I guess I have a document to look at, don't I?

MR. DOTY: Yes. Why I'm coming to that point, is that most of your owners or contractors, or potential tower erectors that will pay for that, are not interested in the method of how it's done, but they are interested in having it done safety and getting it accomplished on budget at the time, and then selling their space, or whatever.

Of course, the broadcast towers, I would assume, not being a tower person, are probably some of the tallest towers, which are more susceptible to the problems that occur as far as fatalities and that are concerned.

But if they could come up with one simple type of document that would say best practices or that kind of thing, and then put it out to the owner, then the owner would have some control, or insurance company would have some control over how we could look out and say, you know what? They're doing that wrong, you know.

I'll say something to the lead guy or to the owner of the company and request that they do something correct based on some type of general industry standard or recognized standard as far as safety is concerned.

Or, in fact, if I watch somebody go out and ride the crane ball up instead of climbing the ladder, you know, I would know that there was either an exception to the rule or that they were doing the wrong thing. So, that's where I'm going. Something simple to give us an idea of what's good and what's bad from a layman's standpoint. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Jim Ahern?

MR. AHERN: Well, from personal experience, in the last year we've been in the tower retrofitting business and out of the tower retrofitting business. One of the things that we noticed, was towers were popping up all over the population density areas, and planning commissions were getting unhappy about multiple towers within a very short geographic range and were stopping the permitting of new towers. They said, hang these additional transmitters and receivers off the existing towers.

Well, the existing towers were designed for an initial load, and now we're expanding it. So we developed a partnership with a fellow that used the same stuff that's in a B-1 bomber wing to build up the tower strength versus welding steel on there.

What we were hoping for and what we actually found out, were two different things. We did about seven or eight jobs over a six-month period. The average job was less than $30,000. We did it for four different owners, three of which were major corporations.

We found out that their planning is poor. They wait until the last minute until they have the agreement with the additional broadcaster or receiver to hang their gear on the tower. They are under such economic pressure, that low price drives the train more than anything else.

Because the jobs are relatively small, you're only there for two or three days. The ability to inspect, either by the -- the owner doesn't really have a desire to inspect. He just has a desire to generate revenue, in most cases. For the OSHA compliance people to get out there timely is almost an impossibility.

The bar is so low, it's a guy with a pick-up truck, a rope, a shiv, and a set of sockets. It's a daunting task. But the statistics that Kevin presented us with in our workgroup meeting show there's a tremendous safety problem.

How you license, organize, certify, or train is very, very difficult. It would be a challenge to our group to try to make some really worthwhile recommendations.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Jane Williams?

MS. WILLIAMS: Sir, as in many industries, insurance is driving a lot of safety compliance. Have you seen an increase in typical insurance premiums for your industry that may drive some of these smaller ones who are not in compliance, or do the owners require proof of insurance prior to getting on some of those sites?

MR. DOTY: To answer your last question first, yes, they do require insurance. To answer your first question, yes, it's definitely having an impact on driving the smaller companies out of the business because they just cannot pay the premiums. They have gone up astronomically for the last three years.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes, David?

MR. BUSH: Does NATE have an annual program that recognizes the safest contractors? Do you actually have a program where they compete and they have to show their actual safety records?

Most of the major group organizations, both the unions and the open shop associations, have annual safety programs that recognize--and it's on your work list here--best practices and recognition for low EMRs and other factors. Does NATE have that?

MR. DOTY: No, sir.

MR. BUSH: Would that be a good thing to start?

MR. DOTY: It's a great idea. I will be glad to take that back.

MR. BUSH: And then along with that, a program that has value will also list those criteria, best practices it takes to get into the program. If you started a program -- the Association Builders and Contractors has a step program where you have to fill out a form to become part of it. So, I think you would be helping us by starting programs like that and recognizing what the best practices are.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. DOTY: Thank you, David. I would like to comment on the last one, that the first steps of establishing a bar, if you will, were developed for the partnership, the pilot partnership program that's going on in Region 5. I think that's a great stepping stone. It's a good start. From there, we can refine that and make it better. But thank you very much for your comments.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Doty. I would encourage you to leave your business card, or at least your name and phone number, for contact so that members of that workgroup -- I sympathize, from the roofing industry, knowing your problem, and others sitting around this table from other industries, when you have a diverse industry.

In your case, as someone had mentioned, probably broadcast towers are bigger, better. The contractors who are putting them up probably have a safety record.

But I think you can see from the comments from this committee, recognizing the problem that exists because it's so visible and fall fatalities are so horrendous in the ways that they've happened, that it's drawn attention to your industry.

But I think you can see that there are helpful hints that that workgroup could provide back to your segment of the industry, and I think the workgroup would be grateful for your input and assistance to help understand your problem as well. I think it's a two-way street that would be beneficial to both parties.

MR. DOTY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank all the ladies and gentlemen of the committee for the opportunity to speak. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: You're welcome. Thank you.

Mr. Lott, I take it you're not in the room.

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay.

Next on the agenda is a Fatal Facts Presentation by Meta-Media, Mr. Rick Glasby. Rick, if you would introduce your cohort for the record. Just as a preface, I had seen a presentation similar to what you will see from these two gentlemen in our offices. The media they're going to present for training purposes, I think, is a very unique one. I think you'll be very impressed with it.

Somebody mentioned yesterday that they thought they saw on an OSHA web site something that pointed out hazards. I think this may be what you might have seen. This is a CD-rom or computer presentation.

So, gentlemen, if you would, welcome.

Fatal Facts Presentation - Meta-media

By Mr. Rick Glasby

MR. GLASBY: Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. My name is Rick Glasby, spelled G-L-A-S-B-Y, with Meta-Media Training. We're located in Montgomery County, Maryland. With me is Tom Held, H-E-L-D, the president of the company.

We appreciate this opportunity to share with you some of the training programs we've produced for the construction trades. I think we ended up here because, at Tom Broderick's conference in Chicago, we were showing some things.

Jim Boom, of OSHA, had seen them and suggested we talk with Stew Burkhammer, which we did. Through Steve Cloutier, he invited us to present here, and we very much appreciate the opportunity.

With your permission, I'd like to show you some of the things. Everything I will be showing you this morning over the next hour or so is a custom project that we developed for a specific client, so it's not an off-the-shelf program.

The first program I'd like to share with you is a work in progress that we are developing for the Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust that will be used for both apprentice and journeyman awareness training. It's designed to introduce some of the hazards that they might face on a typical construction site.

We produced the disk in association with SMOHIT and it will be used at their 167 training centers around the country.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Would you explain what SMOHIT is for the Reporter? I've been apologizing for all these acronyms we use.

MR. GLASBY: Yes. It's the Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust.

The disk is called "Job Site Safety," and it's being presented on DVD, which is the same media that you can buy movies on for use in your home. In fact, we designed this particular program to run on the lowest common denominator, meaning you can run it on your $60 home DVD player.

It can also run on a laptop computer that uses a DVD drive, or you can use it on a higher-end professional player, which is what I'm using here, because it has a mouse on it and it makes it a little easier to operate.

It has in it about a day and a half's worth of instructions, typically not presented in one fell swoop, but is presented in chunks.

The idea is to make the instructor in charge of the training. So, this brings to his fingertips the various media assets he can use in the presentation.

So we have lessons. There are 18 lessons, including how to work with other trades on the job site, responding to emergencies, material handling, fall protection, and the instructor uses this interface to access each of the individual lessons.

There's also information on housekeeping, how to keep the job site clean for safety; getting along with others on the job site to minimize conflicts; your rights under OSHA; even how to read OSHA standards at a very basic level.

The increasing role of women in construction is addressed and some of the specific hygiene and safety problems that are posed that women face on a daily basis on the job site.

Some of the other lessons include topics such as scaffolds, aerial lifts and hoists, stairways and ladders, environment, both heat and cold, and how that can affect your health and safety on the job site.

We also have information on hazard communication, how to read an MSDS form, for example. Electrical safety, health and safety, how to work in confined spaces, PPE, and tools and equipment.

I'd like to show you just portions of some of these, paying attention to the fatal facts animations that we've produced as a part of this. That's what Stew had asked me to focus on here.

In order to do that, I'm going to go into the lesson on fall protection and just skip around to show you sections of this, not go through in a linear fashion. In fact, that's the way the instructor can use this program as well.

The first screen and lesson typically shows the objectives that the student will achieve upon completion of the lesson. The instructor can also access multimedia elements that are shown on the right side. In this case, we have a short video clip that introduces the hazards posed by falls.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: So everything we address here, we try to focus on the particular audience, in this case the sheet metal workers.

We also try to bring other elements of the job site into the classroom. We have what we call war stories, which are basically people recounting problems that they've had. In this case, it's Mr. Mehan of Stromburg Metals, again, relating a tale.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: So we try to bring the personal side of safety into the classroom as well.

Some of the other assets that the instructor can access, we call these the OSHA files. In essence, they're photographs taken at actual job sites. The instructor asks the student to take a look at the photo and try to identify some of the hazards that are depicted here.

After the class discussion, then he can open the file and there we list the hazards, the OSHA standards that were violated, and the suggested corrective action to take in order to correct those. So, it's all designed to engage the students who are in the class in the discussion.

And, of course, we have access to high-resolution photos and pictures, in this case on the types of fall protection the instructor can show, nice, crisp photos of the different fall protection systems, everything down to safety nets.

I'd like to skip through a couple of frames here to show you one of the fatal facts that we've produced. If you go to the OSHA web site now, you'll see some still pages that depict -- it's actually, I guess, a compilation of typical accidents that occur in the industry.

We've taken the base graphic for that and then tried to bring it to life. Here's an example:

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: These animations are produced in a technology called Flash so they can be presented on DVD, as we're showing here, or also over an Internet web site by streaming them. So, they're pretty flexible.

I'd like to go to another lesson to show you another example of one of these fatal facts. I'm going to move on down the line here to aerial lifts.

The instructor has a binder that contains all of the text points that are on the screen here, plus suggested discussion topics so he can expand the discussion more.

He also has, with this particular player, a bar code reader. He can use that bar code reader to scan in his guide a particular multimedia element, be it an animation or a video, and go directly to that part of the disk. So, it gives them a lot of flexibility.

In this case, we have a fatal fact, an animation, and a couple of videos. So for each of these screens, there's a fair amount of information that he can use in his presentation.

Here's another example of a fatal fact:

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: I'm going to go back to the menu now and select another lesson. This particular one will be on electrical safety.

The lessons range in length from about 20 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the topic. Again, it's awareness training. It's not designed to be an OSHA 10 course, but it introduces the hazards to the students.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: I'd like to show you another example of a video clip that supplements this lesson.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: We shot some of this video at the National Institutes of Health at a construction site there. That's up the road in Bethesda, Maryland.

We were also fortunate for the cooperation of the Volpentest Hammer Training Facility out in Richland, Washington. Some of their instructors were very helpful in helping us set up some of the scenes.

In fact, there's one in confined spaces here where they participated. They have an excellent facility there for simulating things such as confined spaces and fires.

I'm paging through the screens here rapidly to just show you sections.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: That's Respirator Man.

(Laughter)

MR. GLASBY: One of our subject matter experts was adamant that one of the biggest challenges he faced was people wearing respirators when they weren't trained and they hadn't been fit tested, so he asked for something that would make that point. I hope that did it.

Tom, did you want to go over some of the other programs that we've produced for other clients as well? Tom Held formed Meta-Media back in 1982, I believe, up in Germantown.

Fatal Facts Presentation - Meta-media (Continued)

By Mr. Tom Held

MR. HELD: Thank you, Rick. It's a pleasure to be here today to give you some idea of what we're doing with DVD technology.

Not everything we do is on DVD, but what we're finding is that the instructors really like this out in the field because it feels like a videotape. You put it in the machine and it works. You're not having to put it into a computer and trying to download different pieces of software to make the thing run, and you can run it on a TV set, which is kind of nice.

What Rick was just doing, he bounced around between 7, 8, 10 different lessons. If I'd had to do the same thing that we're doing on a job site with a videotape, we'd probably have to produce 20 separate videotapes for that.

You couldn't do what he just did, to be able to pick and choose. It really gives the instructor a lot of flexibility. We feel it's really interesting technology and it's not just for movies any more.

I'll just give you a quick overview. Actually, remember optical laser disks, those great, big disks? We're actually converting a lot of those things now over to DVD again.

Then we had things like CDI and CD-rom. Now, most of the CD-rom drives on computers will probably be replaced by DVD drives by the end of the year. It will be hard to buy a computer that has a CD-rom drive in it.

The growth of DVD in the United States has just been tremendous. It took five years to sell 30 million DVD players in the United States. It took 12 years to sell that many cell phones.

Of course, we've gotten the price down now from hundreds of dollars down to $50 or $60. So, now training facilities -- it becomes pretty inexpensive now. It's cheaper than an overhead projector, if you can still find an overhead projector.

High-quality motion video, twice the resolution of videotape. Much better than what we can get with video on the Internet or on CD-rom. Very inexpensive delivery systems.

Multiple audio tracks. We didn't really show any of that on this particular program, but I will on one of the other safety programs. We can put eight different audio tracks on there, so there could be eight different languages. Rick, on the job site, were the subtitles in there?

MR. GLASBY: Yes.

MR. HELD: Okay. We'll try and show some of those. We actually subtitle all the programs, both in English and in Spanish, but we can have the narration running in English. There are a lot of sheet metal workers that have some hearing problems, you know.

Again, very durable. This thing is never going to wear out. A lot of interactivity, the ability to branch to different sections in the lesson. We can actually put a link on there to a web site on that same DVD.

So if you play it in a computer, you could link to Small Hits' web site or you could link to an OSHA web site. If you wanted to get the text information about a particular safety hazard, you could link directly from the DVD disk to the web site, then come back to the DVD again if you're running it through a computer. That's probably the last one on there, I guess.

MR. GLASBY: No. You have the examples.

MR. HELD: Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Okay.

We're not going to get real technical with this. DVD looks like a CD-rom, but I can encode both sides of it and I can actually put two layers on it. So, the program that Rick was showing you is what we call a DVD-9.

It's almost 9 gigabytes of data and it's got two layers, so we can actually focus down to the second layer on it so we can refocus the laser by programming to get to the layer underneath the first side.

If we wanted, we could go all the way up to a DVD-18, which is almost 18 gigabytes of data, probably the equivalent of about 20 CD-roms. So, we can store a lot of material on there.

I can control it with a remote control that comes with it. Rick was using a mouse. I can hook a track ball up to it. We have bar code pens that we're using in the instructor manuals so the instructor can just turn to a page, if there's an image on there, he can barcode that and search to it, mouse or keyboard, or we can even hook a touch screen up to it.

Job site safety, as Rick pointed out, is one of the current programs we're working on for the Sheet Metal Occupational Health Trust. That will be completed shortly.

The hazard awareness training is a series of three DVD programs we're doing to support the HAZWOPPER refresher course. If we have a few minutes later, I'll show you one that we did. We're doing that with the Center to Protect Workers' Rights.

The disaster response DVD. This is another program we're working on right now in response to the difficulty of training the construction workers and laborers that had to go into the World Trade Center catastrophic site.

A lot of those workers were not trained for weeks on how to use personal protective equipment. They did not decontaminate their clothing, did not know how to decontaminate their tools.

Again, we're working with the Center to Protect Workers' Rights on this to develop a three-hour course that would be packaged and sent out if there's ever another catastrophic event.

It would all be on DVD and it would cover personal protective equipment, decontamination, and incident command. We're in the middle of finishing that program right now. That should be finished in a couple of months, I guess, Rick.

Fall protection for roofers. This is another one of Rick's programs. Do you want to talk about that for a minute?

MR. GLASBY: Well, actually, I was going to show a little bit of that.

MR. HELD: Okay. All right.

Sheet metal shop safety. This has some similarities to the job site safety program that you saw a minute ago, only here we created a three-dimensional sheet metal shop. I'll show you a little bit of what we're doing with that. That represents about a 20-hour training course, again, all on a single DVD.

While Rick is loading that up, I'll show you, in this case here, what we've got is what we call our portable training system. This is a portable DVD player, probably weighs about a pound. The case here is a portable video projector that will hook up to that. It will project an image probably about eight feet.

There are little portable speakers on here. You can put on extension cords and everything. You can actually send this whole thing out in a package along with the training program. So, we think that's kind of neat.

The image quality coming from this little portable player, it actually has a screen with it, too, so if you just want to review stuff, you can. It's got a battery pack with it. It'll play for about three hours.

On the shop safety program, we probably have a manual around here someplace, too. This is an entire curriculum here on sheet metal shop safety, and it has two components. If you're an instructor, you can go into lecture support.

On here, these are all the lessons that I've got in here on this one disk: Cuts and Electrocutions, Burns and Dismemberment, Poisoning and Infections, Suffocation, Falls and Tripping, Crushing Injuries.

If I went to Crushing Injuries, I've got slides here, I've got video clips, I've got safety guidelines, OSHA diagrams, real-life stories. I could go back to the main menu and I could get back to the top menu. I can take a virtual tour of the shop. This is actually after I finish my lecture.

So what we've done here, is we've taken a sheet metal fabrication shop, we've peeled the roof off the top of it, and these are the areas that you would be working in if you were a sheet metal worker. You might be working on cutting and shearing, or in welding, or in loading, or in assembly.

So I can decide, I'm the instructor today, I'm going to teach safety in the cutting and shearing area. Each one of these represents about four hours of lecture material.

These are the different pieces of equipment you might have in a cutting and shearing area. You've got plasma cutters, hand tools, power tools, torches, and power shears. All of these are active. Simply by moving the mouse over there, I can get to any of those that I want.

If I want to teach safety in the power shear, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to click on that. The objective here, what you're going to see, are two workers using this piece of equipment with no narration, but just with the ambient sound on it. What you have to do, is determine if the activities they're doing are safe or unsafe.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: So then the instructor at this point is going to start talking to the class and ask the class, what do you think? Do you think that operation was done safely or unsafely? Could be a problem there, huh?

Okay. You say, okay, it was unsafe. You're right. But since the task is considered unsafe, but discuss the video you've just seen and explain your answer. Why was it unsafe? If you're not sure, we can go to clues. I've got diagrams of the equipment here, I've got OSHA information. I can get some information on the power shear and how it works.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Okay. Now, if I replay the video, what I'll do, is I'll see the same video, but now I'll get a narrator.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: So the second time through you actually get a narrator there that tells you what was wrong with that particular scene. There are a lot of scenes here where there's nothing wrong with it at all. I can go back to clues. There's one more thing I can get on here. I've got real-life stories.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: And if you're hearing-impaired, I can bring up a subtitle in English, or I can bring a subtitle up in Spanish and keep the narration running in English.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Then I can decide to go back to the cutting/shearing menu again, or I could go back to the shop menu and I could go into another section, go into welding. And I've got areas here that deal with confined spaces, grinding and rolling tables, and sheet metal arc welding and gas metal arc welding. I'll just show you a minute of this.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: I can do some interesting things with this program, too. This was something that was kind of unexpected, but I can stop the program and I can take a look at that image and ask the class, is there anything about this that looks like it's unsafe?

VOICE: The bottle is not capped.

MR. HELD: The bottle is not capped. Yes. I can highlight that. I've got a little telestrator here, kind of like a John Madden, a football thing, in here, and it's built into that particular player, into the graphics.

So I can grab a color, grab a line, I can grab a circle and I can highlight that area. If I had the keyboard hooked up to this, I could go up here to the ABC and I could actually type text in there and say, what's wrong with this picture?

It's got a "save" function on it and I can save that. This particular player has some memory in it and it allows you to save all that. So the next time, then it would automatically come up like that. And I can undo it all, exit the program. So, that's what we're doing with that particular program.

Rick, did you want to show something?

MR. GLASBY: Yes. I wanted to show the program we're producing for Mary Vogel and the New England Roofing Industry Alliance, Construction Safety Alliance, out in Boston. This is funded using one of the Susan Harwood grants. This particular program is a part of their OSHA 10, but is a very small part. It's designed just for fall protection.

They had produced a program called "Roof Safe," and this kind of integrates into their existing "Roof Safe" course.

Again, this is a work in progress. In fact, we're going to be field testing this next weekend up in Boston. This is a section of their "Fall Protection for Roofers" DVD. This particular section has information on PFASs, safety nets, and review.

Again, this is designed to be instructor-led. This is not self-paced. An instructor is in control. But it gives him access to all the information he needs in order to present the course and he can customize the presentation.

So in this particular case, if he's interested in seeing or showing a video on, let's say, the body harness, he just clicks on that part of it.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY:

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: So he can select which pieces of video he wants to show. He also has access to the text of particular OSHA regulations if he wants to incorporate that into his presentation.

I wanted to show you a different approach to doing the fatal facts. In this case, it's not actually an OSHA fatal fact, it's one of the NIOSH presentations. This is about inspecting. Again, there's a video clip for each one of those procedures.

We also have an animation in here on free-fall distance.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: So in this case, the instructor can select the distance between where the lanyard is attached and the D-ring on the back. So, let's say I select "even with the D-ring."

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: Or I could be out of compliance by selecting "four feet below the D-ring."

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: So the goal is to help present what can sometimes be complex topics in a way that the students can understand. We also had one there on swing falls.

Here's the thing that's similar to fatal facts we call "What Could Have Been Done." In this case, it's one of the NIOSH accidents.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: At this point, the instructor would engage the class in a discussion of what could have been done to prevent it, and then clicked "Continue."

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. GLASBY: This program also incorporates another feature. I'm going to go back to the menu. It allows the instructor to bring up review topics with the class.

In this case, in the case of questions, "Which of the following is true: a personal fall arrest system prevents a fall; reduces the consequences of a fall; is failsafe or requires little training.

No matter what you select, it would take a group consensus. The instructor would ask the class, by a show of hands, what they think the correct answer is. Then the correct answer is highlighted. So, there's a series of questions at the end of each of them that involves the class.

The idea of this is to add some life to OSHA 10 training and help the instructor keep the students engaged in the discussion.

How are we doing for time, sir?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Getting close.

MR. GLASBY: Getting close.

Tom, did you want to try to go through CPWR's emergency response? This is part of their HAZWOPPER training program.

I'm sorry. Before I forget, there are some handouts in the back of the room that describe some of the topics we've been showing, as well as some contact information. Sorry.

MR. HELD: Some of the most interesting work I think being done in this area is being done by the Center to Protect Workers' Rights.

Good morning, Chris. Chris, would you like to talk about any of these programs and some of the work that you're doing?

VOICE: Maybe if there are some questions on this we can do it later.

MR. HELD: Okay. Okay. There may be. Chris is the person that you should talk to about obtaining a copy of these programs.

We've started working with Don Ellenberger at CPWR about a year ago. Most of you are probably familiar with the HAZWOPPER refresher course. What we found, we actually sent a couple of our people through one of the courses one time. And even though we had never been through it, it wasn't particularly exciting.

There were people in there that may have been through that course 10 or 15 times. Every year, apparently, if you're working at a site like that you have to go through the refresher training.

Some of the training can be very good, some of it is not very good. It depends on who the instructor is and what they have for support tools.

So what we did, is we took one section as a prototype just to see, what could we do to make a particular section a little more interesting? We chose emergency response. Although this was really developed just as a prototype, CPWR felt this was really good enough to actually use in a classroom environment.

So what we've done here, again, on a DVD disk, if you're wanting to teach, you've got a whole series of emergency response slides covering eight steps, DOE emergency classes, warning personnel summaries.

I can get back to the main menu again. There's a simulation in here. We've got lots and lots of interviews with people. We won't go through all that, but I'll show you what we did with the simulation.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: So here we've got a chemical storage pad. Again, we had wonderful cooperation from the people at the Hammer Training Facility out in Richland, Washington.

So what you're watching here are two workers in a pretty typical environment. They're moving around 55-gallon drums that have some type of hazardous chemical in them.

As you observe what they're doing, the same thing, you need to be looking at what they're doing and seeing if they're doing things correctly or incorrectly. There will be an accident that will happen here shortly. Then you have to start making decisions on what to do.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: There are probably a few hundred teaching slides in here, and maybe 15 interviews. What we're finding, is this just becomes a tremendous resource for a classroom instructor and the type of thing -- you could not do this -- you cannot run this kind of video across the Internet yet, no matter what Bill Gates says. It won't work. It will probably be years before you can run full-motion, full-screen video across the Internet. It's just not going to happen.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Okay. You've got lots of things that happened here. The cap on the drum has come open and there's some type of liquid that's going down, and it's actually going into a water supply. The forklift operator panicked, backed it into the propane tank. He's unconscious, and now that's burning at the same time.

Then you have to decide, what do you do? Do you try and rescue your friend? Do you alert others of the emergency? Do you size up the situation? No matter what you choose, there's going to be a different response there. So, there's lots of different scenarios here.

"I can try and alert others of the emergency."

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Okay. That was the correct response. If I would have tried to go in and save my friend, I'll get a different situation.

Now I've got, do I size up the situation? Do I notify EPA and OSHA? Evacuate personnel from the area? Do I try to rescue my friend?

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Now I'll get the consequences.

(Whereupon, the video clip was played.)

MR. HELD: Okay. We didn't get into all of that. But there's another scenario where the two workers die, another one where they're both okay, they're not hospitalized.

So, every time you go through this you can take a different pathway through it. This is really designed to take about one hour. We think it's a little more interesting than somebody reading you the regulation on emergency response.

Let's see. There were two other areas we're working on now, decontamination and confined space, as part of that course. That's just a real quick overview of some of the things that we're finding that the industry is doing in health and safety.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Tom Broderick?

MR. BRODERICK: Is this a part of the 9/11 response?

MR. HELD: No, this is separate. Not this program. That's a separate program.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Manny Mederos?

MR. MEDEROS: Yes. You cite OSHA standards, and I think some other standards up there. If I'm a customer of yours and I buy your program and their standard changes and I'm not aware of it, is there any notification to us? Is there any update of the material available? Is it a severe cost to update the material?

MR. HELD: Okay. A couple of questions. First, we don't sell programs. We're really developing these programs for our clients, then they distribute them. But to address that issue, that is a very important issue.

One of the things, as I mentioned before, we could do with the DVD, if there was a change in the OSHA standard, we could put a link on that disk and we could link that directly to the OSHA web site, and we could update the standard that way. I can't put anything else on that disk. It's very much like a CD-rom.

MR. MEDEROS: Then the customer would have to notify you that there was a change and that they wanted the disk updated, or would you notify the customer of the change?

MR. HELD: I'm not sure. That's an interesting question. We've never really been approached with that. I wonder, how do people get updates now, individual trainers?

MR. MEDEROS: Well, it all depends on the industry or the person out there. If you're a small company, it's very difficult. If you're a large company, because there are so many people involved on the safety side of it, that that's not a real problem.

But if I'm a customer and I'm putting on my safety program and trying to be diligent and then I get cited from OSHA because there's been a change in the standard, then I would be a little upset.

MR. HELD: One of the things we can do, working with SMOHIT, for example, they've got about 170 training sites. So, it's not difficult for them to actually send out or broadcast facts to all of those sites or to put it in their quarterly newsletter.

If I were a publisher, like J.J. Keller is one, they have hundreds and hundreds of videotapes. I'm not sure how they would actually upgrade their videotapes, either, but they probably wouldn't because the cost of upgrading those would just be too expensive.

Yes, Tom?

MR. BRODERICK: But you would store electronic copies or masters of these so that if the person or entity for whom you developed them notified you that there was a change, it wouldn't be a big deal to make that change and then burn more DVDs.

MR. HELD: Not really, no. That really wouldn't be too difficult. We could put a different menu item on there too that had things like updates on it every time you wanted to burn a new DVD. The cost is really going down. In quantities, you're talking about a dollar, probably, to burn a new DVD and send it out to the field.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Marie Haring Sweeney?

DR. SWEENEY: I'm from NIOSH. This committee probably thinks this is a broken record, but when you develop a training course you want to know how effective it is in getting the message across. Has anybody done that? I know you create them and give them to the owners, basically. So has that been done?

Then the other comment is, when you're dealing with a large number of folks who may or may not be literate in their own language, putting up written text may not be the most effective way of conveying the message.

MR. HELD: I agree with you on the second part about the written text. Normally when there's narration on there -- that's why we are putting up the subtitles. But in order to change that, let's say we wanted to put the entire text up there in Spanish, it almost means producing a separate program.

DR. SWEENEY: Sure. Sure. But the question on effectiveness. Has anybody done --

MR. GLASBY: The disk that we just showed you for the fall protection for the roofers, the Construction Safety Alliance, as part of their OSHA grant, has an independent evaluator. That's one of the things they'll be doing next weekend with the independent evaluator in the class.

DR. SWEENEY: With Mary Vogel?

MR. GLASBY: Yes.

DR. SWEENEY: Okay.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg Strudwick?

MR. STRUDWICK: And this is to go along as a lecture series. In other words, with the instructor up there.

DR. SWEENEY: Sure.

MR. STRUDWICK: So you can accomplish the translation or narration if you've got an audience that's relatively illiterate, I would assume. The instructor knows that.

MR. HELD: That's true, they do.

MR. STRUDWICK: And the question I was going to have, was you mentioned the Harwood grant. I was just wondering which client had brought that to you. I guess that was through the client base.

MR. HELD: That's correct, it was.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It was our Local 33 up in Crossneck that worked with Mary Vogel.

MR. HELD: That's correct. And we worked with Mary actually on a proposal to do that.

MR. STRUDWICK: Okay.

MR. HELD: We wrote, like, the technical end of it.

MR. STRUDWICK: And not to pry, but when you develop a DVD like you're showing us here and it has a certain amount of gigabytes in there, it's a huge amount of information because you're going from all these different angles. Could you give us kind of an overall, what does it cost per hour, say a four-hour course? I mean, what is the --

MR. HELD: We've got some pretty good experience on this right now. We probably have right now about 1,500 hours of DVD-based training under development. Obviously it's not all health and safety. We're doing a lot of technical training as well.

What we're finding, is the cost per contact hour probably is about the same or less than producing an hour videotape. If you're producing one hour of something, it's going to be fairly expensive.

But when you get into 10, 15 or 20 hours, once you have the basic design built and you've got your underlying program begun, it actually is no more expensive than doing a CD-rom or a videotape.

I'm trying to think, in this area, if you contracted out for a videotape to a television production company, they're going to charge somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 a minute, something like that.

So, a 30-minute videotape, if they're charging $2,000 for a 30-minute videotape, with $60,000 we could probably produce three hours of interactive programming on a DVD for that same amount. We could probably produce twice or three times the amount of material. We think it makes it a lot better teaching tool for the instructor.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Gentlemen, it was very impressive. That's my second time. I didn't view all of that the first time around, but I was impressed the first time.

Anyone who's done any training knows the value to an instructor of standing in front of a roomful of, whether they're apprentices, journeymen, or for safety training and being able to deliver meaningful training that holds the interest of the audience, that is obviously something I think that anyone involved in training would covet.

We thank you for your time. It was very, very impressive. I don't mean to be repetitive, but as a new generation of training materials, it is very impressive.

MR. HELD: It was a pleasure being here. Thank you.

(Applause)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Let's try and stay on track. We'll take a 15-minute break. Let me repeat again this morning, for those in the public who would like to comment, please see me so we can get your name and put you on the agenda.

(Whereupon, at 9:55 a.m. the meeting was recessed and resumed back on the record at 10:14 a.m.)

Workgroup Reports

CHAIRMAN KRUL: We would like to go through the reports of the workgroups. After that, we'll have a discussion with the committee on what you were charged with yesterday, and that's the restructuring of these workgroups and looking at some brief work scope definitions, and the composition of those workgroups.

So, let's take the workgroups' reports in the order that I them. The first one would be the OSHA Training Institute Course Ideas and Delivery Systems. That is going to be Jane reporting on that.

MS. WILLIAMS: Yes.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Please proceed.

Workgroup Reports OSHA Training Institute Course Ideas And Delivery Systems Workgroup

By Ms. Jane Williams

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have distributed to the committee and to our designated officials the report of that workgroup. Some of it is more just reporting status, but there are several recommendations.

So I would propose to go through the report and move the recommendations, and then if the members wanted to discuss those, some would be explanatory. We could take a vote if there was an exception and we could pull one out, to make it quicker.

The general note that you will see, as this was the first time in several months the workgroup had met, we had a joint workgroup session. So I called the OTI Delivery System Group 1, Certification and Training was Group 2. It was the first time that Workgroup 2 had met. All co-chairs--myself, Frank, Tom and Joe--were all present.

The workgroup participants were welcomed. We did the sign-in sheets and we did all the emergency things that Mr. Cloutier helped us with.

The first item was old business from our meeting of about two years ago, and that was the issue of demolition training. The workgroup's consensus is to pursue awareness of the demolition process, with emphasis on awareness issues for small employers.

The workgroup's intent is to contact associations, State Plans, and other resources to determine what is currently available to assist employers with pre-demolition hazard assessments, employee training, and their awareness issues that would come with that.

Once we have a product, then we will work with OTI to see what is the best outreach method or whether we just want to go through the -- well, whatever we come up with.

The second one we entertained was the last item of old business that we had from the prior discussions on creating programs, and that was on excavation. Our consensus was to concentrate on the demolition awareness issues and put excavation on hold because we did not want to burden our resources.

The next item of old business was feasibility of the OSHA 10-hour Construction Outreach Training Program hour reduction. We had been charged at one point to look at the 10-hour program and to see if making it an 8-hour, 16-hour, or whatever would make it more employer/employee friendly.

We had extensive discussions on that and there was total consensus of the workgroup that the 10-hour should be maintained in the way that it has been. The workgroup then discussed OSHA today, and we were talking about content of the 10-hour.

The workgroup recommends that the Assistant Secretary be advised that ACCSH supports an OSHA history progress media tool to be developed to provide instructors with a positive perspective of OSHA today.

The workgroup suggests such a media tool would make the core subject of the introduction to OSHA a positive approach to worker safety and participation, as well as assist instructors to dispel negatives of perceived OSHA's agenda.

We all felt that many times in our 10-hour classes the students come in with this perceived notion that OSHA is the villain. We thought a more positive approach, all their successes and what they're doing today, could really help this. It's the first hour you do. We think that could be a very positive role.

So, again, that will be one of the recommendations. And we will vote on these all as one unless there would be something, of course, you would like to talk about.

Then we really got into some of the open items that we had been charged to evaluate with OTI, and OTI was present. Consensus was that we re-communicate the issue of contact hours to all instructors submitting for course completion cards with a separate noticeable insert advisory.

Basically, what we are saying is we felt many instructors are not doing the total 10-hour contact, and we asked if OTI would be able to put some type of a flyer in as cards are requested to remind instructors.

And they did not have any problem in doing that, so we told them all these recommendations would be going to the Directorate of Construction, who would then just forward our reports, even though they were present.

Re-communicate the issue of course flexibility for employer-specific class matrix. Again, the concern that we had, was some people were not aware that they could stretch out the course over a six-month period and that they didn't have to do 10 hours in one day, and they could make it more employee friendly by doing that. OTI again said that that would not be a problem for them to reiterate that.

The flexibility for the six-month matrix, as I was saying, and the site-specific for an employer. They can change the curriculum of those six hours however they wish to for the employer. So, they were agreed that they could just do a reminder, if you will, to the instructors.

Lastly, that the 10-hour construction matrix on the web reflect its current revision. It was pointed out that the matrix that's on the web now is not the matrix that the instructors are using. It might be two years old. So, we asked that they kind of reflect on their documents.

The workgroup discussed the issue of an expiration date for OSHA 10-hour course completion cards, such as that that was required for instructors' credential renewal.

A resounding consensus was not achieved. There was a lot of discussion on that, Mr. Chairman. We really had a lot of mixed comment on it. We felt that that was such an important issue that it really should be discussed by the full committee and not have a workgroup recommendation on that item. So, we're referring that one back to you.

The workgroup was in total agreement that the instructor sets the tone for the success of the training experience, and we asked OTI if they could put a little more emphasis in the 500 regarding instructors and how important they are, and they were in total agreement with that also.

At the next meeting, the workgroup will review the issue of revising the OSHA course 501. There were several comments that for experienced instructors to come back and basically go through the whole 500, except for some miscellaneous things, wasn't really productive and they might want to consider whether or not we would go in and just hear the current changes, or the fatality issues, or the current emphasis programs that would be affected in the course, and of course any standards that would change, and maybe look at the content of that, and that was well-received also.

Under new business, we were -- and this was more Mr. Broderick's and Mr. Durst's charge at our Chicago meeting. Stakeholder Tracey Fletcher had brought forth at that meeting her concerns for heavy equipment operators to be certified.

We did, in fact, follow up with our assignment and contact her of this meeting, as was directed. She was in attendance and we did listen to her comments and her concerns.

The workgroup did explain the typical regulatory process that some of her items would require us to go through. We did repeatedly thank her for her participation. We encouraged her to be part of the stakeholders' portion of the negotiated rulemaking for cranes, and that that would be readily made available, and that the ACCSH members had her e-mail and could make sure she was aware of that.

But outside of that, there was not much action that could be taken, other than to refer to the Directorate the next recommendation the workgroup recommends, that should the opportunity avail as a result of the negotiated rulemaking for cranes Subpart N--we didn't feel it would be in the scope, but if it did--that the Directorate of Construction evaluate, if any, accommodation for heavy equipment operators that could be made at that time.

Lastly, the workgroup recommends that the Directorate of Construction evaluate the creation of an advisory notice, or emphasis notice, whatever we would call it, for publication on OSHA or ACCSH's web site requesting employer participation to enhance heavy equipment operator training to include hands-on, practical instructions before workers are permitted to operate such equipment.

We just felt some of the alerts that had been done are very positive when they go out on the web, and sometimes it brings issues up to employers who may not really think about it. That might be an easy vehicle that could be more timely and more effective.

So, with that, Mr. Chairman, those are all the recommendations and the activities of those two workgroups. At this time, I would move all those recommendations and entertain any discussion.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: We won't entertain a motion until we have a discussion so we don't go back and start amending and re-amending.

MS. WILLIAMS: Right.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: So, let's have a discussion. There's a couple of controversial portions, obviously, from your report that need to be discussed. Let's put them out on the table and let's start with the one that's got everybody jumping up and down, the expiration of the 10-hour card. How do folks feel on that on both sides of the issue from the committee? Frank?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I spoke out against the 10-hour refresher for several reasons. I was told that it was not required by law, which we all know the 10-hour card is not required by OSHA or law to get on the job site.

It's more paperwork to go through. I've also been informed that, because of paperwork, that the heavy equipment operators, when they used to have a certification, it was taken away because of the undue paperwork.

We're also looking at the companies. If a company wants to do a 10-hour or requires a 10-hour or a 30-hour, they can do this on their own and they have the right to do that.

I don't see giving or making a person come through in a refresher class for something that's not required in the first place. That's my whole reason I voted no against this.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Anyone else? Joe Durst?

MR. DURST: I certainly support the renewal and recertification of the 10-hour training. It is true that the 10-hour program is a program that was established through the OSHA Training Institute to assist and make available to employers training of workers so that there would be some basic safety and health knowledge on a consistent basis, at least, when you look at the mandatory required subjects, six hours or four hours being elective on the part of the instructor, presumably to cover the interest of the work done by the employer by his employees, whether it be excavations, trenching, or something different, or other type of work.

When an employer asks for his source of employees, whether it be the union, a hiring hall, a four day provider, and says I want 20 employees who have OSHA 10-hour cards, you assume that he's asking for 20 employees who have some basic knowledge of the OSHA standards, at least the required six hours plus whatever those other four are.

The OSHA 10-hour card does not expire. He should be getting people sent to him either by the union or by a four-day provider who in fact have valid OSHA 10-hour cards.

But they don't expire, and they got them in the 1980s and they have no knowledge of the new Subpart M, or knowledge of Joe's new Subpart L, Scaffolds, Ambient Fall Protection, no knowledge of personal protective equipment that was changed, recordkeeping was just changed. That employer is really not getting what he asked for.

I think as long as we're going to bring instructors back every four years to keep instructors current, which we certainly should do, even instructors are teaching the current OSHA standards, that the employees ought to have to renew their certification every four years also.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: Just from a worker standpoint, and I don't disagree with the fact that somebody needs to have additional training to keep current, to keep safe.

But concerns me, is an expiration on a card has a tendency to give somebody that really has no authority the ability to say someone is out of compliance or somebody shouldn't be somewhere because of that expiration date.

The card itself was issued as a certification that someone went to the training and became exposed to the OSHA standards. It's an introduction to the 10-hours, an introduction to the 1926 standards in the context that we train. I want them to feel like that is something that they achieved that really doesn't expire.

Where we see expiration or certification expiration dates as detrimental, is when somebody shows up to do a job and someone says, your card expired yesterday or the day before, you can't be here.

In actuality, they look at the card and could say, well, I see you haven't updated your training for five years. Have you done other classes, or could we look at some other qualifications? We could offer you or ask you to take a current 10-hour. Would that be inappropriate?

It wouldn't cause them to judge good or bad based on an expiration date. It would just say, maybe you need to have another 10-hour course. And the electives might even change in that course that would be more applicable to what we're going to do on this job site. Okay. That expiration date gives somebody the ability to control somebody else that maybe is not quite appropriate.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Tom Broderick?

MR. BRODERICK: Of course, I was on the other side of the argument that said we should have cards lapse. One of the things as a safety practitioner years ago that I would fight, and any of you around the table that have done this know, one of the things that you hear all the time is, well, this is how we always used to do it.

I just feel that if you don't bring people back to get caught up to speed with the latest technologies, the latest requirements, that you're not doing an adequate job of keeping your people trained.

We live in a world of expiration dates. There's expiration dates on food, there's expiration dates on our driver's licenses, there's expiration dates on our credit cards. So, I don't think it's, from a social standpoint, a terrible thing to have an expiration date.

I think one of the major arguments along the road has been, from a practical standpoint, the OSHA Training Institute has never had an expiration date, or didn't have expiration dates even on the instructor credentials for many years because the OSHA Training Institute did not have the wherewithal to have all of the instructors they had created come back to take training at the Institute on a regular basis.

Well, some years ago they opened up 13 Education Centers, at least one in every region, several in my Region 5. We've just added another bunch of them, so we're up to 20 Education Centers.

Each Education Center -- I think they're all consortiums, so they're multiple institutions that have fairly deep penetration in the county. So, the availability for contractors and employees to receive updated training on some period, five years, four years, to be consistent with the instructors, seems to be a much more practical thing to get done.

I guess the most relevant argument I could see is the one that Mr. Durst brought up, and that is that we have people that come up with cards that were issued in the mid- to late-'80s that asked the question, is this still good? The answer is, well, yes, it is.

I think that one might tend to read into that, then I must still know what I should know to be in compliance with OSHA. Well, the answer to that question is, obviously, no.

There have been critical subparts either changed or added since that person was issued that card in the mid- to late-'80s. That is, I think, the key reason why we should consider having an expiration date on these cards.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Marie Haring Sweeney, then David.

DR. SWEENEY: I wasn't in the discussion, and I'm sorry I wasn't there. But I have a couple of flat-out questions about this.

Is this going to be a hands-up/hands-down, yes or no, we're going to ask them to recertify or not? What does recertification mean? Do you take the whole 10-hour or can you take a couple of classes to go over things that have changed?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Let me just clarify, we're not going to make that decision today.

DR. SWEENEY: Well, yes. But, I mean, if you're going to bring a motion ahead to us, I think it needs to be fleshed out.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: This looks like it will be one of the exclusions because there was no consensus, and that's my view on this.

DR. SWEENEY: But I'm still confused. So perhaps if we come back with a motion -- because I'm not prepared to vote.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: No, that is, I think, what Jane's point was in putting it all out there, and why I wouldn't accept a motion, at least right now up front.

David?

MR. BUSH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the question may go to Stew, who isn't here. Steve might know, or Mr. Swanson might know.

In these alliances/partnerships, I think one of the basic elements is a 10-hour and a 30-hour OSHA course. Is there a requirement for renewal in those partnerships and alliances?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: No. The answer is no.

Let the Chair just weigh in on this discussion. I can see the value -- I can see that we're not going to come to consensus at this meeting. My suggestion will be that we exclude that from any recommendations or motions, or at least that portion of the workgroup's report.

But let me make this suggestion. There are groups like the Center to Protect Workers' Rights who deal with this issue. Contractor associations are certainly a political attachment to this with the building and construction trades unions, the general presidents and contractor associations, both union and non-union, that all point to money.

It kind of goes to Frank's point, although I'll be more blunt about it. We're talking about putting a lot of people through a lot of very expensive programs again.

I don't disagree with the need for updating, and I'm wondering if there's a different way of approaching this for keeping people current with changes to subparts without going through the whole rigmarole.

Look, I'll be honest with you. Our training programs go through this, and I'm sure all my labor brethren will back me up. It's very, very difficult to get these people to come back into the classroom continually. They're already going through nuclear accreditation, welding certifications, drug and alcohol testing.

GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler are going to be right behind them and have a Safe to Work program. People have to go on the Internet and complete 14 modules before they can come to work in factories.

Asbestos certification. We're going to have people in classrooms their entire life, not on construction sites. So, there is a difficulty in looking at this, although the points are valid on both ends, I guess is my point.

What I'd like to see happen with this particular phase of the workgroup's report, is that we do some more research on it. We can see it's contentious and I think there just needs to be some more information gleaned so that people on both sides of the issue can make more valid points.

I mean that from the groups I just mentioned, and anybody else, if they would feel free to come to the next workgroup meeting and perhaps let's put these issues on the table.

Dan Murphy?

MR. MURPHY: Just a suggestion to the workgroup. What you're talking about has been modeled and used in the mining industry for years with new miner training and annual refresher, and you're looking at a five-year refresher versus annual refresher.

I would suggest you take a look at how that's done and how they keep people up to speed in the mining industry. That's done on an annual basis. I've always been very appreciative of that.

I started my career teaching those courses and I found that when we refreshed the people, our losses continued to drop. So, food for thought for the group and a place to look where it's actually been done.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: And I think there's a way to get -- that's a good way of putting it, Dan, by citing someone who's already been down this road before. There's probably a way to get there that both sides could be happy with.

Frank?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Two things. MSHAW is a good example of what you say, Dan. The problem is, MSHAW requires by law a 24-hour refresher, and the 8-hour. As long as OSHA doesn't require that 10 hours, and I've been told they never will be able to require it, how can you put something on top of that? How can you do a refresher?

Plus, any new regulations that come out, I know as an ironworker, and I was in the training department for several years, Subpart R came out, we developed something. Subpart L came out, we developed something.

So our men and women that work out of our trade, they carry a card separate from the 10-hours they get. So I'm not saying that we're not keeping our people trained safely.

I would never want our people not to be trained safely, anybody, union, non-union. I don't care. I'm saying, every time something new comes out, there is new training material put out that breaches that aspect of it.

The other thing is, if we were to go through a refresher, every single time a new subpart came up, that would automatically make that refresher card that the guy or woman just got the day before outdated, because yesterday Subpart X was changed. So, I mean, there's a lot of things to think about and I look forward to getting more information on this one.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Jane Williams, then Joe.

MS. WILLIAMS: I would like to point out for clarification for the committee, our workgroup was only charge to arouse those levels of discussion.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: You did your job very well.

MS. WILLIAMS: Which we did a very good job on. The decisions, of course, would be made by OTI in conjunction with, I'm sure, the Secretary or whomever. Their request to us back when was, what are your feelings in today's environment about that 10 hours? So, we're giving them a lot of the feelings.

I think it would be a good item. We could make more notice on the record that this will be our intent to discuss that. I'm sure other people would then show up at that workgroup, and just start detailing all the pros and cons that we hear and pass it on to the Directorate to advise whomever of all those issues.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It will be excluded from any motion.

MS. WILLIAMS: And it is not a recommendation in here in this report. That's why I purposely said this is not a recommendation, because there was no consensus.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: That's fine. The issue needs to be resolved, or maybe not resolved, but it could go back to the group.

Joe?

MR. DURST: If I may get a second shot at this. In the OSHA standards, and for many years the standards simply said, "The employer shall train the employee in," and then there was this general statement. I was trying to find a copy of it, but fire hazards is one.

In my previous years on this committee, the committee always argued that employers are making the claim they don't understand what OSHA wants them to train in when they get cited for not training.

Well, then we went to great lengths to spell this out. The scaffold standard, you have the whole Appendix D that spells out exactly what employers are supposed to train about each type of scaffold.

The new powered industrial truck training section of the standard. There is a whole list, one-half of this page, of things the employer is supposed to train the employee in.

Then when you get to retraining, many things--asbestos, lead, confined space--those standards require annual training. In some cases there's an overlap between this Agency and EPA as to what that training is going to be because the other agency -- EPA has a model program that says exactly what that asbestos training will be, at least from their book.

Then when we go to the scaffold standard and the issue of retraining, we introduced this language that has to do with when the employer observes the employee working unsafely or working in a manner that they didn't understand the training, which means that two days later, four days later--the same language is in the powered industrial truck standard--the guy doesn't get on the forklift, or the powered industrial truck, or the construction powered industrial truck until he has been trained, unless it's during his training period.

But after the training, if he is observed operating it unsafely, the employer is to retrain him and then do a review of that person's ability to operate that equipment every three years.

Now, you get to the argument about, is or is this not required by OSHA. This was an argument that we kept making many years ago. In the very beginning of 1926, 1926.21, the safety training and education in general, "The Secretary shall, pursuant to Section 107(f) of the Act, establish and supervise programs where education and training of employers and employees in the recognition, avoidance, and prevention of safety issues in employments covered by the Act."

So, it was the Secretary. That dribbles down to the Assistant Secretary. He's told, you've got to create programs for employers to use in training employees to recognize hazards and deal with them. That has finally started to happen, or it's happening. OTI is doing a good job of that, now.

The Directorate of Construction is doing a good job of that now, making training programs available and putting them up on the web where we can get to them and use them. Paragraph B says, "The employer should avail himself of the safety and health training programs that the Secretary provides."

There is some indication in the regulatory text that employers ought to use programs provided by OSHA. Now, the only real question is, that doesn't say "the employer shall use the programs provided by OSHA."

CHAIRMAN KRUL: The chair is going to end deliberation on this issue. We're not going to solve anything here. I think this should all be brought back to the next workgroup meeting, with some of the suggested groups and associations and information that I brought out.

It's obviously something that both sides feel very passionately about. There's going to have to be a resolution one way or another, and that's what workgroups are for.

Are there any questions on the remainder of this workgroup's report? Any opposition to the recommendations or the report? Joe Durst?

MR. DURST: Mr. Chairman, can we ask Ziggy from OTI if they can research their files and see what the discussion was about the OSHA 10-hour course when it was created?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: You can ask her to appear at the next workgroup. We're not going to do it here.

MR. DURST: I'm not talking about here. To provide to the committee that information.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Sure. Sure. Anybody and everyone is invited to these workgroups that has information that is germane or applicable, are they not?

MR. SWANSON: I think, Mr. Chairman, that he's asking for OTI's presence at the next workgroup meeting.

MR. DURST: Well, I'm asking for a request from this committee, i.e., the chairman or the Directorate of Construction.

MR. SWANSON: The OTI representative is no longer with us this morning, but your request will be relayed. I'll make sure that happens.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Hearing no objection to the remainder of the workgroup's report, a motion would be in order to accept the report and recommendations.

MR. MURPHY: So moved.

MS. WILLIAMS: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Regularly moved and seconded. All in favor, signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Opposed, if any?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you very much.

The Tower Erection Workgroup. Those co-chairs, or at least present co-chairs, are James Ahern and Kevin Beauregard. I neglected to mention Jane, who was in your workgroup. Frank Migliaccio, Mike Sotelo, and Jane Williams are part of this workgroup. Who will make that report? Kevin?

MR. BEAUREGARD: I guess I will. Should I start with the recertification of tower erectors?

(Laughter)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: At your peril, looking at your watch.

Workgroup Reports Tower Erection Workgroup

By Mr. Kevin Beauregard

MR. BEAUREGARD: We had our first workgroup meeting a couple of days ago and we did have pretty good participation. There were about 12 people in the meeting.

We started off the meeting just kind of giving an overview of the different types of towers for the benefit of the folks in there. We also did share the Assistant Secretary's letter out to the tower owners, as well as I believe he sent one out to the broadcasters as well. We distributed some NIOSH material that they had put together, some information about some case studies and some statistics.

Once we got through all that, we decided the first thing to do was try to figure out what our objectives of the group was going to be, because we really didn't think the way to go was to work on a rule and develop a rule in that workgroup.

What we did decide to do, was first of all list what were the main issues associated with towers. You should have a handout somewhere in front of you which is an outline of what we discussed there.

You'll see that that the objectives that we worked on, was we did want to try to get some type of finished product fairly quickly. And maybe optimistically, but we're aiming towards the end of this year to at least get something out of this workgroup.

We were going to concentrate primarily on recommendations for outreach activities, create training courses, perhaps put some best practices together for people in the industry so we can have some type of fairly immediate impact out there in the industry as opposed to going to the rulemaking rail.

Also, the issue came up of Spanish language. Anything that we develop, we would try to make sure that we're addressing the Hispanic community in the tower erector.

We did decide that we were going to develop a recommendation, should OSHA decide to pursue rulemaking, a detailed outline of the topics that we think should be covered by that rule.

A list of items that you see under "Main Issues" there are a tentative list that we put together. They're not in any particular order. We're going to go back and clean it up and then we're going to put it on the ACCSH web site and allow feedback from our workgroup members, as well as the other members, before we meet again and try to get some of that done electronically and through telephone calls.

The other issue, was seeing if we couldn't come up with some recommendations to OSHA for better targeting sites, not only for compliance activities, but also getting the information out.

The issue that came up in the meeting was that primarily the people that are involved in the erection of towers are smaller employers, I think several people from industry said primarily 15 or less employees.

We heard earlier from NATE that they do represent a number of erectors, but there's also a number of erectors that they do not represent. Those ones seem to be the more difficult ones to get ahold of, and also they seem to be the more difficult ones that may have a real grip on the safety and health issues associated with that type of activity.

So, those are the major tasks that we're going to work on. This workgroup later may decide that there are different objectives, or this ACCSH body, and that's fine. We can go ahead and modify that.

But we felt that before we started anything, we needed to at least know what we were expecting as a workgroup to get out to get back to ACCSH with. Those were our primary objectives.

The other thing, we were fairly well-represented across the board in the first meeting, but we did make a list of various industry interests that should probably be participating in the workgroups. Down at the bottom there is a list of people, and we're going to try to get some individuals from those associations.

We did have a number of them already represented at the meeting yesterday. Besides myself and Jim Ahern, I think there were three or four other ACCSH board members that participated in the workgroup as well.

But as a kick-off meeting, I think it went fairly well. We were able to at least get some preliminary stuff together. We're going to go back, clean up some of our notes from the meeting, get it out and try to get comments.

We may have a meeting prior to the next ACCSH meeting. It all depends on what we can work up. But, like I said, we are going to try to get some of the work done electronically, or through feedback from the information that's out there to try to get something out.

I'm primarily interested in getting some best practices together and getting that information out, or getting it to OSHA to help us get that information out to the field.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Kevin, we have Mr. Doty, who is going to offer his services from the Tower Erectors Association. I will provide you with Mr. Lott's phone number and e-mail. I think, at the very least, the workgroup could -- he didn't show today, for whatever reason. But the workgroup could probably benefit from listening to his experiences, at least from a former worker standpoint.

Any questions of the workgroup?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: A motion would be in order to accept the workgroup's report.

VOICE: So moved.

VOICE: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Regularly moved and seconded. All in favor, signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Opposed, if any?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Let us move to Homeland Security. That would be Jane, again.

Workgroup Reports Homeland Security Workgroup

By Ms. Jane Williams

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, this was our first meeting to go over some of these issues. We wanted to at least try to define a preliminary scope.

Under new business, you will see in the report we felt the industry's need for a product to assist employers, especially small employers, be aware of the construction soft target hazards, emergency reporting, and response for worker and public protection was determined to be needed.

We did have some participation with us from the Directorate's office. Mr. Burkhammer thought it was very timely in what we were doing in our approaches to that, and Steve was there also.

We decided, because there is apparently a wealth of information being generated by various entities, that rather reinvent a wheel, we would try to access these reports, findings, master plans, and things, bring them into the workgroup, and see what we could garner into maybe a very brief outline, checklist of recommendations to a small employer, have you considered this, this, this, as it would apply to their site.

So, with that, each of the members in attendance was charged to solicit from their own associations contacts, or wherever they could, what they feel might be available.

Then our next workgroup meeting, we will look at those issues. There are some State Plan documents and checklists that are available. So, we're just going to garner information and then evaluate that information at our next meeting.

We had requested of Steve and Stew if, in fact, it would be possible through the Directorate, with Mr. Swanson, to evaluate with him whether we could have copies of the new Region 2's master plan that they have developed as a result of all that they did, as well as there's a couple of people who we understood have been very active with DOL, and that possibly we could have them come in at our next meeting and capitalize on their expertise and recommendations. At that time, I think we would know what kind of a document we could put forward to assist the Directorate.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Thank you, Jane.

Any questions for that workgroup? Dan Murphy?

MR. MURPHY: Jane, I would just like to offer to your workgroup, if you would call me, we'll get you access to our password-protected site. We have many documents developed on this topic area.

MS. WILLIAMS: Wonderful.

MR. MURPHY: You all can use those as reference material.

MS. WILLIAMS: Thank you. I'll call you, Dan.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you, Dan.

A motion would be in order to accept the workgroup's report.

VOICE: So moved.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Seconded?

VOICE: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Any discussion?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: All those in favor, signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Opposed, if any?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Silica will be Marie Haring Sweeney.

Workgroup Reports Silica Workgroup

By Dr. Marie Haring Sweeney

DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chairman and committee members, I want to apologize for not putting a report together. We had a very interesting and full meeting.

With the graciousness of the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, we had about six people come in and explain to us the hazards associated with silica, exposure methods, control issues.

Bob Burt from Regulatory Analysis came in and talked about the SBREFA process because the silica proposed rules going into the SBREFA process. Then Phil Perry also talked about the regulatory process and gave us some updates on it.

There were about 15 or 16 people, including 6 members of the committee, who attended the meeting. There were many issues that came up relative to construction.

I would think that others who attended the meeting would agree with me that this group who is writing the rule needs some help relative to construction, and what the issues are in terms of how exposures occur and controlling those exposures, all the way down to, what's the definition of a wet method, and some of the other issues, how to control exposures on a variety of different sites.

So, we had discussions all the way up until 5:00. We really didn't come up with a scope of work. What we did do, is we asked Bill Perry to send us some of the key questions that they have relative to the standard and to construction.

There will undoubtedly be an additional meeting between now and the next ACCSH meeting, because there's a lot of ground that we still need to cover. I understand the proposed rule, the SBREFA comment period, and everything should be done by the fall. They're on a fast schedule.

MS. SHORTALL: I'm not sure what their schedule is. Part of the schedule that is established for SBREFA is scheduled statutorily. We, along with OMB and the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration, have established certain procedural guidelines we'll follow to get the process moving prior to the initiation of the statutory period.

But that period is a 60-day period when the panel is convened, meets, and the report must be issued. So, if that's what you're talking about, it is a pretty fast 60 days.

DR. SWEENEY: I think things are moving quickly. Thank you.

Some of the issues that we did discuss are things like, instead of monitoring, having industrial hygienists come in and monitor a site, given that sometimes your activity is very short in terms of silica, or what have you, are there ways that OSHA could develop matrices, tables?

This is the kind of saw you're using, this is what you're sawing into, this is what you're expecting in terms of exposure, and this is the kind of PPE that you have to wear, or these are the kinds of controls that you need. So, that was just one discussion. There's lots more to be done.

So, anyway, hopefully I will send an e-mail to Mr. Perry as soon as I get back in my office and remind him of our request. I will also type up the notes from the meeting and send them to the full committee. So, that ends it.

Jane, would you like to add anything?

MS. WILLIAMS: No, I think you've covered it quite well. It was a very, very interesting and active workgroup meeting and they were very accommodating with the information they brought.

They were really being patient with some of our questions that weren't quite in our vocabulary, we can say, and were more than willing to work with us and actually wanted the construction input.

DR. SWEENEY: Yes. I think we should extend our sincerest thanks to Bill Perry, Loretta Shuman, Jason Capriati, Wanda Bissell, Neil Davis, and Bob Burt for spending lots of time with us and giving us every piece of information we needed at the time. I'm sure there will be more times. That's the end of my report.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Questions for the workgroup?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I'd just offer, again, for many of the questions that your workgroup probably has, that ground has more than likely been plowed through the Center, through the Building and Construction Trades Safety and Health Committee, especially through the Bricklayers, who were instrumental in putting together a proposed standard that is here before the Secretary of Labor for adoption.

Not that it will be, but I just think that a lot of these things that you're asking about, definitions and what methods work and when they don't, I think that information is already there, or at least some of those studies have been done. Chris, nod in assent to me, will you? Say yes.

DR. SWEENEY: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes? Go ahead, Marie.

DR. SWEENEY: There was one more point. I was really surprised that we didn't have -- the Center wasn't there, that other different players weren't there.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I think that was a miscommunication.

DR. SWEENEY: There was some miscommunication. The -- Association wasn't there either. Yes. Yes.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: The difficulty was holding it in conjunction with the Chicago LAN safety and health thing. The Center was a co-sponsor of that Chicago LAN safety and health expo, so they were at odds time-wise. It was a bad time to have, as I understand it.

DR. SWEENEY: Wednesday?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: No, no, no.

DR. SWEENEY: On Wednesday.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Oh, this Wednesday?

DR. SWEENEY: I was surprised we didn't have --

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I thought you meant at the last time around.

DR. SWEENEY: Yes.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: This time around, nobody came?

DR. SWEENEY: This is our very first face-to-face workgroup meeting.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay.

DR. SWEENEY: But I was really surprised that we didn't have more outside participation. It may just have been that people weren't reading e-mails.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It's not a problem. We'll straighten out that communication thing. Because, as chairman of the Safety and Health Committee, we have a direct link with the Center at all times. I could be that link for you. That's not a problem. That's not a problem.

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes, sir?

MR. SWANSON: If I may. That takes care of one communication problem. But there might have been several, or many others. As we get the new committees set up, we should probably discuss exactly what you'd like to see our role in as far as making sure that folks get contacted.

How do the folks out here in the audience or out in Peoria today indicate that they'd like to have notice of a workgroup meeting on a particular subject, and then how do we give them advance notice of that?

If there are materials that should be read or looked at before someone comes into a workgroup meeting, what assistance can we be to ACCSH to make sure that that happens? That all has to be discussed, I think, at some point.

MS. SHORTALL: As one person who reads all the Federal Register notices announcing your meetings, there always is a mention in there to check the OSHA web site for workgroup meetings.

Now, we do have to have that notice into the Federal Register 15 days in advance, but at least maybe at this point people will understand information on the workgroups might be placed on the agenda even prior to that 15 days.

DR. SWEENEY: You said 1-5?

MS. SHORTALL: Fifteen days prior to the meeting. But they could always look. The web page might actually have the information they need even earlier than that, which would allow people to make the necessary travel plans or arrange their schedules to do it. So, that's been something that's been in place for several years now.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you, Sarah.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Mr. Chairman, I have a question for Sarah. This came up in our subcommittee meeting, our workgroup meeting and I was not sure of the answer. In the Federal Register we put notice of the ACCSH meetings. Are we also required to put notice of the workgroup committee meetings or just the ACCSH meetings?

MS. SHORTALL: You're not required to put notice of the workgroup meetings, but the workgroup meetings, by the regulations, are required to be open to the public.

It seems that if they're open to the public, a courtesy would indicate you should give some form of notice, but it wouldn't have to be in a formal Federal Register notice.

I think it's become -- just keep the Federal Register notice short and to get people the information about the ACCSH meeting, where it is, what room it's in, we have been moving the notices about the workgroups and information over to the web page.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Great. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you, Sarah.

Jane Williams?

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, one item that we have done that's been quite successful once a workgroup has been established, and I think when we go through our housecleaning a little bit later here.

The public is encouraged to contact the co-chairs of a workgroup so that they can get onto our e-mail list. Then we as co-chairs send out this last e-mail, if you will, to everyone who has signed up and shown an interest. That typically will keep growing after we have meeting after meeting.

So I think after everyone hearing what we're doing today, which was the first time for many of these, I know all the co-chairs will be more than receptive, and we all have very detailed sign-in sheets with e-mail so we can make sure these people were advised of our next meeting as well as making sure that we get that information to Mr. Swanson.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Good point. I think with this restructuring it will all be helpful and we'll get better communication in the future. Okay.

The last one, Certification and Training. Tom Broderick and Joe Durst. Anything to report in that workgroup? Please don't tell me about expirations.

(Laughter)

Workgroup Reports Certification And Training Workgroup

By Mr. Joseph Durst

MR. DURST: Mr. Chairman, the co-chairs of the workgroup have met, but the committee did not meet at this meeting other than in conjunction with the issues raised at the other meeting of the OTI issues. We have looked at developing a scope and purpose for this meeting and put that forth at the next meeting.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. That's next on the agenda, anyway. Is that the end of the workgroups? Is there any other workgroup that I don't have listed here that has a report?

(No response)

MR. DURST: What happened to Musculoskeletal? Did you drop me again?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Well, we're going to go into those right now, Joe.

Committee Business

CHAIRMAN KRUL: What I'd like to do, is your homework, if you will, between or after cocktails, was to look at this list and see how we could somehow rearrange it, prioritize it, get more management involvement on some of these workgroups, and to also get some brief work scope definitions so folks could have a focal point as to what the goal of their particular workgroup would be.

Would anybody like to take a first shot at it? David?

MR. BUSH: I couldn't sleep so I sat up and did some of this last night. I went back to what Dan had suggested, and that was making an overall division into three major groups, health, safety, and training. Then I subdivided literally everything that was on the web page, the list that I think we were all working from yesterday, that had even the items that were taken out. Although the ones that we definitely -- like cranes, Subpart N, I did not try to find a category for.

My suggestion would be, and not to lengthen this so there's more time for others to have input, that in that major division of health, safety and training, that we make sure that there would be: 1) one champion or chair for each of those; 2) in that group and the next level of participation, that all the segments, Mr. Chairman, to answer your concerns, would be assigned to one of those so we made sure there was employee representation at each one of those major groups, employer representation and public representation so that we had that division, and then to open it up for subgroups under there. I will do health, first, where we would have chromium issues, the noise issue, the musculoskeletal disorder issue, silica issue.

I think, in going to Joe's comments, there is no reason to take the musculoskeletal disorder away from the public's view, which might deliver a message that we aren't concerned about it, but to keep it under that main heading.

It just may not have any activity until it becomes an issue again. Or if Joe comes to us with new data that says we need to revisit this, then the whole committee would make that decision and you'd revisit it with a task force, but then people could move freely in those three categories to the areas that are critical to them.

You may not be in the top group as a representative of one of the segments, but if you have a concern in silica, let's say, you can certainly attend the workgroup. If you don't and you don't like what's said, then that's kind of your fault, no one else's. That would get that good spread that I think Mr. Swanson wants, which would get us well represented in each of the groups. I'll shut up.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Do you have recommendations for the other two groups for subs?

MR. BUSH: Yes. I went through them. Under health, as I said, we have the chromium, noise, musculoskeletal disorders, and silica. Under safety, I put tower erection. I added the highway workplace. The Assistant Secretary brought that up yesterday. I have some questions about some other issues he brought up. I'm not sure they're ours to look at, but I'll touch on those next.

Under training, I put certification, diversified workforce initiatives, multilingual safety issues, OSHA Training Institute and courses, delivery systems, and then I put youth safety under there and other new issues that the Assistant Secretary brought up yesterday.

Then I'm not sure where you would put homeland security, data collection, and State Plan state initiatives.

Then there were a couple that the Assistant Secretary brought up, I'm not sure we even want to get into. One of them was motor vehicle fatalities and the other was workplace violence. He mentioned those to us. I'm not sure that's anything this group wants to get into, but I'd leave that up to the group.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Frank Migliaccio?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I also agree with what Dan came up with with the safety, health and training topics. But also, like Dave, there were some I wasn't sure where to put, so I came up with the topic of "Other."

So I had four topics going across there. What I did, was the ones I couldn't figure out where they went, I put them under "Other." The only one I came up with would be the homeland security for construction, just move it out separately.

MS. WILLIAMS: That would be safety.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Do we put it with safety?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes. I think if we keep it to three topics there.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: That takes care of "Other" then. I wasn't sure about it.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Let me ask a question. The Assistant Secretary, when he brought up vehicular fatalities, he was talking about vehicular fatalities on construction sites. Right now, I'm confused.

Do we have -- not that it's not an issue. It's a huge issue, I know, especially for the laborers, highway workplace fatalities. Do we have a workgroup that was dealing with that?

DR. SWEENEY: I'm not sure. I think it's workplace fatalities, like driving to and from your job. There are some things going on in work zone safety, not necessarily here.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Well, that's why I'm confused. I'm not diminishing the importance of it. I'm just confused. Was that a charge for this group?

DR. SWEENEY: It's two different things.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: That was not a charge for this group.

DR. SWEENEY: No, no. Not work zone safety.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: But did I not understand Mr. Henshaw's concern was vehicular accidents occurring on construction sites?

MR. SWANSON: Yes.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes. Not to and from.

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman, he actually made two points. He made both the vehicular fatalities, and then after that--they ran somewhat together--he talked about workplace fatalities on highway sites. So, there were two separate issues to him, and I believe one of them was certainly appropriate to us. I don't know about the second one.

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes, sir?

MR. SWANSON: What the Secretary mentioned yesterday, our concern with the 1,225 fatalities of construction workers that BLS tells us about quite accurately, as we take that 1,225 apart, we find that a significant portion of those, some 40 percent of those fatalities of people engaged in construction, die not in an environment where OSHA has jurisdiction.

So when John spoke about fatalities, vehicular fatalities, I'm sure he intended to cover both aspects, those that die on a construction site as a result of a vehicular issue, and those that die off a construction site.

He acknowledged, I believe a review of the record will show, that we might not have any direct jurisdiction to issue citations or to otherwise deal directly with it. It doesn't prevent us, in his opinion, it doesn't prevent OSHA, from doing something from the bully pulpit about informing, training, sensitizing employers to an obligation you might have to your worker, even if he's not on the job site.

He acknowledged also that he wasn't sure, that OSHA wasn't sure just yet how we were going to get at that part of it. But clearly we have jurisdiction over the issue that the laborers are justifying concerned about about work zone safety, and other forms of vehicular problems. So, it's both.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay.

Yes, Manny?

MR. MEDEROS: I'm getting somewhat confused on this whole issue. As I understand it, the discussion yesterday, the list was too long, it was unbalanced. So, we're categorizing things. The list hasn't shrunk that much, other than the ones we retired committees from yesterday.

Is that the issue, or is the issue that we have three absolute things that we need to do? Do we need direction from the chair to balance those committees and get off and get the work done, or are we just spinning our wheels here moving things into columns?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: No, we're doing both. We're moving things into columns and part of this is to prioritize based on what's coming up on the regulatory agenda and what the Assistant Secretary mentioned in his remarks yesterday, and for any member of the committee, as the MSDs were so noted, if there is a concern by any member of this committee for any safety and health issue, it will not be taken out of the workgroup, it will be up to that individual to make sure that there are people who are going to come to the table.

What you're going to look at here--and I'll get with you in a minute, Joe--silica, noise, homeland security, the diversity/multilingual issue, and the OTI were five prioritized items that these workgroups will have to focus on and devote most of their attention to. It doesn't mean that these others will be ignored. Some of them may be called on an as-needed basis. These topics will be addressed with a priority.

The rest of them may or may not be addressed at future workgroup meetings. It will all depend on the folks that are going to be on those. As I understand David's proposal here, there's going to be three main tri-co-chairs, or tri-chairs, if you want a name that will be representative of both labor, management, and the public sector.

Under those categories will be these other ones that will have a priority that every member of this committee is invited to participate in, and we will be getting those names.

MR. MEDEROS: I understand that. But it seems to me that we're spending a whole lot of time trying to categorize things. They're going to stay. We have a list already. We know which ones the priorities are.

We have three on fast track that we need to do something with, and I think we ought to get on and do it. We're still going to have a list of 9 to 12, and we started off with a list of 13 and we retired two or three already. So --

CHAIRMAN KRUL: But as I see it--and somebody tell me if I'm wrong--the three chairs are going to assess the priorities of these categories that are -- the three categories make it simpler, because what Stew had said to me is, we had 15 workgroups before, none of them ever scheduled because they were out there as a separate workgroup.

Now they're being lumped under here with a priority being assigned by the three chairpersons. So to me, there's a better structure to address the workgroups as to who's going to do what and when when you guys meet.

Joe?

MR. DURST: Well, Mr. Chairman, while you all were playing around with arranging this stuff in threes last night, I was going back and looking at the Act. The Act says we should be an Advisory Committee with five employer reps, five employee reps, two participants from the public, participants from the government, and OSHA representative.

Now, when I started applying these people to group A, group B, group C, I run out awful fast of public people. Okay. So when you tell me you're going to have an employer representative and an employee representative and a public person in each one of these A, B, C things, and drop down in the next group and go, employer, employee, public, employer, employee, public, the public people are getting stretched pretty thin.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Well, they're stretched thin now, Joe, when you look at the old list. There's people from the public sector that are on practically every workgroup. I mean, what's the difference if three of them are up there in these three categories and they're assigning a priority to what issues are going to be addressed?

If you want to call it an ad hoc committee for the rest of the subgroups, call it that. As long as there's participation and the work gets done, what difference does it make? My concern was, is when we looked at these original 15 groups, there was a dearth of management participation.

As the Director of the Directorate pointed out, we can do that. But when issues and recommendations come back from this committee up to the Secretary of Labor and there's a lack of management participation, let's be honest, under this administration, this Republican Bush administration, those recommendations are not going to fly. Let's be realistic about what we're dealing with.

MR. DURST: But if the five employer representatives, although in the affirmative for an issue, regardless of who created it, maybe the blue nuns did it when they brought it and gave it to Mary or Jane to bring over here, and she gave it to Tom, and Tom gives it to me, and I present it and it gets voted on, whatever the issue is. If everybody votes in the affirmative, what difference does it make who did the homework?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Joe, nobody's getting paid.

MR. DURST: What?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Nobody's getting paid.

MR. DURST: I know nobody's getting paid.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: Joe, I just think it's a matter of balance, of focus, and perception, that's all. That's what Bob is alluding to. That's what I was alluding to yesterday.

If we're all represented, co-chair, co-chair, co-chair, you can look on this list, and they're right, there's co-chairs, but they're co-chairs a little out of balance as far as management. But there's a lot of new management people here. I didn't expect to come into a group cold turkey and take a co-chair place. I expected to learn for a while and then become a co-chair.

So it's not a problem based on consensus, it's a problem based on perception from the administration, or whoever it is. Everybody wants to be represented. So organizing the three groups, like Dan suggested, and making sure that there is a management/labor/public umbrella, then all of us working underneath there as a priority, because we might only work on one issue under that umbrella, or two. But from a perception standpoint, it's correct and we need to get on with it.

MR. DURST: Mr. Chairman, I would suggest another alternative, and that is to take the list of things that are half active, half alive, at least well enough that if you hit them with a baseball bat they would quiver, and you assign a management, employee, and a public or government representative to those subjects, and the co-chairs them get themselves their committee.

If that group does not bring to the next ACCSH meeting something of tangible interest, product, statistically valid information, pictures, as long as they're not immoral to this next meeting, then that issue just goes away for a while until somebody decides it gets put back on the list.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Are you including MSDs in a quivering list?

MR. DURST: Yes, I'll put it in the quivering list.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Kevin, then Jane.

MR. BEAUREGARD: I just had a real quick comment about these three categories. I don't disagree that it's probably a good approach. But when I looked at the things that we were discussing about priority items, I noticed that in health you've got chromium, noise, and silica all under health.

They're all priority items. So I would imagine those would be three things that people would be working on. So, are we going to be working on the other categories?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I'll save my comments until the end and let you guys go.

Jim Ahern?

MR. AHERN: I'm somewhat like Manny, a little bit confused here. Let me use the Silica Workgroup as an example. If we just simply used this list, the list is naming the chairpersons of the group.

As it turned out, in the workgroup meeting the other day, even though you don't see a representative of management on the co-chair list, of the five management representatives, three of them were at the meeting. And although you don't see a person from the State Plan group, Kevin was at the meeting as well.

It seems to me we're adding another layer of bureaucracy to have these three groups managing the subgroups, whatever number they are. I think everybody sitting around the table is qualified to be a co-chair without oversight by a superordinate level of additional committee members.

And if you have an interest in a particular area, whether you're on the committee or not, you can attend the workgroup. It seems to me we're complicating things, with all due respect to your idea, to add that additional level to the process.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: All right. Jane, I'll get to you in a second. Now you guys are confusing me, and that's bad. We had 15 workgroups before we said let's look at this and try and reorganize. We had 15 workgroups. All of them don't meet. They're listed. They're listed as active. They were there. The concern from OSHA is, either retire them or, based on the presentation from the Assistant Secretary, let's put a priority on them.

So now when we try to put a priority on them, we said silica, noise, homeland security, diversity/multilingual combined, and possibly the OTI. Well, then let's just have five workgroups.

Everybody's going, oh, wait a minute. We've got to have MSDs. We've got to look at tower erection. We can't take that off the list. Hexavalent chromium can't go away. We've got to have certification and training. I agree with you. We're back up to 15.

How are we going to handle this in a way -- I agree with you. I agree with the comments about, let's just have five or six workgroups assigned with a priority so that when the workgroups come, actual work gets done, we don't have things sitting still for three, four, five meetings, saying there's no report from this workgroup, there's no report from this workgroup, there's no report from this workgroup, there's no report from this workgroup. Then we do have to address this balance issue of labor, management and public. I don't care how we do it. The public is not the concern. Management is the concern.

MR. DURST: At the chairman level? Is that what we're saying?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Chairman and participation level. There are a couple in there -- I agree with you, there's a couple where management is very well represented.

But there are some concerns that if there's going to be a recommendation that comes back from a workgroup that has little or no management participation, those recommendations will not fly politically.

Jane, then David.

MS. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, I was up all night like David, I think, looking at some of these things. I request that we retire Diversified Construction. The reason being, we pulled out the most important, and that was multilingual. At what point that concludes, we can always add something back in and take that task on.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I'll leave that up to some -- diversity in construction was meant because construction always take a bad hit about not enough female participation. Is that a good thing to do?

MS. WILLIAMS: In my personal opinion, sir? No.

VOICE: Combine it with sanitation.

(Laughter)

MS. WILLIAMS: Combine it with sanitation. You guys are bad. Or I would have no problem in not being the co-chair of that and you could select another one. Because I'm the one I think that's spread on the most of them.

Where my interests would truly be, would be homeland security, and I believe you've appointed Greg, who's the employer representative, to co-chair. So, that is one of your most urgent ones. And silica, should you wish me to remain on that one, I could.

The other ones, I think, are totally at your pleasure. OTI was a combination. Greg was right in there, so there's an employer representative. I think we could restructure these if you were to spread it around the middle.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: David, then Joe, then Kevin.

MR. BUSH: Mr. Chairman, I want to go back through this. In my first explanation, I can tell from some of the comments, I wasn't clear. There are two things -- and I'm like Greg. We're new to this, so we didn't raise our hands right away to become committee chairs, and we didn't probably know what we were going to do. There are two things this committee reacts to.

One element, is OSHA initiatives that are brought to us and we have to react to rather quickly because sometimes they're fast track already, and the second thing are industry-critical issues that we bring up ourselves or that come through us through groups we represent.

My theory, again, was if we take these three divisions that Dan mentioned, health, safety and training, group all the potential issues that we may have to cover, whether they're brought to us by OSHA through need from the industry or a drastic problem in the industry, or they're brought through industry-critical initiatives from our own groups or ourselves, fit them under these topics.

Now, if each of these headings has one representative from each of the groups as a chair -- now, I would make one clarification point. I don't think it works to have three co-chairs.

I think each group should have a name, and I would suggest you appoint those names from our list so that health, safety and training all have equal representation from the group. We're still going to have people left over and some people will double up.

Then after that, that group should decide who the key chair is. There should be one point, one champion, or you won't get anything done with three chairs. A camel is a horse that was assembled by a committee.

Then under that, we as a group, as this whole body, can determine what we feel the issues are that are critical. I don't want to say we would, but we might choose not to list as a critical issue something the secretary asked us to, depending on work and our workload.

But you are only going to deal with so many of these. The only plus--and I think it is a big plus--by listing these topics under these headings, even if they're not active at the time nor are they a priority, is it keeps them in front of us and it tells the public we're concerned about them.

I go to Joe's point of yesterday, that the MSDs aren't necessarily off the screen, and we certainly don't want to deliver a message to our industry that we don't think it's important. But we aren't going to work on it. I mean, that's something that the group needs to decide what's critical. Again, I go back to the starting point.

We are going to react to OSHA initiatives, of which we have now, noise has been brought to us, silica is an issue, homeland security is an issue. We're going to have to react to those or we won't have any say in them. That's why we're here.

Then we're going to have issues that we feel are industry-critical that we bring up ourselves, or our groups bring to us that we're representing. So this is simply an outline that allows the group to work functionally and know what's out in front of us without having to worry about getting 15 reports, and if you don't get a report, being upset that you didn't, or feeling that, well, let's get rid of that issue. It leaves it there.

Your list could grow under here. You're only going to have certain items that are bulleted that you know you've got a workgroup working on.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Going along with your logic, and I'm trying to find a new way to deal with this to get away from the old way of just having 15 committees called at the so-called chairs' or co-chairs' whims or necessity, how about making active and inactive topics under your structure? Just as a thought.

Joe, you had your hand up.

MR. DURST: Well, I almost thought I had you turned around again for one fleeting moment there, then that word "inactive" came up. On your last comment, I wouldn't agree with the inactive thing.

If something becomes inactive, it ought to just disappear from the list unless OSHA or some other force, congressional mandate, epidemic in the workplace, brings it back around for this committee to deal with. I've almost lost my train of thought from what I was going to mention before.

But this was a question for the Solicitor representative. That is that this committee, in dealing with the issue of advice for the Assistant Secretary and the Secretary in construction, can do whatever it wants as long as it is legal, it's not improper and it's not immoral, in what the scope of this committee is supposed to do.

So if the committee wants to have 24 active things going, it can have 24 active things going, even with the criticism of Bruce, if DOC doesn't have the manpower to man that. I think the committee is smart enough not to do that.

But the issue now is 15, or doing something less than 15. But if you had an issue that he assigned someone to to his shop, but nothing went on between meetings on that issue, whether you would anticipate a 90-day window before something might happen, what difference does it make if that's what the committee wants to do?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I'd like to answer that. As Chairman, I think I can answer that quickly. The difference is, as Chairman, I don't want to be approached and say, you guys have had this issue on your workgroup for the last year and half and you haven't done a damn thing with it, from either an interested group or a group who's opposed to it. That would be the difference, in my estimation.

Is this an active committee or is it not? I'll go back to what I said yesterday. Excluding the Chairman, with everything being perfect with everybody's schedule, you've got 12 people to work on these workgroups. That's with perfect schedules, everybody being able to come in the two or three days before the meeting.

Now, how are you going to divvy up 15 topics and get work done on it? You're either going to have to prioritize or you're going to have to have an active/inactive list. I can't see any other way that you're going to do it. What's the sense of having workgroups? That was the question that was posed yesterday.

You have 15 workgroups and you come back with three reports, or four reports, or fix reports, or six reports. What about the other nine? That leaves you open to criticism that, regardless of what the issue is, that nothing is being done with it. And the reason nothing is being done with it, is we can't divide our time that much.

Kevin, I forgot you, then Manny.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Mr. Chairman, I would like to recommend that we elect as a group the top six or seven items that we feel are the highest priority, assign members to those workgroups and work on those workgroups. If you had six items, each person was assigned two committees -- I think being on two subcommittees is enough for anybody.

I can speak for myself, but I have a full-time job back at the office with fairly large responsibilities, as does everybody else. I would prefer to work on a subcommittee, get a product done and a recommendation made so we can move on, get that off, and get onto the next one. I don't disagree that there's other topics that are important.

I'm on the tower one. But if this group as a whole says, well, these are the six things and towers doesn't cut it, then we'll put that on hold and we'll go over to the next one. Once we get some of those off, then we'll go ahead and add it on.

I don't think that would preclude, if an issue comes up that's of a concern of any of the members, they can certainly bring any issue up to this board at any time and get it on the agenda for discussion and see if we want to reprioritize and bump one of those off and put that back on. But I do think that having 12 or 15 active is just way too many.

I also agree with having a list of 12 or 15, but if something remains inactive for a year, two years, or three years, there's not much of a justification for having it on that agenda, I don't think.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you, Kevin.

Manny?

MR. MEDEROS: I think we're getting closer, although Joe's three criteria might hinder us, immoral, illegal, and improper.

(Laughter)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Immoral.

MR. MEDEROS: I think we're getting down a little bit to it. I think that if the subcommittee doesn't meet -- and I don't think it's a matter of manning the thing and having 12 and 15. Some of these committees are put on us. We had the Assistant Secretary in here who said these are some priorities that he has.

Now, those committees have increased in their priority level. Kevin's been doing some work on tower erection. That was a big priority for us. I don't think that committee ought to be disbanded. They have work to do. However, the priority says that he may not be able to do it, but he has to participate in another program. I don't think his committee ought to be given away because of that, or done away with at this time.

Maybe we should look at a procedure, if you have a committee and you're not meeting, I think that's the responsibility of the committee's chair or the co-chairs to determine why they're not meeting. If they don't have anything to do, they ought to do away with the committee.

But we're being reactive now to what the Assistant Secretary wants to do, but we are a proactive committee in most cases and I don't think we ought to do away with that.

So, I believe that all of us have a responsibility to participate in these committees. I'm probably more guilty than anyone for not participating in the committee for various reasons, notwithstanding that. But I will participate. As far as balancing the committee, I think that is part of the Chair's responsibility, too.

When those committees are established and we're taking volunteers, I think everybody ought to be given an opportunity to volunteer on these committees as the co-chairs, one from one group, one from the other group.

I believe you're right, we need a good cross-reference, a good consensus of management, labor, and public on those committees to come back to this main committee to say this is what our position is, a consensus position, and be a true consensus position of that committee. So, I think this debate is going on and on, and maybe somebody ought to make a proposal on what they want the Chair to do.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Mr. Swanson?

MR. SWANSON: Yes. May I make some general comments here that I hope are helpful? One, you should remember that the entity that you were appointed to, and the only legal entity that's of any value here is this committee as a whole.

How the committee gets its work done -- historically we've broken up into workgroups. Manny, I think you just invented the term "subcommittee," because it looks like subcommittees. But it has no legal recognition at all. It is only the final product of this committee as a whole in its recommendation.

So if the committee wants to assign duties to individuals or to have five-man workgroups--five-person workgroups, excuse me, Marie and Jane and Tom--

(Laughter)

MR. SWANSON: It doesn't make any difference to OSHA, to DOC what format you use to get that work done. I was asked several moments ago, were we struggling with this to try and answer some request from DOC that we reduce the number of workgroups? The answer to that, is no. We don't care if this committee has 28 workgroups or 2.

I do buy into the concept that if you're going to be working on something, let's work on something. If we're going to draw the spotlights to us, then let's come out with a product.

Yes, you can say that we have on our agenda somewhere a topic that was hot two years ago and might be hot again, but right now we're not dealing with it.

The Assistant Secretary mentioned some things that are hot with him. That doesn't mean you have to have a workgroup on each and every one of them. He mentioned workplace violence. I don't think that's something that the construction industry has to be overly concerned with. He's talking about what we are going to do with 7-11s, postals, and whatever.

So, you should look at where we are going on our regulatory agenda and what your statutory duties are. We're going to come back to you and talk about those three health standards that are on the chute right now and on the way downstream. So you should think of some vehicle so that you can get the construction industry's input to the OSHA shops that are dealing with that.

If that's a workgroup that is going to meet to bring in the construction industry so Mr. Witt's staff can come and listen to what the construction industry has to say, yes, we can do that. If you want to appoint one person, that would be fine, too.

The Chairman, it seems to me, has the authority--and if counsel disagrees with me she can jump in here--to say ACCSH is going to have a delegated workgroup, have a meeting the 15th of July on this topic, and he can go ahead and have that meeting and he can designate who's going to be there for that meeting, and cause a discussion to be held under then the legal cover of this ACCSH.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: Could I recommend or make a motion to the effect that we recognize the three categories, and how you stack under those three categories would be determined just by our agreement together, consensus together, but that it would make it easier and more objective from a public standpoint?

Then if I'm interested, as a management representative, to take a comprehensive evaluation back to my group of employers, then I'm going to pick one in each one of those categories because I like that category situation. I like the safety, the health and the --

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Let me hold your move for a motion right now.

Tom?

MR. BRODERICK: Well, I have a comment, then an idea. I'm looking at my watch. It's quarter to 12:00. When I was nominated to this committee several years ago, we went for two years and we had two meetings and relatively little, if anything, happened on any of the workgroups.

I don't know exactly why that happened or what have you, but I don't think ACCSH suffered terribly. We didn't get a terrible reputation or anything. But in the last, what, six months, in the last year, things have really started to pick up since we've been allowed, or we've been pushed to have more regular meetings.

It was really exciting the first two days of this week, with the amount of activity that we got going. We've got some spark plugs here that make this happen.

I think this is the first meeting where we've really started to struggle with all these structural issues. That's kind of leading up to my idea, is to table this discussion. Let us have another, however several months until the next ACCSH meeting.

I know that a number of us have talked about the new workgroups and the activity that got started in the first couple of days of this week. Let's see how things go between now and the next full ACCSH meeting, and then take it up at that time.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Let me carry your proposal a step further. Let the Chair propose six topics for workgroups that are on the high priority list. Time is a'wasting. for this meeting. Let's get participation from this ACCSH committee for participation in those six workgroups.

It's not meant to deride anybody else's topics, it's not meant to say nobody can come back to the next ACCSH meeting and say I think we ought to expand this even further.

But in an effort to move this off center so that we can have a schedule for next time around for workgroup meetings on these hot topics that are out there right now, and I'm going to eliminate a couple that might be goring somebody's ox here, and I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait three months and give me a reason to bring it back. I want to propose silica, noise, homeland security, diversity/multilingual issues as a combined workgroup, OTI, and tower erection.

DR. SWEENEY: What about hexavalent chromium?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Now, the hexavalent chromium, what I'm going to recommend, is since the only thing people were looking at for a recommendation for that was to look at the studies that have already been accomplished by CPWR and others as what the exposure levels are for particular classes of workers -- that's what I thought, correct me if I'm wrong.

DR. SWEENEY: They came across --

CHAIRMAN KRUL: I thought that's what we proposed, was to have the Center and other folks who had worker exposure studies already done, that that was going to be made available to any workgroup that was formed here. If that's all that's going to be done, that could be done anyway without the formation of a workgroup. That's my take on it. Now -- go ahead.

DR. SWEENEY: I think what has to happen, is for anybody from this group to sit down with the standards and guidance folks and see what they actually have for construction, whether or not they -- they may have the CPWR stuff, but there may be a whole class of other kinds of exposures that they haven't thought of and they don't have data for that they need to be sending a contractor out to collect data on.

So maybe it doesn't have to be in a workgroup. But I'm concerned that that -- like silica, they may not have -- and they're on a faster track. They may not have a really -- they've thought some about construction, but not enough.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Because that's going to proposed rulemaking, I'll entertain that as the seventh for priority.

Now, my view, Tom, to go along with what you recommended, is as work gets completed on these seven prioritized issues, that any other issue that anybody else wants to bring up as a particular topic for a workgroup, that we do that. I mean, I just don't see us juggling any more than this. That's the Chairman's view.

Jim?

MR. AHERN: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to suggest that the co-chairs of each one of those groups report at the next ACCSH meeting as to the date of the final report by each one of those.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: That's fair.

Joe?

MR. DURST: Mr. Chairman, would you restate your list again, please, slowly?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It's not in any particular order. Silica, noise, homeland security, we have combined the diversified workforce and multilingual issues into one workgroup, the OTI, OSHA Training Institute, tower erection, because it's ongoing, and hexavalent chromium.

Now, there are current chairs and participants on this, and in the interest of time let's do two things. Let's look at those folks who sit on these and who want to sit on these. We want to open it up again to the management representatives who aren't on there.

You can deal with me, you can deal with Mr. Swanson and the Directorate. Tell us if you want to be on it. Steven, we'll be happy to add your name to those lists. I want you to think about coming up with your brief descriptions for your scopes. We're going to proceed on this, but I also like what Tom suggested. That is, let's give this some more thought.

We could sit here all afternoon and argue back and forth about what we should or shouldn't be doing. I think we're all tired. It's coming time to the end here and we need to do two more things.

First of all, let me make sure everybody here is happy before I do this. Joe, then Tom.

MR. DURST: Okay. Mr. Chairman, when I came back to this committee I was given a document called "Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health Procedures and Guidelines." I spent a whole afternoon going through this thing.

Paragraph 5 is workgroup meetings. It goes on and on and on about workgroups, and you appointing the workgroups and the chairpersons, and what they're supposed to do. So, I would suggest everybody find their copy of this thing and read it before the next meeting.

MS. SHORTALL: This would be something if you're going ahead. Have you moved that motion for the seven?

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Not yet. I'm still taking comments.

MS. SHORTALL: Okay. If you do, I just would point out there are no chairs yet for hexavalent chromium.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Our chairperson has left the room. That's what she gets for leaving.

MR. DURST: And Mr. Chairman, you haven't done anything out of line yet.

(Laughter)

MR. BRODERICK: I would just ask that, on the last one that you mentioned, the OTI, Joe and I had indicated that we would like to -- we didn't have a problem meeting with, and see good sense in meeting with and being a part of the OTI.

We still, though, would like to keep the certification and training as a separate heading, but we would continue to work with and meet at the same time, if that would be all right. So, as we did with multilingual/diversity, it would be OTI/certification training.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Yes. That was my point, is that we're not adding a separate one.

MR. BRODERICK: Right.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: No. There's no problem with that.

Does anybody have a problem with that, with combining those two?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: All right. At least for the present meeting, and this is subject to change at the next meeting, obviously, can I have a motion to accept those as they've been stated? I'll go through them one more time: silica, noise, homeland security, diversity/multilingual issues, OTI/certification and training, tower erection, and hexavalent chromium. Let the record show we have unanimously elected Marie Haring Sweeney to be the chairman of the hexavalent chromium workgroup.

MR. STRUDWICK: So moved.

VOICE: Second.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: It's been regularly moved and seconded. Before we get the vote on this motion, I want Ms. Haring Sweeney to know she has been elected chairman of the hexavalent chromium workgroup, since she left the room.

DR. SWEENEY: So I have noise, silica, and hexavalent chromium.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: All those in favor, please signify by the sign, aye.

(A chorus of ayes)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Any opposed?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. We'll work on this, going through at the next meeting.

Public Comment Period

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Two things. Let me ask anybody in the public. Nobody's come forward. Scott? MR. SCHNEIDER: I don't know if you're aware, but September 15 and 16 in Portland, Oregon, there's going to be a conference on Design for Safety. I'm hoping at some point that this will be an issue that this committee will take up, that OSHA will take up.

I think it's really the next quantum leap in terms of construction safety and health, is really figuring out ways to get the designers and the architects involved more. I know OSHA has talked about this in the past, but this is something I think we should move forward ahead on.

I would love to see OSHA working with this committee on developing some sort of guidance document on design for safety to push it onto the design community. So, anyway, the 15th and 16th of September. Anyone that's interested in information about this, please give me a call, send me an e-mail, and I'll send you the information. I'll give it to Bob and he can pass it along to the committee.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Scott, just for the record, would you indicate your affiliation?

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yes. The Laborers Health and Safety Fund of North America.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you.

David? Go ahead. I think the public is all done. Anybody else in the public wishing to comment?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Go ahead, David.

MR. BUSH: Mr. Chairman, I showed you yesterday, and it goes along with the Assistant Secretary's request, there is a one-page editorial from the April 14th issue of ENR on the work zone fatalities in highways. I'm just passing that around so all the committee members having something in case this comes up as an issue that we want to add.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Thank you, David. It's a huge issue. If we had more time -- I know Scott could speak very authoritatively on it. It's a gigantic issue with the laborers, as it is with the whole Heavy Highway Committee, and all highway construction. I think Jim Ahern had apprised us of this at his very first meeting.

Marie, did you have your hand up?

DR. SWEENEY: Just that NIOSH has been working on work zone safety, and there are a number of documents out there that we've just published, if you're interested in that.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Tom?

MR. BRODERICK: Scott speaking made me think of something. I don't want to make us all crazy with workgroups here. But I think a subject that we should look at in the future is the role of the architect design community in construction safety. There are people who are moving in that direction.

I think that we would be a logical conduit for information to OSHA from this movement that's taking place to get the architect design community more involved in construction safety. So at some point as we get a few of these knocked off, I think that's something that we really ought to think about

I think we would have a very zealous group. Very much like some of the workgroup meetings that we've had where there's been a lot of participation from non-ACCSH folks, I think we would have some hardworking people that would come forth and help us advance that.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Just as a suggestion, the American Institute of Architects is located right here in Northwest Washington. Maybe at a future meeting, Mr. Swanson, if we could --

MR. SWANSON: Yes, we'd be happy to have them come in and make a presentation to the committee. We'd be happy to see the committee get involved in this issue. I agree with Mr. Schneider that this is an issue of paramount importance to the construction industry and the safety of workers. OSHA is going to have someone on the panel in Portland next September. It's an area where we kind of are wearing handcuffs, though.

The Act allows us to act only on those who are engaged in construction. The case law so far has designed engineers and architects not engaged in construction, but it doesn't stop us from giving them a forum to speak.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: I am going to bring you a document that was created through the Common Ground Alliance that has a tremendously valuable structure for dealing with damage prevention and all of the issues combined.

When you get that document--and everybody's going to get a copy, and I've already made arrangements to have those copies made--you'll see that it included all of the stakeholders. It's really a model for addressing multiple issues.

So, I think you'll appreciate when you see how it's structured just exactly what we've been talking about for the last three hours, and including all of the stakeholders. So, I'll have that to you within a couple of weeks.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. We have the next meeting, which never gets to be a firm date. But is there any reason to look ahead at when the next possible meeting may be? Will it be by notice?

MR. SWANSON: We can handle that any way the committee wishes to, and the Chair wishes to. If you want to talk about what dates right now are not available and give us some sense, we'll try and work with the possibles.

If Tom's watch is pressing us all, you can simply e-mail us some dates as to what would be your choice, your options, and we'll try and coordinate that for you.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Sarah reminded me, it's the Chair's duty to set a date. But knowing that this next three-month period is going to fall right in the middle of vacations and everybody else's schedule which always gets to be a circus anyway trying to establish these dates, everybody's on the e-mail list, as I understand it, and I think that would probably be the best way to go, is to look at the availability. I don't think we're looking at out of town, right?

MR. SWANSON: No one has discussed out of town. We did the one in Chicago in February, so this one should probably be here.

What is the NSC restriction? What dates are they taking out? I think they're through by the 12th, are they not?

DR. SWEENEY: I'm out that week of September.

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Okay. Why don't we do this. Sarah reminded me of something, too. If we're looking at August/September for the next meeting, we're going to be into the last month of the year for the final meeting of the year, and that's always a difficult time, not only with weather, but with the availability of rooms in this town, the availability of meeting space here at the Department.

Why don't we look, and I know it's difficult to look that far in advance, but let's look at the potential for the next two meetings. We'll do that via e-mail and be reminded through the Directorate of that forthcoming.

Any other business anybody wants to bring before the committee?

(No response)

CHAIRMAN KRUL: Hearing none, I'd like to thank Bruce Swanson, the people at the Directorate, Noah Connell, Mike Bouchet, Steve Witt, Steve Cloutier especially for his assistance in putting this together, thank the Solicitor, the Recorders, everybody here on staff for their help and assistance, Camille Villanova, and Vaneta Chatmon, who handles the arrangements for travel, without whom nobody could get here.

But thank you, one and all. Thanks to all. Thanks to the public. We're adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m. the meeting was concluded.)