United States Department of Labor
Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health
Washington, DC

Volume I of II
Thursday, December 8, 2005

US Department Of Labor Room N3437-A/B/C
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.

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The hearing was convened pursuant to notice at 8:40 a.m., DAN MURPHY, Acting Chairman, presiding.

 

P R E S E N T

 

Acting Chair

Dan Murphy
Vice Present
Zurich North America

Employee Representatives

Mr. Frank Migliaccio, JR.
Executive Director, Safety & Health
International Association Of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental & Reinforcing Iron Workers

Mr. Scott Schneider, CIH
Director, Safety & Health
Laborers' Health And Safety Fund Of North America

Mr. Thomas L. Kavicky
Safety Director/Special Assistant To The President
Chicago Regional Council Of Carpenters

Employer Representatives

Mr. Michael J. Thibodeaux
Director, Risk Management
Lennar Corporation

Mr. Greg Strudwick
President
Greg Strudwick & Associates, Inc.

Mr. Linwood O. Smith
Vice President, Risk Management & Safety
T. A. Loving Company

State Representative

Mr. Kevin D. Beauregard
Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Director
Division Of Occupational Safety & Health
North Carolina Department Of Labor

Public Representatives

Mr. Thomas A. Broderick
Executive Director
Construction Safety Council

Mr. Michael W. Hayslip
President/Owner
National Excavation & Safety Training Institute

Designated Federal Officer

Mr. Russell B. Swanson
Director, Directorate Of Construction
U.S. Department Of Labor - OSHA

Committee Contacts

Mr. Stew Burkhammer, P.E., CSP
Director, Office Of Construction Service
Directorate Of Construction

Mr. Michael M.X. Buchet
Office Of Construction Services
Directorate Of Construction

Ms. Sarah Shortall
ACCSH Counsel
Office Of The Solicitor
U.S. Department Of Labor

P R O C E E D I N G S

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We are going to go ahead and start the meeting. Prior to introductions, I would like to just take a few minutes to make a couple of announcements, so everyone is aware of what needs to happen should there be an emergency.

If there is some sort of fire or that type of threat within the building, if you go out through the exits, as you can see clearly marked, and on either side of the elevator bench, you will see a stairwell with an exit. That will take you down to the first floor, and then you can go out either side of the building.

I was informed this morning that if there should be a terrorist situation, someone from the directorate will take us in the building to a shelter. So should that happen, Bruce or Michael or someone will step forward and be sure that we get to where we need to be.

What I'd like to do first this morning is self-introductions. My name is Dan Murphy. I'm the acting chair today for Mr. Krul. I'm with Zurich North America, their construction division, and I'd like to go to the right.

MR. SWANSON: I'm Bruce Swanson. I'm from the Directorate of Construction and I am the designated Federal official for this group.

MR. HAYSLIP: Mike Hayslip with NESTI.

MR. KAVICKY: Tom Kavicky, employee rep for the Carpenters' Union.

MR. THIBODEAUX: Mike Thibodeaux, Lennar Corporation.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Frank Migliaccio with the Iron Workers and employee representative.

MR. BRODERICK: Tom Broderick, Construction Safety Council, public representative.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Scott Schneider with the Laborers' National Union, employee representative.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Kevin Beauregard with the North Carolina Department of Labor, state representative.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick, Greg Strudwick & Associates in NUCA, a employer representative.

MS. SARAH SHORTALL: Sarah Shortall, Office of the Solicitor, ACCSH Counsel.

(Whereupon, there were public introductions.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much. If the committee members would take a look, you have an agenda in your portfolio, and we have to make a few minor changes to the agenda, just so you're aware.

After Mr. Snare's comments, you will notice that there was a break on the agenda. We are going to not break at that point so that we have time between two of the presentations to set up equipment. So the break will between 10:45, somewhere around 10:45 or 10:30, and that will give the folks that are presenting to us this morning the opportunity to set up their equipment for their presentations.

As many committee members that I've spoken to earlier this morning found out when you tried to get into the building, you realized that your badges were expired. I'm going to send around a list of all the committee members with all your personal, your work information, and what we need you to do is make sure that is correct, and also put the badge expiration on this sheet under your name so we know who has to get a new badge, so if you would be so kind.

I would also like to let you know that Steve Wilshire will not be here today. He sent us an email this morning letting us know that he had something come up that he couldn't attend the meeting. So Steven won't be here with us for the next couple of days. And I think that's all of the announcements.

MR. SWANSON: Yes, I'm sorry. Let me add to that list, Mr. Chairman. I was told that Dr. Kohler from NIOSH will not be able to join us, and I strongly suspect that Mr. Rhoten will not be joining us today, so.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you.

MR. SWANSON: You have a question as to whether Linwood will be here or not? Linwood said he would be here. He had a hip replacement recently, and reading our weather reports, I didn't hear much conviction in his voice when he said he was looking forward to being in D.C. But he said he would be here.

Why don't we see if the committee has something they would like to get out of the way before the Assistant Secretary shows up. We got 15 minutes. I think everyone would appreciate if we could move lively through the agenda and late in the day see whether or not those that have to travel, because some people might wish to depart early.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: We can do the work group report right now.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. Let's go ahead and do that and we'll move it.

WORK GROUP REPORT, TRENCHING

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick, Greg Strudwick & Associates. The Trenching Work Group met yesterday, or actually did meet yesterday morning. Originally we thought we were going to meet on Tuesday. But we met yesterday morning and it was very well attended, and we've met actually four times in this annual period, starting in February.

Then we met again in June and we met again in August, the work group, in Chicago, and what you're going to see this morning is a representation of what we viewed in August in Chicago that we thought was important enough to recommend that it be viewed by the entire ACCSH work committee. So I think you're going to enjoy that very much.

We have, over the past two or three years, developed a numerous list of action items since 2003 to address a change in the fatalities count in the trenching industry. So I feel like we've made an awful lot of progress.

We, Scott and I together, went through those line-item action items, and we identified those we had accomplished and we identified some of the recommendations that we had made a year ago that had been accomplished.

Scott has a list of the action items that we are going to proceed with, but without boring a lot of you, because a lot of you have seen a lot of the information we have. The Directorate has created a numerous list of tools, along with NIOSH and along with what I would consider stakeholders, partners, in our effort that including Tom, Mr. Broderick, and his website where we can go and look at all of that information and use what is applicable to whatever type of industry effort we're making in excavation. It's fairly incredible.

So what I'm going to do is defer to my friend and co-chair, Mr. Schneider, to give you an overview of the ten action items that we're going to proceed with, including one of the last ones that will be a rewrite of the recommendations that we propose to the ACCSH committee about a year ago, and most of those have been accomplished. So, Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Okay. Thank you, Greg. You know we had a pretty productive meeting yesterday. Of course one of the big successes has been the trench quick card that OSHA developed and I think over 150,000 have been distributed so far, something on that order of magnitude.

One of the action items we have is we have also drafted a card. The OSHA card is geared towards employees. What we did was we drafted something equivalent to that which could either be a card or a fact sheet, specifically geared towards employers to sort of raise employer awareness about what they need to do and why.

We are very close to finalizing the language on that. We're going to make some minor revisions, and I expect by the end of this month, we'll have a final draft out, reviewed and then back to the agency, which we will give to the agency to publish or to consider for publication.

The second thing is we began at our last meeting looking at the idea of developing best practice guides, taking really innovative solutions, ways to encourage and increase the compliance with the trenching rules, such as what happened in Cobb County and also other innovative solutions and developing a single page best practice guide that explains to people what people were doing, where they can get more information, and why it worked.

What we want to do is we're going to be developing a list of best practice guides that we want to draft and getting various members of our subgroup to volunteer to draft them. Then we're going to be figuring out how we're going to host that. We're going to put it up on the web certainly and I'm sure it will be on Tom Broderick's website, where we have a repository of trenching safety information.

But one other idea we have talked about is I've talked with OSHA and with Greg about maybe doing this as part of the OSHA, NUCA Alliance, getting it on the OSHA web page through the alliance process as another venue for people to get access to this information. So we have two of these drafted, and we're going to continue to draft more and then get them up on the web.

The third thing is one of our recommendations, original recommendations from a year ago, was that we do a lot of outreach to people that we traditionally would not think of as doing outreach to. OSHA has sent letters and CD-ROMs and also posters and quick cards to a couple of hundred contractors. I think it was about 400 contractors so far, and I know they're going to be doing another mailing.

What we're going to do is we're going to develop a list of additional folks to send materials to which would include municipalities, building inspectors, the fire and rescue folks, police, one-call folks, the Common Ground Alliance, so we're going to be developing a list of contacts for OSHA to do further outreach beyond the immediate contractor community.

We will probably have to draft the letter a little bit differently but I think it will be a very important outreach effort.

Fourth, or next, there have been a number of groups that got Harwood grants this year to develop training materials on trench safety, including NUCA and the Construction Safety Council. So those materials are being finished now over the next few months, so we felt it was important to get those materials up on the web through Tom's website, perhaps through OSHA's website, through links to get those out to as many people as possible, make them widely available. That's another goal that we have over the next few months.

Fifth thing was at the last few meetings, I passed around various things that we call PEST sheets, photo enforcement safety tip sheets. Basically it shows pictures of unsafe job sites and says if you see this, then here is the phone number for the local area office. We want you to make sure that they know about this, so they can get out there. That's one way of increasing enforcement effort on those sites that are having serious problems.

By next month I expect those PEST sheets will be up on our website, so I'll send information out to everybody on the committee and we can distributing it widely so people can download those for use.

Speed Shore, a company that makes shoring, has already been using something equivalent to this in training Texas DOT workers and found that it was very helpful.

Our sixth item, Matt Gillen from NIOSH showed us some checklists that he had gotten from the health and safety authority in Ireland. These checklists basically use pictograms instead of text for people to audit their job sites, to go around and see if various safety features were present and if they were required. So one of our action items was to develop a checklist -- yeah, Greg is holding it up now -- and we'll pass one of them around -- so one of our action items was to develop sort of a safety checklist for trenching, using pictograms that we could develop and put on a quick card so people could have a checklist quick card as well. NUCA has volunteered to do that.

Seventh action item was we're going to look at the compliance directive. One of our recommendations from a year ago was that they revise the compliance directive for trenching, so Kevin Beauregard from North Carolina OSHA has volunteered to look at the compliance directive and read it over and make some recommendations as to how it needs to be updated or if it needs to be updated.

Next recommendation was to look at the 2004 recommendations we made a year ago and update them. As Greg said I think we've accomplished several of them, and there are several that we still need to work on. So Greg will be revising those.

And our last recommendation is Emmett Russell has offered to look at and get information on the OSHA special emphasis program on trenching to find out what they have done, what the current activity is under that special emphasis program.

So those are our action items over the next couple of months between now and our next ACCSH meeting.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Scott, one point that I notice. You kept referring to Tom Broderick website. I think we should provide that website.

MR. BRODERICK: It's www.buildsafe.org.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you. Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: To kind of summarize, Scott, in our efforts, and, Tom, it has certainly been an enjoyable activity to meet with so many people that were so interested in correcting some of the problems that we have in our trenching industry and the effort that each one is making is incredible.

Part of the reason that what we have presented here this morning that we thought all of you would enjoy looking at is because we recognize that we're going beyond the supervision and actually the management side and looking more at who creates the environment as far as training and equipment is concerned.

To kind of summarize, we spent two years or so trying to go and identify the root cause of trench fatalities, whether that be part of the equipment involved or the trench itself, and we're starting to focus now on some of the things that I think will make a definite improvement and part of that is to organize a fact sheet on where the training is and how it is provided and how comprehensive it is for the people that are actually running the machines and creating the environment.

So to all of you that worked on the committee and to all of you with the efforts, I thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your report. I had the opportunity to sit on that work group and lots of good things are happening, and we certainly hope that will result in far less fatalities and serious injuries in the trenching business.

At this point, it's with great pleasure I get the opportunity to introduce the Acting Assistant Secretary for OSHA, Jonathan Snare. He is going to spend a few moments with us this morning, giving us some information on what's going on in OSHA. So, Jonathan, thank you very much for being here.

REMARKS

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Good morning, everybody.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Good morning.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: It's my pleasure to be here today and to give you a brief overview of OSHA's activities. But first of all, I'd like to thank everybody on the committee for your hard work to improve safety and health in the construction industry, obviously a big focus of the agency continually and will continue to be a focus of our efforts, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute.

But, again, I just wanted to tell you that as we wanted to thank you for your hard work, and we hope to continue our productive, I believe, relationship with this committee and the ongoing work that you've done, the recommendations that you've done in a number of areas.

It really, in my view, the advisory committees -- we have a number of them -- the agency does -- they provide an essential role for OSHA. They provide advice. They provide different perspectives on a number of issues that we work for, and, again, I think they really help us and help the agency in our cause and in our mission in promoting workplace safety and health.

Let me, just to start off, give you a brief overview of some of the numbers and the facts in the recent, sort of BLS data releases that have happened since the time we last met at the end of June.

First of all, the injury and illness data that was released by BLS on November 17th, I think they show some good trends. Injury and illness rates, and in construction as well, decreased. The latest data shows a hundred thousand fewer injuries and illnesses in 2004 as compared to 2003.

Injuries and illnesses in construction declined significantly from 6.4 cases per 100 full-time workers, from 6.8 cases in 2003. The overall rate of injury and illnesses declined to 4.8 cases per 100 workers from five case in 2003, and there were declines in almost every area in injury and illnesses in the 2004 data as compared to the 2003 data.

Looking at the construction numbers in particular, I think there are some other high points. Injury and illnesses were down nine percent in heavy and civil engineering construction and among foundation structure and building exterior contractors. Injury and illnesses were also down seven percent among specialty trade contractors and building finishing contractors.

Now let's look at the 2004 fatality data. The fatality rates over the past three years are at historic lows. There was obviously an increase in the fatality data that was released by BLS in August of this year. The construction industry fatalities recorded 1,224 in 2004, which is obviously an increase over 2003.

And, again, the agency has been making progress in making workplaces safer and reducing injuries and illnesses. Fatalities are at historic lows, but we have work ahead of us to reduce the number of fatalities.

I'm confident that the agency can meet this challenge and we will find ways and look at a number of ways to reduce these numbers and the agency will continue to take the necessary steps to do so. The work that you're doing on this advisory committee can be part of that effort.

What I'd like to do beyond addressing sort of these initial numbers is provide you an overview of the agency's activities since the time we last met. But before we get into that, I'd like to describe the agency's role in the response to the hurricanes and our efforts in what will turn out to be one of the largest reconstruction projects in this nation's history, and I know that's of interest to many of you on this committee.

As many of you may know, OSHA was created 34 years ago to provide for and ensure and promote safety and health of America's workers. Everybody knows that OSHA's jurisdiction is wide ranging and that we are on factory floors, ditches, highways, hospitals, nursing homes, work sites of every description, construction sties, obviously. Seven million work sites in this country are under OSHA jurisdiction, and we're there to promote this ongoing mission.

But we're also there at those same work sites at hospitals when they're struggling with casualties from some disaster like a hurricane or what happened at 9/11, when the ditches are flooded, when the highways are blocked by debris, and when the construction site is the World Trade Center, like where we were in the Fall of 2001 and 2002, at a 16.5 acre site, or now the challenge we're facing with the hurricanes, 90,000 square miles across three states with hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as Florida with Hurricane Wilma.

We are currently working, as I mentioned, on one of the largest reconstruction efforts, and as many of you who are involved in the safety and health industry, you can appreciate the challenge that we're facing. We're doing everything in our power, the agency, to make sure that this reconstruction effort is the safest this nation has ever seen, and with your committee's help, we can continue to do so.

You're going to get a detailed report this afternoon from Ruth McCully, John Ferris and Dave Ippolito about our emergency preparedness efforts and our response to the hurricanes, and they will go over with you both our sort of OSHA's traditional role in hurricane response as well as our important role with the activation of the Workers Safety and Health Annex under the National Response Plan.

We will be asking this committee for feedback on what you've seen or heard about OSHA's efforts on the hurricane recovery and your comments are welcome.

I also understand and I know when I came in here this morning, you were giving Scott an overview of one of the work groups that met over the course of last several days, and I'll be looking forward to getting some more detailed reports from Bruce on the ongoing discussions and efforts that you all have been doing over the past couple of days.

Let me now just sort of give you, moving beyond the work that we're doing on the hurricane, a summary of our recent activities since we last met, and as we do, and as I did in my presentation in June and I've done in a number of public forums, we do it sort of in the framework of our balanced approach which includes our fair and effective and strong enforcement program, our outreach, compliance assistance, and training efforts, and, third, our cooperative programs.

Again, in our view, the balanced approach is working, and you can definitely see that by the numbers, the recent trends in the injury and illness and the fatality rates which are at historic lows.

Let me say a brief word about our outreach and compliance assistance efforts. We use a number of resources to communicate with a variety of audiences. For example, in the Harwood training grants they awarded this year, we awarded 10.3 million to labor unions, community colleges, nonprofit organizations.

A number of you in this room received them. Tom, I know your organization received a grant, and we took nearly half those funds this year, about five million, and marked them for disaster response and recovery and training grants, and they provided critical health and safety training for workers engaged in disaster response, cleanup and rebuilding efforts across the Gulf state regions.

Much of that recovery work involves heavy equipment, hazardous situations where the training that these grants provide will enable the workers to do their jobs more safely.

The grants will help train workers to avoid hazards relating to electrical work, construction tools, slips, trips and falls, mold, water contamination, respiratory, chemical and biological hazards, animal and insect bits.

You've heard or you will hear today about some of the grant recipients have had some challenges and some issues in convincing employers to give their workers time off for that training, and we look forward to any views, any thoughts that you have with respect to that effort.

Among the other grants that we gave in the Harwood this year, we awarded $200,000 to the organization of Hispanic contractors in Irving, Texas. This organization is going to use the training grants to develop bilingual materials for the construction industry to address hazards and falls, electrocution caught-in hazards and struck-by hazards.

Some of the products that they're planning through this program includes an interactive computer-based program for classroom, an independent study, a Power Point picture-based classroom materials, and a pocket digest listing industry standards and definition.

This is just an example of what one of the recipients can do through this program, and, again, an example of some of what the recipients will be doing with the hurricane-related grants, which I think are going to have a positive effect in helping us in our overall reconstruction effort.

One of the guidance products that we're proud about here at the agency is our quick cards. I know I talked a little bit about it when we met here in June, and I just want to give you sort of an overview of some of the other accomplishments we've had in this area.

They have been very popular, as many of you may know, because you were involved in this effort, with the industry, with the trades, and with employees, reminding everyone and providing quick and handy advice on addressing a number of hazards. In the construction industry in particular, we produced thousands of these cards in English and Spanish and we've had requests to translate them into other languages in certain industries as well.

We printed and shipped 20,000 quick cards in general construction hazards, 50,000 cards in fall protection, scaffolding support, trenching, and person protective equipment in construction. We've produced 70,000 cards in work zone traffic safety and demolition and cleanup, 100,000 cards in heat stress and thousands more in a number of other areas including electrical safety, crane safety and lead in construction.

We're also working on a new quick card for working safely at night which offers guidance on high visibility clothing, and watching to see tripping hazards and inspecting equipment in work areas before dark.

I will tell you with respect to my experience with these quick cards recently. I went to the hurricane zones in the Gulf States in early November, Alabama, Mississippi and New Orleans, and I also had the pleasure to meet with the volunteers from a number of state plan states and OSHA employees who were being rotated in there -- they're all volunteers -- for two week stints to help on the reconstruction effort.

A number of the quick cards and other materials, some of which again this committee provided assistance and advice in helping us to develop, were very well received. I had discussions with our staff before they went out on their deployment, and they had a lot of positive things to say about what they had encountered out on their daily work in this important effort about distributing these materials, the quick cards and some of the other guidance products and other documents.

Each of our offices we deploy to Mississippi and Alabama from Mobile, at least when I was there, and then in New Orleans, we've shifted our efforts from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, and we have a temporary site in New Orleans, and we deploy out people from that site.

We have all sorts of these materials again, these quick cards, the other guidance documents, which our people are going out and using in the interventions that we're working with. Right now we're sort of in the debris removal stage, and the reconstruction efforts are beginning in differing stages in a number of these areas.

There is obviously significant amount of work to do, and particular when I was there in New Orleans, there are still vast areas of the city where there wasn't even power. And I toured the area near the 17th Street levy, I guess, is where the initial flooding had taken place, and the challenge on the construction because there was an entire neighborhood of homes completely destroyed, and what's going to happen there and obviously there's going to be reconstruction which is of interest to many of you here. But there's going to be a significant challenge to get that place back to normal operation.

Just a few other points on our compliance assistance efforts. We're continuing to add and build up our training programs in a variety of other ways. Obviously at the OSHA Training Institute, the OSHA education centers, and our outreach training program. We have been building up that program over the past few years.

In Fiscal Year '05, over 300,000 individuals were trained in general industry and construction through the outreach training program, and we're going to continue to build that.

We're also, just generally, looking at a number of ways to increase and build up the OSHA's website, which I think has had a positive effect and provides a wide variety of resources, both in construction as well as every other area that OSHA has jurisdiction over and allows us to communicate our resources and our message out to the regulated community.

Let me talk for a few words about the next element of our balanced approach which our enforcement program. It's really the pillar of our balanced approach in some ways. In Fiscal Year 2005, OSHA conducted 38,700 inspections, which is a little over a thousand more than we initially projected in plan.

Federal OSHA conducted 22,000 inspections in the construction industry, and there were more than $38 million in proposed penalties in this industry.

Our inspection targeting efforts including national and local emphasis programs targeted industries and our enhanced enforcement program, which I'll mention just in a minute, but I'd like to briefly digress and just give the committee an overview, even though it was not in the construction area, of our activities with respect to the British Petroleum.

A lot of this happened after we last met in June, but I think it's a good example of some of our approaches to enforcement. Obviously everyone here is familiar with the British Petroleum tragedy that took place on March 24th. Fifteen employees, all contractors -- they were not actually direct employees of British Petroleum -- were killed, about 170 were injured, and on the day of that accident, we made a commitment to root out the cause and find out what happened.

We have taken significant action. We had a team on the ground the day of the accident. We had people that we brought in, experts on process safety management, from our national office here to work with our regional administrator, to help assist in the investigation.

In September, we levied the largest fine this agency has ever issued, 21 million, and we entered into a settlement agreement with British Petroleum, where there were significant agreements that British Petroleum agreed to, to allow additional oversight and review of their procedures and mechanisms to prevent this type of incident from taking place.

We're going to monitor the company closely, monitor the site closely. We have a number of rights to do so in this very strong settlement agreement and to lead to change to prevent this type of thing from happening again.

A few other elements in our enforcement effort are national in emphasis and national and local enforcement in emphasis programs. We have five national emphasis programs currently in amputations, lead and silica as well as trenching which is obviously crucial to our efforts.

In the construction industry, we have approximately 140 local emphasis programs developed by our regional and area offices, and they focus in a number of areas and emerging areas, including quite a few in the construction industry or construction-related areas. About 20,000 of our overall number of inspections each year arise from or derive from these emphasis programs.

We also have a number of targeted industries that we focus on in our enforcement program, looking a specific and particular industries. In the construction field that included residential construction, bridge construction, masonry restoration, tunneling and underground construction, mobile cranes, and a number of others.

We're also continuing a program that was developed relatively recently, the enhanced enforcement program, which zeroes in and focuses on employers with the largest and gravest violations who, in our judgment, failed to take their safety, health obligation seriously.

In this past fiscal year, 2005, we conducted more than 640 inspections under the program. About half were in construction, and about 80 percent of those involved a fatality.

Again, as a result of our enforcement efforts, combined with some of the other elements in the compliance assistance efforts and continuing on with this balanced approach, I think we're going to see continued improvements in workplace safety and health in all areas including in construction.

Let me just say a few words about the agency's budget, and I know we talked a little bit about it when I was here in June. The President proposed a budget in Fiscal Year '06 for the agency at about 467 million, which is going to enable us to continue our mission. That included two separate one-million-dollar increases for compliance assistance as well as the OSHA data initiative.

Currently, the Senate has completed action on the fiscal year appropriation. As many of you may know, the House rejected the conference report. It happened right before Thanksgiving. The Congress is back in session. The House is here this week, and the Senate, I believe, comes back into session next week, and we're obviously monitoring that situation closely.

The conference report that was rejected provided for OSHA's budget at 477 million which is above the initial request. There is going to conferees appointed by the Speaker to reopen the conference and try to address a number of the issues in the Labor HHS Bill which we'll just wait and see. We're going to be monitoring the situation closely as to what happens over the next couple of weeks.

Let me say a few words about our regulatory agenda. We're continuing to work on the priorities and items in our agenda that was published. The latest one was published, I think, October 17th or October 18th, and we've got a number of efforts and topics of interest to the construction industry, working again on the Cranes and Derrick Standard, which I know you're going to have a more detailed report, I think, later this afternoon.

We're looking at the proposed rule on confined spaces in construction. We've got ongoing rulemaking activities in the rollover protection structures, which I know you had a work group, I guess, in discussion about this yesterday.

We're working on hexavalient chromium, which is a court-ordered rulemaking which we're under an obligation to file a final report or submit a final rule in January.

A number of other efforts that we are working on, some of which I think are of interest to this committee, the electrical power transmission and distribution rule which we proposed in June, and now the deadlines, in terms of the submittal and hearing, we pushed that back and I'm not sure of the date of the hearing -- I think it's in early '06 -- general working condition in shipyards and assigned protection factors, a number of other items on our reg agenda that we're working through.

I understand that you're going to be getting an update later today from NOA on the construction safety standards and, again, as I mentioned on the cranes and derricks, Keith Goddard will be giving you an economic analysis update as to where we are on that.

In addition to the standards, projects that we're working on, have been working on, will continue in this new fiscal year. We're working on a number of guidance materials, updating or producing guidance materials in a number of areas, hazard communication, PPE for emergency responders, mold and building-related illnesses, avian flu and a number of others.

We're looking to produce new guidance materials in nanotechnology and a number of other emerging areas. So that's going to be a continued focus of our standards and guidance department.

Our cooperative and voluntary programs which is the last element in our balanced approach is going to be also receiving a continued focus. We're going to continue to expand all of our programs, including VPP, as well as our partnership in alliance programs, and I think they will have a positive effect on our bottom line.

Again, I'd like to thank you for your efforts and your hard work. As I mentioned at the outset, the role of advisory committees is important and helpful and crucial for us as an agency in providing different perspectives, different views, advice on a number of these important areas; and, again, I think in particular with construction, it has been an area that this agency has had continued focus over the past number of years.

It's an area that provides us challenges and your advice on the quick cards and a number of other programs have helped us and will continue to help us, and I look forward to some of the work that you all have been doing here this week and you will be doing, depending on the weather, tonight and tomorrow over the next two days. I'll be happy to address and take a number of questions. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much. If there is a question for Jonathan, please be sure to identify yourself prior to asking the question, and, Linwood, would you just take a moment and do a self introduction.

MR. SMITH: Thank you. Linwood Smith, and I apologize for being late. I had hip surgery just a few weeks ago, and I don't move too fast anymore or right now. But I apologize for being late and I'm employer rep, representing AGC.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Linwood. Frank.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Frank Migliaccio. Mr. Snare, I'd like to welcome you here today, and appreciate you taking away from your busy schedule to address this committee.

I'm with the ironworkers and we have a few concerns. I'd like to see where we are on those concerns, and it has to do with Subpart R, and I imagine Noah will speak about some this afternoon.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: But what I was wondering is you recall we had a meeting with you personally in June of last year.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: And we had a couple areas we addressed, shear connectors and the planking stages there.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: And a third article that was added at that time was the slippery painted surface?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: And the first two shear connector and planking, have you moved forward on this at all? Is anything coming about, or are we waiting for the actual -- I know you're in temporary, but are we waiting for a director?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: No. What I can tell you is we have had a number of discussions since we met in June, and I've talked to a number of individuals that were with you as well and have had discussions within the agency to look at all of the issues raised by the concern that you raised at the meeting.

I'll tell you I've had a number of discussions over the last few weeks about sort of taking the next steps and we're in the process of determining sort of our final process. It's a decision I am in the position as acting and employee empowered to make the necessary decisions that we have to make. Obviously there's going to be a new assistant secretary coming in and confirm, but the timing is not part of relating to that.

There have obviously been competing issues and competing priorities in terms of the front office's decision-making process, but I've been looking at the issue closely and in particular have been looking at it closely the last few weeks. I can't give you an answer now, but I will tell you directly that I have been involved in a number of discussions to determine the best course of action.

And, again, just like a number of issues, we have competing resources and demands that we focus on different issues at different times. For example in September, probably starting in late August, probably the bulk of my focus was on sort of the hurricanes and it's a unique and unprecedented situation.

In fact if any of you follow the hexavalient chromium rulemaking closely, you know that in our most recent filing there are some delays and part of the reason is because of the department's and agency's efforts on the hurricane. I'm just using that as an example of some of the issues and challenges we've been facing this fall that have been in some respects unprecedented in terms of the hurricane.

We are working on this closely and I have been directly involved, just in the last couple of weeks trying to get this issue resolved frankly.

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Secretary, you understate your progress, if I may. Mr. Migliaccio's boss wrote you a letter on this same subject, and you have a draft that is being reviewed elsewhere in this building and will be coming back to Mr. Hunt sometime.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Right. And I've seen the draft. We're working through that as well. I mean there's a number of issues we're -- but I've been, like I said, we've been working closely to try to get decisions made and get this issue resolved.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Also on the third article we addressed that day was on the slippery surfaces on the paint, and I know we have a problem with the testing. They just really haven't come up with a testing mechanism yet.

But I have a letter here from International Paints. It was sent on to me that was faxed to you October 31st, and I was wondering if anything has been looked into their new coatings that will meet the requirements.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Yeah, I know that letter came in. I mean you all raised, if I'm remembering correctly, you acknowledged the issues that we're all dealing with, the lack of the testing equipment. There's no testing equipment. We don't foresee it in the near future and the concerns about the products as well that would meet the painting requirements, the coatings.

As I recall, the issues you raised, you had suggested a delay if I'm recalling --

MR. MIGLIACCIO: That's correct. It was prior to receiving this letter just the other day. I was wondering --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Yeah. We've seen the letter. I think we have a draft response, and we basically are working through the final decision on that, and we're working through some internal departmental issues here to get it, but it's going to be resolved quickly.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you. Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I'm Scott Schneider with the Laborers. Thank you very much for coming today.

I had a couple of questions. One of them is you talk a lot about the Gulf and the work you're doing there, and I know it's an enormous effort. What is happening with enforcement in the Gulf, in terms of going out and -- I mean we see a lot of these reports. I haven't been down there. Tom just came back from that area, but a lot of reports about people that aren't being paid, that aren't being trained, aren't being given the proper equipment to do this kind of work, particularly the demolition and cleanup work.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Let me address that sort of several ways based on what I know and what I've briefed and what I saw. Obviously in the counties that were declared disaster areas, the agency had, under our emergency management plan, and a number of other policies, we are doing technical assistance. Although we are investigating, and there have been a number of fatalities and complaints, we are investigating and doing the necessary enforcement. But we are providing technical assistance and interventions which are the bottom line having a positive effect.

If you look at the statistics, and I'm briefed on this several times a week in terms of the number of interventions, the number of fatalities and injuries that were prevented by the work that our people are doing, it is remarkable and significant.

Again, we have a full blown plan of our people and other from state plan states and the number from North Carolina, Kevin, as you know, that are down there. I met a number -- actually there were people from North Caroline, I think, in Mobile when I was there on November 8th, and so we're engaged in, I believe, a series of productive effort to do that.

Now in the areas where the damage was less and less severe and it's back sort of into a normal operations, there's going to be just like we did in 2004, where we had the same approach where we were providing technical assistance. The first week when things have been completely destroyed, we're down there trying to help the people and get the power restored and get basic infrastructure in place.

Then there's going to be a transition when you're back into a normal situation where you're going to transition back into enforcement, and obviously that's what happened in 2004 in Florida after the four hurricanes over a certain time period.

We're obviously looking into that now and how we're going to do a transition and we're having discussions about that currently because the situation in Alabama where I was the first day I was there, is very different from the situation in Mississippi, particularly.

And, Tom, I don't know what states you were, but Mississippi, south of I-10, the coastal highway, is basically a war zone. I mean you go down to Gulfport and Biloxi. I was there in April giving a speech to a managers group in our Region 4. I mean it is still just devastated.

But north of there it's a lot different. Again, in New Orleans, the area where the 17th Street levy broke on one side, there's entire neighborhoods that, I don't know what they're going to have to do with the houses, but they are just inhabitable in most respects.

You cross over the bridge and where the levy didn't flood, it's sort of a commercial district. It's relatively back to some normal operations, although New Orleans isn't a physical devastation you don't see like you see in Mississippi. You see just the city. The population is not there. There's empty buildings. No power. There's not one hospital functioning, at least when I was there, in the city aside from the military hospital.

There is very close coordination with the Federal agencies. The area field office and OSHA is working with FEMA and the other groups in a number of areas that you've addressed. So we're looking into all those issues and as to when we're going to do the necessary transition and to make sure that when you shift into the reconstruction after the initial recovery, that it's done in a safe and healthy manner.

I got a lot of information from our folks who were down there on the ground, doing the interventions and looking at a number of issues. I mean one of the issues mentioned in terms of the payment. Those are issues. And we work with our sister agency here as wage and hour on a number of issues, but at least as to the safety and health and the work that we're doing on the annex and our traditional role, I believe we're making a positive difference.

We're looking into, obviously at some point, making a shift. There may be a shift in differing states at differing times into enforcement and doing other strategies as well because it's obviously, as typical in our whole balanced approach, you have to have a strong enforcement program. I believe we do. But you have these other strategies and approaches as well, so.

MR. SCHNEIDER: So the situation now is that you will respond to complaints, but you're not doing regular enforcement right now, but you will be transitioning, at least in some areas first, and maybe other areas later.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Yeah. And currently it has been sort of in all of our public disclosures, including our initial press release, even that first week of the hurricane. Yeah, if there is a complaint or a fatality, we do investigation and enforcement, currently. We have been since the beginning, since the Katrina hit on August 29th, through Rita and Wilma as well.

But in the counties that are declared disaster areas, we're providing and we're doing, our role is what we call technical assistance, again. It's what we did in Florida in 2004. But we have, again, more people on the ground there than we normally do, because we're bringing people in from across the country to do all these other things. And they're out again on the ground. We deploy them every day, and they're out there covering the areas and going out.

If they see a hazard, they go in and talk to the people. I mean I was there, and we were driving down, I guess it was Highway 10, and we saw an issue reroofing a hotel that we called and our people went out. We're going to go talk to them and making sure that they have the necessary fall protection.

I mean that kind of thing is going on every day, and again our people are working very long hours and they're, again, making a very positive difference.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yeah. I appreciate it. I had another question. You were talking about the regulatory agenda and I know I was particularly discouraged and I know a lot of other folks were with the delays in moving forward on a standard for silica, and on hearing conservation and construction, things that we and the agency have been working on for many, many years and the agency has yet to make a commitment as to actually when and if they're going to go ahead with these rules.

I'm wondering if you can give us any more insight into when you're going to move forward on these.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: What I can tell you is the most recent reg agenda that was published at the middle, end of October, reflects our current thinking in terms of where we are, and obviously the reg agenda that we published in May with prediction of certain dates, there are dates that we satisfied and there are dates that, for a number of reasons, due to the complexities of the rule or other issues, have gotten delayed.

But in our view it's a realistic reg agenda. I mean all the items on it are items we're working on in varying degrees of work. I mean hearing conservation, you mentioned, is in sort of our long-term items, and we're looking at some issues and no decisions have been made.

As to our final approach on silica, we've been working on a number of issues internally and reviews internally, and I've been involved in discussions about it on our agenda to have the peer review of our risk assessment health effects.

And if you look at our peer review, our website, that we're required to, under the OMB's new peer review guidelines, our economic analysis will ultimately be going through that process, and that process was just put into place, as you know, in December of '04, effective June of '05, which is adding to some degree the peer review of a number of steps.

The agency is going to have to take it in its rulemaking.

But right now our current plan is to complete the peer review of the health effects and the risk assessment which we've been working on. I've had a number of briefings on. Whatever the date on the agenda, I think it's April, March or April of '06, we're continuing -- I mean again that's early. There's still a number of work to be done. It's not in the stage where some of our other rulemaking efforts are. Obviously hexavalient chromium is at the final stage of that and a number of other berylliums and other rule making that we're working on in the process of going to be starting a SBRFA panel in the near future as well.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I have one last question. At our diversity work group on Tuesday, we talked a little bit about Hispanic workforce and some of the issues and there was an increase, I think, in the number of happens fatalities, and I know the agency had a Hispanic summit a year and a quarter ago, and I don't know what has happened since that. Are there any plans for another one? And what has happened to the Hispanic task force with the agency?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: That's a great question. I will tell you it has been a big priority and it has been a big focus and interest of mine since I've been here.

A couple of things to answer your question. One, our Hispanic task force, we actually institutionalize. We had been at sort of a temporary group as part of our compliance assistance coordinating group just a few months ago, and basically it's going to be the same group. It's part of a permanent group that has quarterly and regular meetings and make recommendations. They just had a meeting there. The folks were here probably within the last month, and they made a series of recommendations to me in terms of continuing our, what I think is a very aggressive outreach program, and we're working on this issue on a number of fronts.

For example, the agreement that was signed with the Government of Mexico, that John Henshaw signed along with the wage and hour division in 2004, had led to a number of alliances and agreements with consulate, Mexican consulates, across the country.

I just met with their, I guess their deputy foreign minister and a number of other officials from the Mexican Government about six weeks ago. We reported on the progress, and a number of efforts, including producing materials and outreach materials in Spanish to target like poultry workers, restaurant workers and a number of others, have been a product of that overall relationship.

We have also again done a number of sort of outreach efforts into the trade fairs and fairs that we're going to reach what we think is a hard-to-reach workforce and we're continuing. We're looking at maybe having another summit. That has been on the table and I've had a number of discussions about it, because I thought what happened in 2004 was very valuable.

We're doing it a number of other ways as well, just in terms of these outreach efforts and working out with the community. We've obviously done a lot of outreach after the situation in North Carolina at the Seymour Johnson Base as well. The Secretary Chao testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Obviously we weren't part of that.

Secretary Chertoff at DHS, also testified that that would never happen again, the sting operation obviously that you must be aware of. And so we're working on a number of fronts. It's an increasing segment of the workforce that obviously isn't construction, and there are a number of things we're working on, on the compliance assistance side, on the enforcement side, and on the outreach side in particular because I really think getting the message out, getting the training out and getting the education out to that workforce is going to be of crucial and valuable importance to us.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Just a quick comment and observation --

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick, Greg Strudwick & Associates, and good morning.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Good morning to you.

MR. STRUDWICK: And I've been in a number of informal conferences lately because that's part of my regular job, but I have noticed, and I don't know if anyone else has observed, but it seems to me in the past few years, since Henshaw had actually taken over and you from him, that the emphasis on training and creating resources for our contractor base is just as important as the compliance side.

So in and among those folks in the field, they're emphasizing the resources and having access to those resources in those meetings, in the informal meetings, and I just wonder if there's an observation from the directorate itself that we're doing an awful lot more settling of the complaints or the violations in the informal, based on their ability to be articulate and flexible and provide training resources and things that we can do instead of just hammering for the top dollar on a compliance issue.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Yeah, I mean I think our approach, and I think under John's leadership and certainly I think my approach as well has been, we focus and target our enforcement resources where it's most needed and sometimes we call them the bad actors, whatever, how you want to term it, for whatever reason employers that aren't taking their safety and health obligation seriously or there are problems.

And, again, in some of these cases, there's just a lack of education or lack of knowledge and if you can come in and try to work out a situation to get an abatement which is the ultimate reason. When you issue a citation, the ultimate goal is to get an abatement, to get them to stop.

I mean it doesn't do the workers at the site any good if there's a contest, and although we will contest them, we will fight them if we have to, to get an abatement to get the problem immediately resolved.

So we look at a number of ways. I've not been briefed on sort of the statistics of the percentage. I may have of the trend in settlements, but we do try to in addressing the situation you raised, try to look at ways creatively, to address these problems. It doesn't do any good to do one approach or the other. It doesn't work that way in my view. It works to have all the elements.

You have to have an enforcement program. You have to have the ability to do that, but at the same time, if there's ways to offer materials, education, here's how you get into compliance, here's how you don't want to have to do it again, here's how you make sure.

It's ultimately the employer's responsibility at that site, and if you can get the intervention there, you're ultimately going to have the most positive effect. I mean there's seven million work sites as I mentioned during my remarks. We can't be there every day obviously to have those employers understand their obligations and through all of these efforts, I really think that has had a positive impact. The volunteer protection program is a classic example where everyone in that program, the average there, their injury and illness rates are 50 percent lower than their others in their respective industry, and we've ramped up that program. More and more sites in that program are going to translate into better and safer work sites.

We just did the corporate program that we entered into with the U.S. Postal Service, the second largest employer in the country, and we're doing a number of sites within that program. Imagine the positive effect ultimately on the country once that program is up completely and completed.

So, yeah, I mean we're looking at a number of ways ultimately to try to address safety and health issues at the work site.

MR. STRUDWICK: Well, in summary, I think it's working, and I see it working all the way down to the area offices. So we appreciate your efforts and the directorate and the agency for their continued support in the Harwood grants and training grants and focusing on that as well as the compliance side. It is working. It's working, and I'm here to tell you that I appreciate it very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Thank you, Greg. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Kevin.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Kevin Beauregard, North Carolina Department of Labor. I also think it's a good thing that you're directing the efforts on the Harwood grant in certain areas, and I had a question about you had mentioned a $200,000 grant that was issued, I believe, in Texas for Hispanic.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Hispanic, yeah.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Is the work product from that group going to be made available on OSHA's website or somewhere else that others can benefit from it?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: The answer is I would imagine so, and I know that a number of other grants that we've had work product have been, but I don't know. Bruce, do you know?

MR. SWANSON: Yeah, Mr. Secretary, all Harwood work products are publicly available ultimately. Yes.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Well, on behalf of the committee, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your time this morning. It's always much appreciated when you spend some time with us and give us the updates that you do and allow us to ask some questions. So thank you very much for your time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SNARE: Dan, thank you very much and members of the committee, again, thank you. I'm looking forward to hearing the results of what happens the next two days. Thank you all very much.

(Applause.)

TRENCHING SAFETY DATA AND INITIATIVE

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: As I mentioned earlier, we're going to rearrange the agenda just a little bit so that we have time to set up some presentations. So I would like to introduce Stew Burkhammer, director of the Office of Construction Services. He's going to give us some information on trenching. And with that, Stew, would you go ahead?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Good morning.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Stew, would you like those lights out?

MR. BURKHAMMER: It's up to you all. If you can see it, fine. Just leave them. It doesn't matter to me.

MR. BURKHAMMER: I want to thank Scott Schneider for making my presentation for me, so are there any questions?

(Laughter.)

MR. SCHNEIDER: You're welcome.

MR. BURKHAMMER: You saved me a lot of time. As I had a chance to talk to you about before on the trenching initiative that we started in 2003, today I want to share with you the 2004 trenching study results, and we'll be ready to start the third year of our study, the 2005 trenching results, in '06.

(A showing of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: As you see from the picture here, we see this all the time. You can drive down the road and pretty much see something like this anytime you go out and take a ride.

Some of them are pretty good. Some of them are not so good. But even the ones that may look pretty good from the highway, may not be pretty good when you actually get up and take a look at them.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Here are some more examples of things that we see on a regular basis that come across my desk and pretty much same old, same old. You know you can see one, you see them all. They may have a different age, a different state, a different kind of trench, but the results are the same. Most of the time somebody dies.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: As you know, we talked earlier about we initiated a study of the trench fatalities and we reviewed the trench-related fatalities in the Federal states. We identified the causal factors, and as it was said earlier, we've developed some compliance outreach tools.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Here is kind of a broad look at the fatalities since 1995. You see we had an unbelievable spike in 2003, and we initiated our trench initiative shortly thereafter, and you'll see in 2004, we've had a decrease to 48.

Does that mean that our trench initiative was a great big success and caused that? No, I'm not ready to tell you that yet. I think the third year of our study, '05, if we continue to see a decrease, then maybe I might go out on a limb and say that maybe some of our efforts have made a difference.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: This is some of the data. As you can see, the 2003 side, no protective system, 76 percent and it's up to 88 percent in '04. And these were the causes of the fatalities and some of the information we gleaned.

The no competent person went down a little bit. The five-to-nine-foot-deep trench also went down a little bit. Hispanics, we show a big decrease in Hispanic trench-related fatalities, but, again, I'm not sure that could be an anomaly; and, again, if it's so, our 2005 data shows it in the lower number, I think maybe we are having some impact there. Our Hispanic outreach program is part of this.

The age group, you know, pretty well the same. No safety and health program went up. That's a little bit disturbing because you'd think by now people would get it that are in this kind of business, but this indicates, again, that they may not be.

The no trenching training pretty much the same.

And then the last one is somewhat telling, I think. We had 85 percent non-union out of the 34 fatalities in '03 and the Federal study in '03 and then 100 percent in the 29 fatality study in '04.

Are we getting all the trench fatalities that are occurring reported to OSHA and, therefore, a case study? Again, I'm not sure that's the case. But from what we are getting and what we are studying and the information we're gleaning from those studies, I think you can see that we still got considerable amount of problems in the trenching industry.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Greg and Scott talked about the letter campaign. We've now sent our second letter campaign. I think altogether we've sent out over a thousand letters in about five different mailings with our trench initiative packet in it.

The first letter was directed to CEOs and COOs of companies that are heavily involved in trenching activities.

The second group was more of a shotgun distribution and we changed the letter a little bit to reflect that. And we've gotten several responses from our mailings which is very encouraging.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Now you've all seen this. This is the latest count, 300,000 cards, 20,000 posters, 2,000 NIOSH CDs, given out as of this report. Matt Gillen and his team at NIOSH have revised the NIOSH CD, brought it to me this morning. We're going to be going through that and reviewing it, and then once we all sign off on that, we'll be having revision one of the NIOSH Trenching CD.

For those of you that may not have seen it, we've got some samples here to share with you, and while I'm plugging outreach material, hopefully all of you have seen our new pocket guide, which has also been a big success and if you haven't seen the pocket guide, I have several copies I'll be happy to share with you. It lightens my load and lets you carry some more stuff home.

Our newest thing that we're working on is through our Highway Work Zone Alliance, which has been a phenomenally successful alliance. It is made up of the operating engineers and the laborers, ARTBA, NAFA, NIOSH, and we've had inquiries from AGC and National Highway about joining the alliance.

Through that alliance, we've done three things. The laborers put together a CD, an excellent CD, interactive CD, where you can do some game playing and role playing in the CD. It's really good.

And we also have an English/Spanish quick card like we do in trenching and we have a fact sheet, and we will be putting these together the first of the year and that will be our next mailing out to the constituency. So if this one has been as successful as the trenching one, I think we are making headway.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: The trenching initiative, ACCSH, is continuing review and you heard the report from the work group this morning and the ten items that they're going to recommend to the agency. A lot of those ten items are in the works. We're doing things on those ten items, and we went over that with Greg.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: We've been getting several trench articles published and I want to thank Tom for the great article in his magazine that he was kind enough to do. NUCA has also done an article in their magazine and we've gotten some other articles and I think through the Office of Communications, Bill Wright and Kevin Ropp were getting some more opportunities to do that.

In our contractor list, I'm glad, Scott, you mentioned about giving us some more names. Michael Buchet is building our list. He pulls his hair out every time he has to add more and more and more names to the list. I think our database is really getting great to the point where we have a lot of people to send stuff to.

And as we do this we get stuff back that said no longer in business or moved or died or whatever and we drop them off the list. So I think the list we do have now, and the list hopefully we get from Scott, will help us expand and we reach more and more and more people.

Also, Scott, and any of you, if you have any list that we'd like to send to the Highway Work Zone stuff to, we'd be happy to get those names from you, too.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: That's the trench report. Any questions? Greg.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick. Just one statistic, Stew. Is it still the 50 and fewer employees in the employer group that are having the most problem?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Yes.

MR. STRUDWICK: Okay. How about ten and under? Any difference?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Twenty and under. I can't tell you about ten, but 20 and under is still there. But mainly we look at the 50 and under and that's the big hit.

MR. STRUDWICK: Okay. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Kevin.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Kevin Beauregard. Stew, do you send any of those letters or contractor lists to any of the state plan, state programs, or is it strictly in the Federal OSHA programs?

MR. BURKHAMMER: No, no. The state plan directors and the consultation program managers all got the letter and all got the package. And we have gotten some feedback back from a couple of the states, asking us for additional supplies. So if you want some, Kevin, let me know, and we'll be happy to fill your order.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Yeah, I think I got a copy of the letter. I just wasn't sure if you disseminated any information to any of the contractors.

MR. BURKHAMMER: All that we've asked the state plans states to send us name, some have of the contractors in their states that they want us to send stuff to, and we've done that, and we've gotten some replies, especially from, I think, Arizona or Nevada, asking for a large amount of material for them to send out also. So if you have any, Kevin, please give it to Mike and I will be happy to get it to you.

MR. BEAUREGARD: And just one other question. Yesterday in the work group, it came up that they want us to take a look at the current directive on trenching and excavation. Do you currently have anybody looking at that, reviewing the directive that's out there?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Noah will be happy to answer that question when he comes.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Okay.

MR. BURKHAMMER: If you'd ask him.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yeah, Scott Schneider. I just want to make one correction that CD-ROM was something that was jointly produced by the laborers, operators, ARTBA and NAPA. It was a Harwood grant. And we're going to have version eight will out be shortly in about a couple of weeks, and it's going to have English, Spanish, and Portuguese as well as some additional demonstrations and a module that will talk about driving safely to and from work as well, so anybody that wants a copy, please just send me an email.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Scott gave me several of these and we've been distributing them out. This is revision seven, I think, is the one we're using now, so.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: No other questions? Sarah.

MS. SHORTALL: I'd like to mark the Power Point that Stew Burkhammer gave, the written copy of it, as Exhibit 1, and have it entered into the record.

(Whereupon, Exhibit No. 1 was marked for identification and entered into the record.)

MS. SHORTALL: And, Stew, I have a question to ask you about the three items you were holding up on the Highway Work Zone. Are those things that you are going to be making available to members of ACCSH or the public upon request?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Yes, on request, yes.

MS. SHORTALL: Okay. Then I'd like to have those three items so that I can mark them and put them into the record, too.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Okay. That's fine with me.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Sarah.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Is that all right?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Sure. Thank you, Stew. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to take a five-minute break right now so that the next presenter has the opportunity to set up. Please be back in five minutes. (Whereupon, there was a brief recess.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: For those of you who don't know, these are watches, and in five minutes is way beyond five minutes, and I see some of our committee members still aren't back.

Sarah would like to take a moment to enter a couple of documents to the record.

MS. SHORTALL: I'd like to enter the CD-ROM, Roadway Safety as Exhibit No. 2. I'd enter into the record the new OSHA quick card on work zone traffic safety as Exhibit No. 3, and the new OSHA fact sheet on work zone traffic safety as Exhibit No. 4.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 2, 3, and 4 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks, Sarah.

TRENCH RESCUE/PRECISION EXCAVATION PRESENTATION

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: To the committee and to our guests, we have two presentations this morning, the first being trench rescue and second excavator training, a simulation. I've had the opportunity to see both of these presentations, and Greg Strudwick and Tom Broderick were kind enough to get the folks that are going to present to us next here to show you their presentations.

The first presenter is Dave Adler. I saw his presentation in Chicago, and it's fabulous. If you ever have the opportunity not to be sitting in a room but to be by a trench, I highly recommend you visit with Dave and see what he does when it's a live demonstration.

Dave is a member of Task Force 1 in the Chicago area or Illinois. He's a lieutenant for 27 years in the Addisson Fire Department, and he's a third generation underground contractor, and he has some really interesting information to share with us this morning, so, Dave, if you would, please.

(A showing of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Thank you very much, and thank you all the members of the committee for this opportunity.

Right now across the Unite States, we still have a very serious problem with trench collapses. People are dying on a regular basis.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: And a couple of things that I'd like to address are the emergencies that are occurring with trenching operations and also the hazards associated with exposing underground utilities. And it's part of this exposing the underground utilities where personnel are jumping in the trench that are exposing them to the trench collapses. And then we'll discuss a new solution for some of these problems, too.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Some of the statistics and we just saw a few of them five minutes ago. Close to 60 workers in the United States right now are killed in trenching incidents every year, and that's only the ones that we know about.

Sixty percent of these deaths are the co-worker or the would-be rescuer that's dying as a result of a secondary collapse. Underground utilities are being struck every day, and millions of dollars are lost in liability, hit and injury claims.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: The typical weight of an average, just a cubic foot of soil, can weigh between 100 to 145 pounds with a typical collapse being around 1.5 cubic yards. We're looking at around 4,000 to 5,500 pounds. That's the weight of a typical collapse, and it happens in one-tenth of a second.

Many times the worker does not see it. When we go in to do a rescue, he still has his hands on the shovel. He never had a chance to look to the side wall. He's looking down. His hands are on the shovel. His feet are still planted on the bottom of the trench. One-tenth of a second. This is the same as being hit by a small truck at 45 miles an hour.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is another important issue that a lot of people don't understand. We not only have the weight of the soil going vertically down, but when a worker gets trapped, there's also lateal pressures that come in on him, too. So when he's trapped, he's suffocating, and it's like a python wrapping around him, the amount of pressure that the soil exerts.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is an example of two fatalities that happened in 2005, one in California and one in Illinois. As you saw with the statistics just a moment ago, many of these trench collapses are family members, grandfathers, father, son operations.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: A secondary collapse is coming, and it's very, very deadly. It's not if it's coming. It's when it's coming.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is how more victims, more contractors, more personnel become victims. The first collapse, if it just trapped his ankle or up to the knee, you could see the example in the top left, a worker comes down to help him out.

There's another collapse on the right, and you can see as the collapses progress, more and more of an area is unsupported. So when the soil has had enough where it just can't stay up, you have a catastrophic failure that comes down, just in time to catch many workers. Many, many times you'll see a trench rescue where it's very unusual only to have one person that was in the trench.

I'd like to show you a video right now of an actual trench rescue. It's a little graphic, but this is really what's happening in the United State right now. Please.

(A video presentation)

The rescue workers were able to get him out safely. But here's another case that didn't have such a happy ending.

It was around 12:30 on a Saturday. I was just waking up, working night shift, when I got a panic knock at the door. The guys next door were putting in a sewer system. When I opened the door, it was Jameen. He said it caved in on them.

I dialed 911 and I expressed I didn't know what was going on. All I know was that somebody came over and told me the guy was buried in some dirt and to dispatch him some rescue.

When I ran in there, all I seen was a hole with dirt and a panicked guy trying to dig him out with a backhoe. So at that time, I said I got to get this guy out of here.

I jumped in the hole, and I started digging with my hands, and I instruct the guy with the backhoe, dig to my left side so he can help me dig out some dirt as I'm pushing to get to him.

The hole was about 11 feet deep, and he was covered about seven foot of it. I got maybe down two feet by myself, and a police officer showed up on the scene and started to help me. So this time we started getting oxygen vials and hooking it up to a garden hose so we could feed some oxygen down to him.

Then fire personnel started getting there and the ambulance, and they started getting in the hole with us. And we just all started digging with our hands.

For about 10 to 12 minutes after digging with the fire personnel, we started to recover his upper portion of his body. We could see his head and his shoulders, and at that time, we could see his face was blue. So that means he wasn't breathing, or if he was, he was having a hard time. He was lifeless. He was just limp.

Well, once we got him out to where we had his whole chest out and we could lay him back, we tried to open his airway. There was dirt entailed in his -- I mean it was all in his airway, and we tried to get air through it. There was now way, and that's when a medic jumped down and tried to tube him.

Then I started on compressions which we don't know how much good it would have did, but we had to try it. With that much dirt on you, it's hard to live, let alone breathe.

Our arrival time was probably 30 to 40 minutes into the incident. In the meantime, they wiped him with ectim, and while the police officers tried to get him out.

They attempted to do some shoring at that point, but they really didn't have any equipment or any experience with this type of incident to do that type of job.

The police had put the family to the side. They were in the front yard of the residence where the incident occurred. They were in lawn chairs sitting there, kind of waiting for the -- I don't think at that point they had learned that the victim was deceased.

I seen the family members all around. They knew my face, but they really don't know my name. They know me as a neighbor. They kept asking me, "Is he alive? Is he okay? Is he alive?" And I couldn't bring myself to say anything. And the only thing I could do was look at them and put my head down, and they kind of knew.

Once a -- pool was established, we had the firefighters begin removing this woodpile from the side of the trench. I knew at that point that the victim was deceased, and so we were going to take our time and just make it a safe removal in the trench.

We also established an air bag in the trench to prevent further collapse. We had spent then approximately three hours into the operation and we had a secondary collapse throughout the trench. -- at that point.

We got our first panels in, into the trench.

Once that was done, we were able to step down the shoring and get right down where the victim was, and we were able to see -- we put ventilation into the trench at that point. The trench was monitored for hazardous atmosphere.

Once we were able to enter the trench safely, the rescue workers proceeded down and began hand digging with hand tools, till we --

We continued doing that until we finally got down to his feet, wherever they -- from the trench. I think they learned -- everyone learned -- on that situation how complicated this scene can be and what has to be done for safety of the trench prior to their entry.

Safety of the trench prior to entry. This is what trained emergency responders think of before they attempt to rescue someone from a collapsed trench. It's also what you should think of anytime you enter a trench five feet or greater in depth or one that is otherwise felt to be unsafe.

If this trench had been made safe prior to entry, there would have been no need for an emergency response, because the trench would not have collapsed on anyone. But it wasn't made safe, and this man paid for that mistake with his life.

That's too steep of a price, and it's one that you don't want to pay either.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: As we said, these trench collapses, they can take place in one-tenth of a second and how far can you run in one-tenth of second?

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: The medical issues are very important in a trench collapse also. Generally if the victim is totally covered, it's not a rescue. It's a fatality and it's a recovery.

But if the victim is covered, let's say, up to his neck, his chest, rescue personnel are trained right away to try to open up that area in front of the chest. This will facilitate chest expansion, oxygen, and more medical care.

Other issues that we have are hypothermia. It's supposed to snow here tomorrow, and the ground is pretty cold. When someone is trapped, that cold ground is sucking, literally, the life warmth out of his body. Trauma, that's another situation, too. Because the earth weighs so much, it's not uncommon for the victim to be paralyzed, multiple, multiple internal injuries and fractures. In trauma we have what's called the golden hour. We need to get that victim to a trauma center, to a surgical suite, within an hour. So time is of the essence there also.

And as you see this here, uncovering the chest, it's a time issue. Hypothermia, it's a time issue. Trauma, it's a time issue. And then crush syndrome, that's the final one where crush syndrome, again, being a syndrome, it starts anywhere from one to three hours. There's no definitive minutes or time frame on it.

But let's say I have 5,000 pounds of pressure on me from the waist down. Those cells are not getting the oxygen. Blood is not circulating. Time is of the essence. There has been documented case after case after case across the United States where the best medical care was given with medications and IV solutions.

The victim came out and said, "Thank you very much. You saved my life." Right now the typical digging operation is around eight hours for a trench rescue. It depends on how deep, what kind of soil and things of that nature.

But this individual that I'm thinking about, and it was down in the south, he was trapped about eight hours, came out, he waved to the cameras. Thank you very much.

They put him in helicopter, and he was dead before he hit the emergency room doors, because the blood started circulating again, and all the debris from the cells and the acids and everything, they came up and this is part of crush syndrome, and it killed him. Again time is of the essence for us.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is an individual doing some gluing. Fell into the trench and it came in and killed him.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Locating utilities. This is another major issue for us.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: You see utilities there underneath the arrow. Many, many times, contractors enter a trench to try to locate the utility. You know, the tractor is digging down and he goes down in there with a shovel to try to find that. He's down in the trench more like this contractor right here.

There is no protection or shoring for him whatsoever. He's trying to dig around the exposed utilities. This is where we're finding a lot of contractors are getting trapped in collapses, because they're trying to expose those utilities.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: If you can see the gentleman in the trench, behind the gravel, in the back, no shoring, two tractors, but he has his helmet on. We see a lot of this.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: With locates, it's very important that we all know where all the different colors are for the different types of utilities.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: The electrical hazards, we see this, too. More and more utilities are going underground. It's a fact of life here. But we not only need to look underground, we need to look above us and it's very important, when we're looking for these utilities underground, if we strike one of these utilities, even during the rescue and we have an arc, that could be a 10,000 degree arc down inside a trench with someone that's already trapped.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: An example of underground utilities.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: And this is what a burn looks like, a high voltage burn. This is what happens to people down in a trench when they come in contact with this.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Every day there's utility hits across the country.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Gas lines.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Propane line.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Here's another natural gas line that was struck in St. Paul, Minnesota.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: And even water lines. These can be devastating, and contractors have drowned in minutes.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Now as you can see, one of the problems we've been having is time. We've got to get to our victims. In the Fire Service right now, we can shore pretty quick. We have pneumatics and hydraulics and if there's a trench backs in there, great. But we're there because something happened. Something collapsed in on a victim. And, again, time is of the essence. We can shore, but now we've got 5,000 pounds of dirt that we need to remove to get the victim out.

Typically right now in the United States, the fire departments use five-gallon buckets and shovels, and for 5,000 pounds of dirt, it's a lot. You can't bring vacuum trucks right up to the side of a trench because there's no shoring in the United States that includes in their tabulated data, a forty-to-fifty-thousand-pound vibrating, superimposed load on the side of the trench.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: So Rescue Vac Systems has developed a system that is being used for rescue and construction.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Basically what it has is an air knife and this aerates and pulverizes the soil, and then the second component is a vacuum kit that consists of different nozzles, special lightweight full vacuum hose and relief valves, and that connects to the typical sewer truck.

So the fire department just has to have the kit and they just have a resource list, and they have a local air compressor come in and a vacuum truck for that.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Here's an example of the air knife and what it looks like. The air goes through the barrel and the tip is somewhat like a jet engine. When the air comes out, it's running around 1400 miles an hour.

But transiently, going over a victim's foot or a utility, there's only around 13, 14 pounds of pressure. So you can safely use this around a victim and it will not hurt any of the utilities. Roots, telecommunications, fiberoptic, natural gas lines, these plastic lines, this won't hurt it, and it really helps us quickly because if we can get this air knife over the victim, then we can blow that dirt away from the victim's chest right away. Again, time.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: When using this around the utilities and exposing the utilities, it also saves the contractors a lot of money on hits and injuries.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Now using the air knife in conjunction with the vacuum kit, we can decrease the dig time in a rescue by 80 percent. So now we're taking the this call that was an eight hour digging operation, now we're taking it down to a 45-to-60- minute operation. Now we've turned it back into a rescue.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Now a caution that I do have is it's generally considered in the construction industry that around 1800 pounds per square inch of water, you know, these pressure washers that are being used, with a straight stream around 1800 pounds of pressure or greater will be destructive to underground cables.

We don't use pressure washers to loosen up the soil around a victim. The victim is already cold. We don't want to wet him down anymore. Plus we don't want to put a hole in a plastic gas line or we don't want to take the insulation off and energize the electric line and thereby causing a catastrophic arc.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is a type of a typical vacuum truck. This one happens to be from Vac down in Florida, and these operate around 2600 to 8,000 cfm, cubic feet per minute.

This is what helps us so much because we can lift vertically, material, 200 feet, and depending on the type of material, we can move the material horizontally 400 feet. What works so well about this system is when you have the air knife and it aerates and fractures the soil, that's very helpful.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: But when you use that air knife underneath the vacuum, being that the vacuum is an air conveyance piece of equipment, it's an aerating piece of equipment, anything that's aerated underneath there is what goes.

We aerate water, water main breaks, mud, sand, soil, anything like that. It's a tremendous, tremendous rescue tool, and contractors are using this also for high target hazards and areas that they need to move the soil quite a distance away.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: Another caution is with the straight open pipe from these vacuums as you don't want to use those by themselves because when it comes down, it could actually damage the utility and you don't have the fine tuning touches around a victim in a rescue operation.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is the general placement that we would put equipment like this. We're off the 90 degree corners of our trench. That's where we put our vacuum truck and we put our air compressor. Now the trench always has to be shored first. We always have to make this trench safe.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is an example how we'll come down, in front of the victim, open up his chest, create a sump area and even if this is a water main break where water is coming in from the right, we can make a sump pump hit over there and collect the water and keep working on the victim and just go back and forth.

Water acts like a grease, you know, for the material going through the vacuum line also. But now we can keep the victim from drowning also. We're back to a rescue mode.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: This is an example, 500 gallons of water, and it took 30 seconds to remove 500 gallons of water and mud out of this trench. This is what we can do with this technology.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: I spoke about this. The main objective is to get the patient out as quickly as possible for medical intervention.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: So this system saves time. It saves money and it saves lives, money especially on reduced hits, claims and injuries and saving lives. It's evident how much more quickly we can dig somebody out.

(A change of slides.)

MR. ADLER: I'd also like to thank the Department of Labor and OSHA for the last year in Illinois with our Southern Training Association. It's a large training facility in Northern Illinois of which I'm one of the instructors, and the Department of Labor and OSHA have been working with us in training firefighters, and this is one of our final scenarios here and we have three compliance officers at our training site and this has been wonderful.

We're trying to encourage, too, from the fire side this cooperative venture, and I'd also like to thank the Chicago Construction Safety Council, too, for the tremendous work that they have been providing with the fire departments, too. You're a wonderful resource and we need you. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Dave. Did you have some equipment that you were going to show?

MR. ADLER: I have some samples in the back. At a break time, I'd be happy to show it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. Great. So what we're going to do now is we're going to allow the next presenters just a moment to set up, and then we're going to start again, so I'd appreciate it if all of you would stay put.

MR. STRUDWICK: Thank you, Dave, and just for the record, don't ever anybody ever volunteer to feed him for two days.

MR. ADLER: Thank you.

(Laughter.)

MS. SHORTALL: I'd like to enter into the record as Exhibit No. 5, Rescue Vac, a Comprehensive Overview of the Rescue Vac System and enter as Exhibit No. 6, Rescue Vac Saves Time, Saves Lives. And, Mr. Adler, would you be able to make a copy of your Power Point presentation hard copy available to the Agency for our record?

MR. ADLER: Yes, ma'am.

MS. SHORTALL: Okay. I would like to mark then in advance Mr. Adler's Power Point Presentation on Trench Emergency Response and Rescue as Exhibit No. 7.

I understand your video, however, is not available to us at this point?

MR. ADLER: I will get you a copy.

MS. SHORTALL: Okay. Then I'd like to mark the video on Emergency Response for Trench Rescue as Exhibit No. 8.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 5, 6, 7, and 8 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks very much, Dave. I encourage all of you to take a moment to visit with Dave when we take a break.

(Whereupon, there was a brief recess.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We can get started if everyone would take their seats, please.

The next presentation, I wanted to thank again Tom Broderick for bringing these folks here. The reason that we changed the agenda for the committee's information is so that the next gentleman could set up their simulation process for cranes and backhoes so that over the lunch hour, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity to try this equipment that they brought with them.

I had the opportunity to do that, and I think it will be a great training aid to all of us going forward. So with that, I'd like to introduce Bruce Rabe. He's with Vista. He's the CEO. It's a training solutions company. I had the opportunity to visit their operation and to take a look at some of the stuff they're doing, and I think it will be a great help to the construction industry over time.

Also, we have today Paul Freedman. He's the president of Simlog. These two gentlemen work together to product the products for training and education that you're about to see. So with that, Bruce, I turn it over to you.

EXCAVATOR TRAINING SIMULATION

MR. RABE: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. First of all, I wish to thank the entire committee for inviting both Vista Training, Incorporated, out of Waterford, Wisconsin, as well as Simlog, Incorporated, out of Montreal, Quebec, to present to you today. Joining me is Paul Freedman, president of Simlog, and I, of course, am CEO of Vista Training.

(A slide presentation)

MR. RABE: We'd like to conduct our presentation for you today in three basic parts. It was suggested that perhaps it was important for the committee to view what is available today, readily available, in the field for use for training in the construction business.

Secondly, talk about what is cutting edge today, technology that is first being applied this year, frankly, to the industry, and finally give some insight into the future where we see training and technology taking our ability to improve and enhance the training that is being provided.

So the agenda shows basically the progression in that fashion. First, a knowledge training that's currently being done and offered by Vista. Secondly a skills training which is -- and I'll explain more about what I mean by skills training -- but something that is new to the market and fairly revolutionary being offered by our business partner Simlog.

And finally our longer term aspirations to combine these two techniques to form something that through synergy provides actually something that is far better than what we have today.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: First, briefly about Vista training, based out of Waterford, Wisconsin. Founded in 1991 by a gentleman, Ray Peterson, who had a career with Case Corporation, maker of farm and construction equipment.

One of Ray's last assignments with the company before retiring at age 55 was to manage the international training group, and in that capacity, he was exposed not only to what type of training was being provided on mobile equipment in North America, but also on a global basis.

And I think through that experience, it really accentuated, in his mind, the need for visuals and the ability to demonstrate to people, some of whom, of course, have never been in a piece of equipment or even driven a car.

If you could visually show them what harm can come to them, can come to others on the job site, and, of course, to the machinery, if you could demonstrate that concern, it would be very powerful for those people to understand the harm they could cause, using this new machine that they're being trained to operate. So given that, Mr. Peterson retired from Case Company at age 55 and formed Vista Training in 1991, committed to helping operators of equipment be safer operators as well as more productive. This is our facility currently in Waterford, Wisconsin.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So our company does provide a complete line of operator training products. As I mentioned, we were to review what is available readily in the field today. For the committee members, I have presented a catalog that we use to market our products and many of those products developed over the last 15 years by Vista. Others we receive from other companies through a distributor relationship.

Secondly, we provide operator training in a hands-on fashion. Many times we'll receive a phone call from a municipality as an example, where they will ask for motor grader training. And our people will go out and physically do hands-on instruction, both in classroom, but also mentoring on the machine itself to help improve the skills and the safety practices of these individuals operating these machines.

It's key to remember that today, in our world, we are doing this in a hands-on fashion, where a Vista instructor or someone like a Vista instructor is out in the field, on the machine, mentoring the operator. As we talk about the Simlog technology later, that would be an important point to remember.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: Vista has studied the training market for mobile equipment, and we've identified this visual that you see on the screen in terms of how people learn. People learn by what they hear, by what they see, but finally what they experience, or we term, what they do.

In our environment today, you'll note in a couple of the demonstrations I'll do in a moment, that we're able to show people what they will see and tell them what they will hear, but to this point, we've been limited in our ability to share the experience of operating a piece of equipment, and that is the breakthrough that Simlog brings us.

Also, though, within this graphic, I'd like to point to something that I think in the long term is perhaps more interesting, at least to our company and an opportunity to improve training at large, in that each individual being trained needs three, what I would call, key factors. The first I would cite as the proper knowledge to be trained or to acquire that knowledge, the proper skill to be able to acquire that knowledge, and finally the proper attitude to acquire that knowledge.

Through the technology that's available and increasing and capability as we go through time, we believe that each of these three areas can be further enhanced through assessment of the individuals being trained, and somewhat of a way that our products can guide them in terms of attitude in particular, so that they have a better consciousness on the importance of what they're learning.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: Next I'd like to kind of review for you the training evolution that we have seen even before Vista was formed in 1991. In the early days of 1980 and 1985, most training was being done with an audio cassette. Many of us in this room can probably relate and remember those days very clearly.

Also documents or course work was the primary method of delivery at that time, and classroom instruction, of course, was how these products were typically used.

Well, technology has changed to the point that in the '90s, we were using VHS tapes and you will find that those are still largely used today. You'll find many of those in the catalog that I distributed and you'll find if you visit construction sites and visit with the trainers that are doing the training, VHS and now finally DVD has come to the marketplace, and that is a primary mode of training in today's construction world.

But we're rapidly moving into a new era where computer-based learning has become a part of the training mix, in many ways eclipses what we've had available to us today. And that's really what I'm here to show you in terms of the cutting edge things available in my demonstration shortly.

In addition, though, now that we have these computer-based learning modules, we can add additional facilities in terms of record keeping and knowing exactly how that person was trained, how they responded to certain questions, and all this information can be databased.

So most of that can be done through either a learning management system which is in-house in larger organizations, or it can be delivered over the web and even paid for on a per-use basis.

Finally, then, and I'm not sure we'll wait till 2010 to do this, virtual reality simulators will become an important part of this process. And if you remember back to the graphic I've shown you before about people learn by hearing, seeing and what they experience, virtual reality simulators are the answer to add that experienced portion of the learning process without putting the person on the machine, where, of course, he is more able to cause harm to the machine, himself, others, and things of that nature.

So again simulators put them in a very safe environment versus our past practice in terms of how we mentor actual operators.

And I should point out at this point, that Vista is still of the mind set that there still is need and always be need for a person who is expected to actually operate a piece of a mobile equipment, to be checked out on that piece of equipment.

It's simply a question of training him further and preparing him better for the experience to get on the machine so that again the safety risk factors are mitigated.

One thing about the training business, it continues to become more interactive, and through our experience working with some military contractors in our past history, we've learned that this can actually also lead to a compression of time.

In many cases, computer-based learning can compress the time required to comprehend and test at a proficient level the subject in a four-to-one ration. So where you may have taken four hours to learn a specific topic in the past and completed it with a competency that it proven through testing, you now perhaps could do that in one hour. That's at least the word on the street that I understand from my conversations with people that have actually got empirical data.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So next I would like to give you some demonstrations to show you what Vista is doing at least in this regard, and I'll have four demonstrations that I'll provide.

The first two are relating to trench safety, and they're different in the fact that the first one I will show you is on a CD, which can be put into any standard laptop or computer machine and run standalone for the use of the person locally.

The second one I'll show you for trend safety is actually an application that we have developed which is being delivered over the web and is on a per-user basis through a use of a password.

Secondly, then, and I should mention that both of these initiatives are somewhat industry initiatives, the first by the National Utility Contractors' Association and the second I will show you is through the Sunshine One Call Centers of Florida.

Secondly, then, I will demonstrate two more products that are manufacture initiatives. The first, again, will be a standalone product that will be used and offered to their customers for training of operators. The second is intended to be web delivered. And I'm making these points consciously so that you can see the differences when I start the demonstrations.

This one loads slowly. Be patient. It's only because I have the other programs open. It simply would operate much more easily if it were not taxed by the other programs that are open.

So as I mentioned this is the first program sponsored by a Harwood grant, frankly, that was provided to the National Utility Contractors Association. As you will notice it's available in both an English and a Spanish format with voice over. And I'll let our friend, Jim, tell us a bit more about the program.

(Demonstration presentation.)

MR. RABE: The next it's asking me is whether I'm a student, that I would like to progress through in student view, or the trainer can also use this in a classroom presentation, so at this point, I make this choice.

If I were to choose "trainer," the voice would be suppressed, and so that the trainer himself would be able to do the narration.

(Demonstration presentation.)

MR. RABE: So, Mr. Chairman, as you can see from this point forward, my job is rather easy. Jim, does all the work.

(Demonstration presentation.)

MR. RABE: I believe this program is about 90 minutes in length, and I heard at the beginning of the meeting this morning that due to weather concerns, most of you were not willing to stay until eight, nine o'clock tonight, so I will only show you a portion of this at this point. I'll focus on the competent person portion and show you the very first part of it.

(Demonstration presentation.)

MR. RABE: I think we may have lost some voice-over capability here, but you're seeing the actual graphics that are embedded in this program. There is a significant amount of video and I'll also add to the point made earlier, that this is a final beta version, but not yet final.

And there is a compression technology that will be added to compress the program prior to delivery so that most machines will not be taxed as this one is to actually drive the content of the video that is provided.

(Demonstration presentation.)

MR. RABE: So that was just a brief look at that specific section and I had queued it up which what caused the lesson to complete.

Now as I mentioned that was a standalone product that will be delivered through NUCA and sponsored by OSHA, eventually becoming part of the public domain through OSHA.

I'd next like to show the program that I spoke of which is a web-delivery application that we have created for the Sunshine One-Call Centers of Florida.

I think in my haste, I had actually opened more than one copy of that, and that's what slowed my machine down.

This then is a page from the Sunshine One Call of Florida program that we've created which is a web-delivered application. This is a sample of part of this section which will be provided to utility contractors throughout the State of Florida.

(Web-Delivered Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: You'll notice that this program is not full screen, and that's actually intentional so that it is easier to distribute over the web. As the capabilities of the web become better and our technology or the available technology to compress data improves, you'll likely see this go full screen. But that is intentional that it be this size and this is the way the contractor will see it.

If I mouse over to the left-hand side, you'll notice that this is the instruction and design of the program, starting with the introduction itself, and planning the job -- I apologize -- that's difficult to read -- locating utilities, job site inspection, digging safely, job site surprises, enforcement and a final test and also them some reference material.

So these were the two initiatives that I had suggested I would show for the industry involvement. I'd next like to show you a couple of manufacture initiatives that we worked on with them.

The content I'm showing you for the manufacturers is a copyright of Vista with a license to manufacture so I'm within limits to show you.

Then again, maybe we will be here for the snow storm this evening. My machine seems overtaxed for some reason. I did run through this presentation last evening and didn't have this difficulty, so here we go.

(Manufacturer's Initiatives Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: So this program is, as you can see, a operator training program for skid-steer compact tractor loaders. Again, I'm given the option of either a student view or trainer view. This time I'll put it in the trainer view so that I have the ability to navigate it more freely.

You'll note on the left-hand side that these are the lessons. We term this a module on skid-steer training and then within each module, there are lessons, starting with goals and objective, the components, safety and warning symbols, pre-op inspection, et cetera.

All these have a check-your-knowledge test at the end of that lesson, and I just want to walk you through one section.

(Manufacturer's Initiative Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: You will notice, we've completed that portion and then the flashing arrow occurs up here or appears up here so that you know to move forward. And I'm going to move forward rather quickly now to get a later point in the program so I don't walk you through all of this section, because in the interest of time, I will simply move forward quickly.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: I apologize for that. I did want to show this part because there is some information that's very effective.

I wanted to show that graphic because one thing animation does, again, it's another form of technology we have been able to apply, but naturally to have that depicted in any other way would be difficult, either to show the seriousness of it or, of course, if you tried to enact the scene itself, someone could be injured by doing that.

So there's an example of using technology, animation if you will, to actually help in the training process. It's very effective.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: We actually modeled that individual after one of our employees, and he will be the first to tell you that he would rather see an image of himself be run over than actually have it happen to himself.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: And I had mentioned there were some check-your-knowledge questions. You've just seen this demonstrated in the animation. So here is the question for you. Your skid steer had a designated safe spot for riders, true or false. That is false. There is not one on this machine in any way.

The next check-your-knowledge question is perhaps referring back to the time compression of understanding that I pointed to earlier. By keeping people much more involved or interacting with the program, the learning improves.

I think you can relate to that yourselves by knowing what happens when you passively watch a television program versus when you watch perhaps someone operating a video game. There is a call to action with the video game that keeps the person involved.

We likewise use this type of approach with our check-your-knowledge questions. This next question depicts that very well.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: And then this is what we call a drag-and-drop answer, so he has given me the four selections, and I am to drag into place the two that I believe to be correct.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: so that is the example of the standalone product I mentioned that I would show you as a result of coming from a manufacturer. I have a one- second demonstration to provide, and again this is a web-based-delivery program provided for a manufacturer.

I have already selected the operator controls area of this program, and I simply want to give you a quick view of how animated graphics, again, are used in the learning process.

I'll note that when I mouse over the left-hand side, it actually shows me the lessons of the program and we're currently in the operating control section.

(Web-Delivery Demonstration.)

MR. RABE: So you'll note that this is a web-delivered application where customers of this manufacturer are able to actually access this via the web. It's not currently available, but will be shortly. So this is again some product that I'm demonstrating that is cutting edge, if you will, from the standpoint of where training exists today.

But the final segment that you viewed also gives you some lead into the next presenter, Paul Freedman, because as you noticed, there was an animated graphic there. What happens when I move the lever? We you move the lever and we saw the machine react. But that's only hearing and seeing that experience. That is not being able to do it yourself. To find that capability, Vista partnered with Simlog from Montreal to help provide that experience to the people being trained.

Paul, I'd like to invite you up so that you can share your products with the committee.

MR. FREEDMAN: Good morning, everyone. I would like to begin by echoing Bruce's comments and thanking the committee for making time for us. It's not always easy to go from one person to another as part of the same presentation.

(A slide presentation.)

MR. FREEDMAN: But as you'll see in a moment, the things that we're doing at Simlog and the things that Vista is doing already are very complementary, and that's why it came to be that we're working on things together.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: I'll talk for a few minutes about Simlog. Bruce has already talked a little bit about the kinds of new simulator products that we've come to call personal simulators, and then show off a little bit about what they can do.

Then as a third part of our presentation, this will constitute the second, we'll talk about things that you may be able to see down the road.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: I would like to begin by simply pointing out that Simlog is a younger company, although Vista is not so very old either. We're based in Montreal, Canada.

There's a series of handouts that we've distributed. I apologize. They were printed out of order, so I hope everyone is now at the beginning to follow along with the presentation that I'll be providing.

We are only working in the heavy-equipment world, began in the forest industry, doing work in mining and construction as you'll hear in a moment, and we've come to build only one kind of product.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: I don't have to remind the committee that when it comes to operating heavy equipment, when it comes to learning how to do the work well, this is skills-based learning, and there's no getting around lots and lots of drill and practice, but under the supervision of someone who knows how to do the work well.

Whether you're learning to ice skate or play the piano or run an excavator, the fact is there's no getting away from the time and the supervision and that's part of why it's so costly. There is machine time. There is people time, and there's always an element of risk.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: At Simlog, we've come to recognize that there are ways of reducing training costs and improving the way the training is delivered. By coming up with a different kind, a new kind of simulator-based help.

Bruce has already pointed out that no one is every going to give me work to do simply because I know how to run a simulated crane well, or I know how to run a simulated excavator well. The fact is I'm paid to do real work at the controls of real equipment.

But what simulation can do is help you better judge who are the people apt for this kind of work. Just like we're not all born into the world to become professional athletes or with the musical talent to become professional musicians, the fact is we're not all born into this world to become really, really good at the controls of heavy equipment.

Simulation can help pick out not the people who will become your all-stars, but the people who will struggle when they go on to the real thing and will never learn to do it well.

Of course, you can get people going on the simulator, prepare them for the time at the controls, and even look at people doing the work already and get them to sit down at the simulator together since on the simulator everybody is doing the same work.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: We have been working with the manufacturers. We've been working with training professionals like Vista to make sure that the products that we build incorporate best practices. In the case of our simulators from mobile and tower cranes, we've also been working with the National Commission for the certification of crane operators, Graham Grant and his team at the NCCCO, to look at the kinds of skills tests that are part of the practical exam to be certified as CCCO safe on a mobile crane or a tower crane, for example, and then built into our products, exercises to help get you ready for that kind of certification.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: We've also come out with something brand new for hydraulic excavators and this is really what I wanted to show off.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: This graph is meant to describe in a picture what we're really trying to do. You can see that there are two axes. The horizontal one is price and complexity because the more complicated your simulator becomes, the more costly it becomes.

The vertical axis is training value, and up in the top right corner, you can see that I put in something that I've called flight simulator. Montreal is also home to CAE who builds the real flight simulators for aircraft training, pilot training, and they are 15-or-20-million-dollar creatures. They provide a tremendous amount of value, but they're very costly, in part because they're very, very complicated. Down at the bottom left, I put down video games which don't cost a whole lot, but then again aren't helping you very much when you leave the confines of your living room and step outdoors.

The third diamond is the personal simulator idea. We're trying to shoot for as much training value as we can, but at a completely different kind of price point. And we can do this today because PCs today, the kind of Windows PCs we can count everyone to have, don't cost a whole lot, and have enough computing horsepower and graphics horsepower to make these kinds of graphics applications work well.

The other trick is to use different kinds of off-the-shelf USB-ready controls, and I brought along, as you can see, these are simple PC joysticks that you can pick up at Circuit City or Best Buy or even Wal-Mart for that matter, with a little USB plug to go right into the back of your PC.

So Simlog is really a company providing simulator ingredients, and we count on our customers for simulator controls that we can make available to them and the kind of PCs that we need to have.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: There is an instructional design flavor as you'll see in a moment to what we do. We're doing much more than saying a plane flies like this, so our simulator of a plane flies like this.

In our kind of heavy equipment world, we don't have an FCC or back home a Transport Canada that says if you want to build an excavator simulator, this is what it should do. The fact is there aren't any, and so that's why we sit down with folks like Vista and say what do you do to learn to run a real excavator? What do you teach someone first? What do you teach someone second? How do you know if they're doing it well? What can we use to measure what goes on?

So out of the box we build into our product all of this training help in this special instructional design way.

You can see at the bottom the training self-paced and unsupervised. The idea is that people sit and work away at your PC, because the trainers are busy doing other kinds of things outside.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: The simulation software, as a I mentioned already, measures very carefully what goes on, much more carefully than you can measure in the real world.

In the case of a crane simulator, we can measure maximum load sway when you're making a pick, while in the real world, you'd have to instrument a load in order to make those kinds of measurements with special data acquisition.

In a simulated world, nothing happens by itself. It's the programming behind the scenes that makes everything happen so we have universal knowledge about everything that's taking place.

Down at the bottom, I point out that the data is for measuring, not judging. And I don't want to belabor this point, but simply point out that the simulator will never say good work, Paul. The simulator will simply say here is Paul's data. Here is Bruce's data. Here is Greg's data.

It's up to people now to look at the data and decide whether the data suggests that Paul knows what he's doing. The data may be poor. It may be poor because I've just sat down.

On the other hand, if Paul said to his employer that he knows what he needs to know and sits down at the simulator and does poorly, that's suggesting that he's not being entirely truthful.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: Results, of course, pile up on the PC in different ways in the form of a file or go can go into a certain kind of database.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: I mentioned the simple PC joysticks that a lot of our customers are using all around the world in fact. There's an industrial but still USB alternative that some customers are using. Instead of $50 each, these are roughly $500 each. But then again they're industrial and they've got a really good look and feel.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: In fact some customers go on to something we call replicate controls and you can see we fitted real industrial control handles down onto the shafts of a PC joystick on the left, and an industrial USB joystick on the right. The cost is higher, but it's still USB.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: Different kinds of tabletop mounting brackets to bring these joysticks down to the sides of your chair.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: We have customers who have created their own. The one on the right is from the Ohio Operating Engineers in fact. There's a little desktop PC behind an operator chair, fitted with those industrial USB joysticks. The one on the left is where the mockup of a crane cab in Australia.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: This is a picture from a customer in Finland, in fact, and you can see they've got four bays, four stations set up, one side-by-side, where they're training operators of mobile and tower cranes.

(Demonstration.)

MR. FREEDMAN: I will bring this down. This is how things start. Oh, somehow the display resolution has changed. I'm just going to send that back to something that's bigger for everyone to see. There we go.

If I've created an account for myself with a log-in name and password, this is where I would type it in. I'm just going to proceed without that. And this is the simple user interface that's created.

I'll begin by showing you some of the details of the 3-D modeling. It will become evident who are particular partner was. Bruce already mentioned that animation can give you a sense of when I move a joystick what happens.

But here I can really show it off to people and people can learn by doing. So as you can see, raise and lower the boom. I can even drive it around. Now I'm in a mode where moving the left joystick forward moves the left track forward and back.

The construction site is rather big. If I just quickly give you a sense of things, you'll see that we've created something very large, very clean, very safe, by the way. Accidents never happen on the simulated job site, in part because there aren't any people other than the one that you're becoming at the controls of this excavator.

I want to point out that, of course, we can change units, but more importantly we can change controls from loader backhoe style to the SAE style which I happen to prefer. That's the kind that I know. And I'll just quickly, quickly show you a sense of what it's like to actually work with this.

I know that time is passing, and so I'll simply jump down to what we call the last of the modules. By the time you're here, you're supposed to know what it is that you're doing already. We have a way of changing the point of view.

I can see that I'm going to go into a driving mode. We pop up these little travel levers now. It tells me that as I rock the right joystick forward, you can see that right track moving, the left one. So I'll drive myself close.

This is a trench and load exercise. So by the time you get here, you're supposed to know what it is that you're doing. Click out of that mode. See what I'm doing as I'm bringing this around.

Remember there's no one around so it's rather safe, and if material falls down, it's because I'm simply not doing the work very well. But just to give you a sense of time, there is no magic here. This is a simple Windows PC. This is what new technology can finally do and what today's PCs have finally made possible.

We're counting all kinds of things, if the bucket is closed too far, if the bucket is opened too far. You can see, too, that to give you a sense of depth, there are little yellow dots moving underneath the teeth and if I move myself back over the part that I've dug, how that also gives me a sense of how things have changed.

If I've decided I've done enough, then I end the exercise. There's all kinds of data that's displayed. How much time I took. How much volume was removed from the digging target. Bucket slams, that's the bucket full open or full close, whether the bucket is passing over the cab of the truck, even though the driver has gone for lunch. How much volume went into the box, the truck, whether I was digging outside the red perimeter, all kinds of details that would be very hard to measure in the real world.

I hope that people will get a chance over lunch when we stop to get some time with this. I'm simply going to go back to the presentation now.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: This is meant to be a description of how people are using these kinds of little simulators today. On the left-hand side, if you follow along, it begins with training candidates who can be pre-screened and then prepared for real work at the bottom.

In the middle column, you see instead we begin with best operators, and at company facilities or training schools, these are people who establish benchmarks.

Remember that I said that the simulator is not judging. It's just measuring. So if you begin with people who know how to do the real work well, they can generate benchmarks for you on the simulator of how well someone can do on the simulator if they know how to do the real work well, and that becomes a way of helping people improve.

In some cases, those same benchmarks are used when you're hiring new people, and Paul comes in off the street and says, "Hire me. I've been running cranes for ten years."

And you say, "Fine. Sit down at the simulator here at our company. We're looking for someone who can do things as well as these other folks who have been doing the real work well."

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: We are building new things, working with other people off highway trucks, wheel loaders, moving more aggressively into the earth moving world as you can see.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: The fact is we've discovered that this idea makes so much sense, and we have sold hundreds of licenses now all around the world to people in places very far away that we never travel to, because they can pick up their own simulator controls as easily as going into a local store sometimes with simulation software we can make available in the form of a file to download from a website.

That's the end of this second part of the presentation. I want to now go into this third part, talking about future trends and here Bruce and I will go back and forth a bit.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So, yes, so Paul's presentation was to show exactly what is available in the field today. The demonstration that you witnessed is available for sale, and there is actually a flyer that I believe I also passed out, showing you some more information about that excavation simulator that's available.

So I encourage you to review that.

Now I would like to spend the final part of the presentation, the short while that we have left, describing what we see for the future. We have a short presentation to do that.

We'll talk about two kinds of changes on the horizon. The fact that more flexible training and delivery is available through the use of the technology you've witnessed and more comprehensive training content can be provided.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So first the training and delivery from a CBT's evolution standpoint. You today got local PC installation of the computer-based learning products. As we add networking capability to that, it adds a lot of capability in terms of record-keeping, being able to know exactly what a student learned and how well he did, how well he scored.

And finally the web-enabled, local browser, remote-server content approach gives you the use-as-need and you can pay as you go. And many of our customers have already expressed a need for that, and you saw one example where we have a client that's actually pointed that direction very soon for the marketplace.

(A change of slides.)

MR. FREEDMAN: In terms of personal simulation, though, things aren't moving forward in the same way, and that's because when you move a joystick or a simulator control of some kind, you need to see a change right away; and, in fact, behind the scenes, the simulation software is actually looking many, many times, as much as 30 times, 60 times, a second to see if something is happening at the simulator controls.

There's just no way of obtaining that kind of back and forth, over the web, or even over a network in an easy way. So this slide is meant to point out that for now we call these applications hosted. They have to be installed on the PC that you're using them on.

It's possible one day to have a mobile crane interact in the same world, in the same simulated world, with an excavator or some other kind of simulated equipment.

But we're very far away from the day where you can plug in your simulator controls and through a browser run back and forth to a big, big computer somewhere else with the same kind of web-enabling that's possible in the CBT world.

MR. RABE: So now you have the computer-base training approach for comprehension, where you can actually use visual inspection for routine maintenance so that areas comprehension, viewing the screen, and diagnostics and trouble-shooting can be included in the computer-based learning module.

MR. FREEDMAN: And as we pointed out, the skills kind of training can now take place at an affordable price to learn what the controls do and, of course, how to master at least in a simulated world, what needs to be done, because there's always all kinds of other things that need to be learned in the real world.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So as you witnessed in today's presentation, these are two standalone concepts at this point, and as you might imagine, Simlog continuing to work with Vista, plans to incorporate these two concepts into one, if you will, and reaping the advantage of synergy as we do that.

Personal simulation will be embedded, we believe, into computer-based learning products of the future, and it will create a new generation of multi-media products, single unified, learning management system where you can create the whole learning experience to the point that you need to put the person on the machine. Vista has already started to work on this approach.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So as you see in this slide, where we earlier talked about learning by what you see, learning by what you hear, and, of course, learning by what you experience, we have taken a huge step forward, in my opinion, towards creating this full learning environment prior to putting a person on a machine. Of course, that translates into a safer environment for training.

(A change of slides.)

MR. RABE: So from a conclusion standpoint, today, you have a special CBT available from Vista that can be local. It can be networked or web-delivered. Also then from Simlog, you have the personal simulation that you have witnessed, which is just local delivery at this point.

Tomorrow and in this ever-changing world in a global marketplace, we'll be able to deliver the type of training required by end user. That can be pervasive, anywhere in the world, distributed and also the databased records can be retained for the needed purposes.

MR. FREEDMAN: And that completes the presentation in three parts. I'd like to thank the members of the committee for their attention. I apologize for the hour. We managed to finish up a little early so there would be time for questions. And as I said, Bruce and I are here. I hope that over lunch, people get a chance to come and have a turn.

MR. RABE: I also wish to the committee from Vista Training, and I do encourage everyone to have a try at the simulator over the lunch period.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I would like to entertain any questions or comments of these folks over the lunch break if we could. We're going to break for lunch right now. We are going to try to compress the schedule this afternoon so we complete our meeting this afternoon.

And for those of you that would like to try to leave D.C. this evening, you can go ahead and give that a shot. So there's a 45 -- I beg your pardon -- you have 35 minutes for lunch. We're going to start up again at 12:15.

For those of you new to the building, there's

a cafeteria on the sixth floor. You can get just about anything there, and we'll be back at 12:15 sharp we're starting again. Thank you.

(Whereupon, there was a lunch recess.)

A F T E R N O O NS E S S I O N

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: If we could get everyone to take their seats, please, we'd like to get started as quickly as possible, and Sarah has a couple of things to enter into the record.

MS. SHORTALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to mark for the record as Exhibit 9, the combined Power Point presentation by Simlog and Vista Training, as Exhibit No. 10, the handout from Vista on hydraulic excavator personal simulation, and as Exhibit No. 11, the Vista Training catalog.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Sarah. What we're going to do, and you'll have to bear with me as we go through the afternoon, because I'm trying to juggle presentations and get things to fit in so that we can try to end this meeting this afternoon.

What we're going to do between now and one o'clock is the work group reports, and we're going to start Mr. Greg Strudwick on rollover protection.

WORK GROUP REPORT - ROLLOVER PROTECTION

MR. STRUDWICK: Rollover Protection Work Group met Monday afternoon, and culminated what has been an effort on Emmett Russell's part, a great effort on Mr. Russell's part, to take current information on rollover protection for rollers and compactors and disseminate that pile of information, including some international information into a comprehensive addendum or a paper, white paper, that can be entered into the current rollover protection standard that will cover compactors and asphalt rollers.

He has done a great job. We have the document down to a couple of pages. We're going to do a little Wordsmith work that the directorate is going to assist us with, and we will have a finished product to you at our next meeting.

So kudos to Emmett. It wouldn't have happened without his constant effort, and Frank did contribute this time and his effort likewise, and we did all meet, but Emmett carried the ball. So I don't think his name should be Russell. It should be Smith, but that's the way it is, and that's my report on ROPS. And you will get the document next time we meet.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Greg. I had the opportunity to attend all the work groups, and things progressed very nicely in the last couple of days.

Next we'd like to hear from the residential fall protection folks. Is that Michael or Tom or --

MR. BRODERICK: Michael is going to.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Michael, if you would be so kind.

WORK GROUP REPORT - RESIDENTIAL FALL PROTECTION

MR. THIBODEAUX: We had a little less than 30 folks there yesterday at our meeting, and quite a good discussion. One person that's not listed on our report apparently forgot to sign in, but Scott was there and made some contributions to our work group.

We had lengthy discussions on fall hazards and protection issues from the residential contractors from around the country as well as other associations.

Most of it was fall protection during roof truss operations was the biggest issue. Arizona contractors and the HBA there gave a presentation on the things that they have done in Arizona, using written fall protection plans and extensive training of all of their workers and some of the subs they use and how that has reduced the number of accidents and injuries when working in this particular area.

We also had a presentation concerning the Frame Pro System which is a wall hanging scaffold system that is utilized both inside and outside the wall area. And there were some pros and cons on it. I mean it is a scaffold system.

It has been in use a little less than a year. Does have some additional up and down ladder work and climbing over and under truss tails that expose the workers to some additional hazards. But those are some things that we're going to be looking at in the future also, getting more data and details on how these are used.

We also discussed STD 3.01A, whether it needs to continue to be utilized, whether it needs to be done away with, and the consensus of the contractors and the associations there were that to keep STD 3.01A active with the possibility of modifying some of its terms and conditions for use in the residential construction.

Also talked about revising the definition of what residential construction should include, and three of those were including concrete block wall construction, poly-steel construction and metal stud steel framing construction in addition to wood frame as part of residential construction.

Some recommendations or things that we, as a work group are going to do and have already requested, is collecting the state OSHA residential fall protection standards and when they were implemented and what things have happened since the implementation of those new standards.

Some of the states have higher fall protection standards than six feet and with other restrictions and whether that has improved their fall protection and improved the number of accidents and injuries that have occurred, we think that's something we need to find out about and Kevin has graciously said that he would contact the state folks that he knows and see if he could get that information for us.

We've already talked to Matt about NIOSH, getting information, specific fall information, concerning residential fall activities, falls from roofs, from top plates, scaffolding, ladders, and from other elevations.

We also have requested from OSHA what is the status of your special emphasis program for residential construction, increased inspections, more citations, training initiatives, those kinds of things, to see what is helping because I think the general import of our meeting yesterday was that training, whatever system you're going to be using, training is the key and getting that out to the workers that are going to be doing the work is imperative.

We hope, when we get a lot of this data, to schedule another work group meeting in advance of the next ACCSH meeting to be able to have a more updated report on where we're going.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much. Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Oh, Greg Strudwick. Just for the record, Mr. Murphy's contribution to the rollover protection group was significant. I didn't mean to slight you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. Thank you.

MR. SWANSON: As long as we're on the record, Bruce Swanson from OSHA. I think perhaps what you meant to say, Mr. Thibodeaux, when talking about those state plans with higher trigger heights for fall protection was you wanted to indicate that that was a lower standard at a higher height.

(Laugher.)

MR. THIBODEAUX: I stand corrected.

MS. SHORTALL: At this time, I would like to enter into the record the meeting report from the residential fall protection work group as Exhibit No. 12.

(Whereupon, Exhibit No. 12 was marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: The next work group, Tom Broderick just wants to make a statement about the diversity multilingual group.

MR. BRODERICK: Yes, I was expecting to make the report tomorrow morning, so I'm not prepared at this time.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Understood. Thank you, Tom. The next thing on the revised agenda will be Ruth McCully. She will here in a few minutes, and we will have a discussion about the Katrina, Rita, what's going on in the Gulf states, so we do have a few minutes here before Ruth is ready to go. So I don't know what you want.

MR. BRODERICK: I approve the minutes.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Did everybody get a copy of the minutes?

MR. SWANSON: Have you had time to peruse said minutes?

MR. BRODERICK: Yes, I believe so.

MR. SWANSON: I know that Mr. Kavicky had a short, looking for a short five minutes on the calendar. This might be --

MR. KAVICKY: Thank you, Mr. Swanson. I won't take five minutes. I just wanted to make everyone aware if you have seen the new safety and health information bulletin by the name of Hazards of Manually Lifting Balloon Frame Walls, this document right here.

This is a new publication that came out of the office through a situation that we had down in Chicago where we had 16 of our carpenters injured while raising balloon frame walls, in excess of two stories, in excess of 3,000 pounds for the wall.

Over 16 workers were injured, some with back injuries, fractures of vertebraes. We had one individual that's permanently paralyzed from the waist down, and this was very upsetting.

So we went to the three area offices in the Chicago Land area and through the collective debate and gathering of information was the result of this bulletin. I just wanted to say how much we appreciate the input and swiftness that OSHA did do on putting that through.

I know the National Association of Homebuilders was involved in looking through it and adjusting and correcting some of it.

What we plan on doing with this bulletin is informing our members, our national office, international office and having our 120 full-time agents going out into the field, going on every residential site that we have and dropping this bulletin off, so, again, I appreciate OSHA's swiftness in this production. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Tom.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I just had a couple of quick items. One of them is Greg and I talked about planning a noise and silica work group meetings. We did not have them in conjunction with this meeting, but we will have them, and we'll let everybody know when they're going to be. Hopefully we'll get one together in January or February.

Second, I wanted to put in a request for a brief discussion about setting the dates for these meetings in advance so that we can have more notice and know for sure when they're going to be, and it would make it a lot easier in terms of inviting people to participate in our, public in particular, in our work group meetings.

Third, I wanted to follow up on our discussion at the last meeting about putting the work products from the ACCSH, including the minutes of these meetings, on the website. Right now our website does not even have the minutes of these meetings posted, and at the last meeting, we had some discussion.

I think there was a lot of consensus about taking the work products like, for example, we would like to post the minutes from our trenching work group on the ACCSH website so people can have access to them more readily. So I'd like to raise those two issues.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks, Scott. Mike?

MR. THIBODEAUX: Yes. Mike Thibodeaux. Tom's presentation on this Hazards of Manually Lifting Balloon Frame Walls, the question really is OSHA or has anyone translated this into Spanish for use, and if not, is that possible to get done so that we can hand it out to our crews, mainly in the south and southwest?

MR. SWANSON: Is that a question you would like me to respond to, Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Yes, now that you're here.

MR. SWANSON: Okay. That's a very valid point, Mr. Thibodeaux. I do not know and strongly suspect that that has not been translated into Spanish. It should be given the nature of the housing industry, and sitting here off the cuff, all I can do is make a commitment that we will make every endeavor to get that translated into Spanish, either out of our budget or the good offices of some of our friends out in the construction community. But it should be done. Thank you for bringing it up.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Bruce. Comments? Any other comments while we have a couple of minutes before --

MR. HAYSLIP: On the minutes?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Anything, Michael.

MR. HAYSLIP: Mike Hayslip, NESTI. Under the minutes under Frank Payne's discussion and the notes of that, I would profess that they seem to accurately reflect the conversations. But I think there was one thing that may have been left out or a couple of things.

I remember specifically a request for a report to be made back to this committee, such that had three elements to it. One is what has been or will be developed in respect to training through the Harwood grants? What is the status of said training? And when or what will it take if it's not currently to get it in the public domain? It's not reflected in these minutes.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Mike. Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: One more comment on our work group meeting in Chicago that I failed to mention was that David Benjamin, with Utility Contractors Association of Chicago, presented us a copy of a disk that has numerous topics that have to do with underground excavation work and they're in Spanish and they're in English and they're available through the Chicago Land Council -- I guess through your place, Tom -- as well as NUCA and they're very comprehensive and very easy to use.

So I would encourage you, if you have any interest in excavating or in pipe laying that you purchase a copy of these tapes or actually DVDs, excuse me, and that's it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks, Greg. While we have a few minutes, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the minutes if I could.

MR. HAYSLIP: So moved.

MR. BRODERICK: Second.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you.

MS. SHORTALL: Are you going to make a motion to revise the minutes?

MR. HAYSLIP: Yes.

MR. SWANSON: You should. Yes.

MR. HAYSLIP: I would like to make a motion to revise the minutes in line with my previous comments.

MR. SWANSON: Second.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Pardon?

MR. BRODERICK: Discussion? I think that part of your amended concern is answered here under Frank Payne's report. He indicates that there is a problem making past materials that were created with Harwood grant monies available because of copyright issues, and that in the new Harwood grant RFPs, they have taken care of that.

MR. HAYSLIP: Comment? I understand that. I would still like to seek a little more specificity with respect to what monies have been given out for and what is the status of what has been gotten for that money. I don't see specificity. I understand the issues of clearance and such. It doesn't answer my concern.

MR. BRODERICK: But the work product is in the public domain, right?

MR. HAYSLIP: To rehash, I would simply like a report that shows to me and others on this committee what work products were expected to be done and what is the status of those work products and how do you get access to them, that's all.

MR. SWANSON: Gentlemen, if I may. The issue it seems to me is not the substance of our responsibility which we will get back to the committee that which we can get back with, but rather whether these minutes accurately reflect the request that was made last meeting.

So that's all we're trying to get into. Do these minutes reflect what Mr. Hayslip requested of the agency. Whether the agency can and will get back to this committee or Mr. Hayslip is an entirely secondary issue it seems to me.

MR. HAYSLIP: Yeah. Agreed. I didn't ask for it to be done. I'm just saying this doesn't reflect my understanding of the minutes. It didn't go any further than that. We may later, but we haven't yet.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: At this point, we're going to leave the motion on the table on the minutes, and we're going to go ahead to Ruth's presentation and then we will get back to this, and there's a number of other corrections in the minutes that we have to talk about.

So I'd like to welcome Ruth McCully here today. She is going to spend some time with us and talk a little bit about what's going on down in the Gulf States, and we really appreciate your time and effort coming over here today. Thank you.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS/KATRINA-RITA-WILMA/FEEDBACK UPDATE

MS. McCULLY: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Ruth McCully, director of science, technology and medicine for OSHA, and with me are two members of my staff, John Ferris and David Ippolito, who are also involved from day one and ongoing with the hurricane response, too.

(A slide presentation.)

What we'd like to do today is give you an overview of OSHA activities, a big picture of our activities to date, but then also wind up with maybe some opportunities where we can gather information and maybe work together on some issues as well so I'm going to start.

Well, maybe I'm not. Okay. All right.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: This is a map of Hurricane Katrina which probably many of you have seen, but as you can see how it tracks that big red circle in the middle of the Gulf is when it was a category 5 hurricane. It actually hit and landed at a category 4 level. But you can see the track of the storm and just how it got larger and so forth.

The picture on the right really shows the matrix for the damage of the storm as it traveled from Louisiana to Mississippi and to then Alabama.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here is a shot of when Katrina came to shore, and I'm going to go over these somewhat quickly because I know you are pressed for time, but the computer is doing something today, and I don't know what it's doing.

(Laughter.)

MS. McCULLY: But if you recall the center of that slide, there was one building standing with a lot of foundations around it. But you can really see that it's a really good view of just what was left standing. I have some others here.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: This is Diamond Head, Mississippi. You can basically see there are no structures left there. It is just foundations.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: In particular, the next one, I think, as you'll see is Wave Land, which has a similar type of setting. One of the challenges for us, of course, as compared to World Trade Center, which was a location that was a 16-acre site, this is 90,000 square miles of damage. Particular if you're recording where you're finding instances or hazards, there are no street signs left in these locations, so we're really requiring GPS coordinates so that we can identify where we're actually finding hazards, or where we are, so we can record them.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Gulfport, Mississippi, this is days after the storm. You can begin to see the blue tarps that are showing up on the roofs.

I remember flying into Florida after the hurricanes last year, and we thought they were all swimming pools, but they're not. They're all blue tarps that are on the houses.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: This is a shot on the left of New Orleans and the flooding. Many of us have been to conferences in New Orleans. You can see the aerial view of the flooding, and I have a couple of slides here of ships and boats that ended up in very strange locations.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: This is Mississippi. Here you can see some more that came ashore, kind of landed on the middle of roadways and were really tossed about.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: This is Charity Hospital in New Orleans. This was taken about early October, and it was about six weeks after the fact. There was considerable damage that was done to the hospital after the hurricane actually hit. There were some residents, for example, in hurricane.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: You can see in a short amount of time in a high-humidity-type of situation like this the impact of the water damage on the hospital. I have another slide I'm going to show you in a minute.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: I want to talk a little bit about Katrina response activities. One of the things that you can see is the whole idea of utility restoration. This is a flooded area in Louisiana where there were leaking gas lines that had to be dealt with.

But the first thing that had to be dealt was the whole issue of power restoration. And even before the hurricane hit, whether it was this year or the previous year, our area offices were in contact with the power utility companies in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and had already made arrangements to identify where their staging areas were so that the day after the storm, they could meet them at their staging areas and basically start providing safety and health briefings for them.

For example, the year before in Florida, we actually went around with the safety and health folks from the utility companies doing spot checks. So that's one of the first things that we're engaged in.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here you can begin to see again the whole issue of utility repair and, for example, this is some of the areas why it's so difficult to get around and get supplies into areas when you have debris all strewn about as well as downed power lines. This is a generator tapping into a power line. We put out information on that.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Another big response that we had to do is debris removal and management, and here you can see just a pile of debris that's on the left, and there are millions and millions of square yards of debris that are yet to be handled.

This was complicated in Mississippi because they're under extreme drought. In fact the only rainfall they really had was from Katrina. Even after the hurricane hit, they went back to their drought situation so there could be no burning of debris, so there was just these giant piles of debris that were being formed until I could get to a point where they could figure out how they were going to manage that debris.

Truckload after truckload after truckload of debris comes into these sites and for a safety and health perspective, that's the whole issue of work zone safety. These trucks are going in. They're dropping off their load, and then they're leaving, and they're traveling at about 35 to 40 miles an hour in a pretty tight space, one after another, backing up, dumping a load and leaving. So that's a safety and health concern that we pay a lot of attention to.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here you can see again the debris of the trees being down, chainsaw safety, trimming of trees. That's also happening the next day after the storm and onward.

Here you can see basically a ground view as compared to an aerial view of the just miles and miles of debris that are being dealt with. South of I-10 in Mississippi, very little of this has been touched as of about the beginning of -- well, middle of last month, they said about only 10 percent of the debris had really been touched south of I-10 in Mississippi. This is going to be ongoing for a long time.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Highway repair. This is going to a huge project that's going to be taking place, and some of you have seen these slides, but this is something that they're going to have to be looking at down the road as to how to deal with the highway repair.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Recovery operations. I showed you one slide of the blue tarps in Gulfport. Here's another view where you can see basically every house is tarped, and in the jargon of hurricanes, you basically have a blue tarping operation going on.

That's one of the things that was addressed, for example, in the site health and safety plan were the safety and health aspects of the blue tarping operation.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Housing and repair and reconstruction is a major issue in response and recovery. We're starting to grapple with that more in New Orleans, as we'll start going into a demolition type of mode in New Orleans with the large number of house there.

But likewise, you have to have a place to put people. These are, for example, the types of trailers that were there in waiting for housing for folks.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here's another picture of Charity Hospital. Again this was taken in early October. You can see in just a short amount of time the amount of mold that can start to form and really eat away at the structures down there.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: All right. Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29th. We have three offices down there. We have an office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one in Jackson, Mississippi, and one in Mobile, Alabama.

I already told you that we had already contacted utility companies. First thing we did was to make sure that everyone was safe and accounted for, and they were, although some had sustained damage, and at that point, they went out on the road. From that moment on, we have had people down there working nonstop on hurricane response.

We have an national emergency management plan which Jonathan Snare, our acting assistant secretary, activated on September 2nd, 2005. This was largely in response to Secretary Chertoff's announcement that this was an incident of national significance.

Once that announcement is made, then the national response plan is activated, and OSHA has its own internal national emergency management plan that details from the assistant secretary down to the basic compliance officer on the ground, what their role and responsibility is in response to a hurricane.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here are some slides of Jonathan Snare when he visited the locations down on site. He had been down at the same locations in April for a conference. But here you can get some closeup views of actual building destruction. This particular building was unstable, as you can see.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: The next one is missing all of its bottom floor and part of its second floor, and so you can really get a sense of the damage from the storm surge that can occur in these storms.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: At this point, he's looking over a block that is basically the marble slabs from the home of the President of the Confederacy. It was a home that had been standing since the 1840s and it was destroyed in this storm.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: All right. I want to go back to the National Emergency Management Plan. It's a key document for us, because it really does identify our role, and it provides for the coordination of state plans and consultation projects.

It also established specialized response teams for us in the areas of collapsed structure, chemical, biological and radiological issues, and those specialized response teams were activated and were sent down there in the first two weeks of the storm.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: One of the other things that happens with the National Emergency Management Plan is we have to organize ourselves into our own incident command structure. So the national office was organized into this incident command structure which many of you are familiar with.

Jonathan Snare was the incident commander. We had an information officer. We had an operations section. I was the lead for the operations section. The operations section dealt with both enforcement and technical assistance issues. The logistics section dealt with the technical equipment and supply, medical support, information technology, and safety and health support for our deployed assets.

We also had a finance section which dealt with the budget coordination administration issues, procurement in a short amount of time for supplies that we would need.

We also had a planning section that was made up of the regional administrators from Regions 2, 4, and 6, as well as our own executive staff, and we met every afternoon at four o'clock, basically to get an update on what had been accomplished that day and what we needed to focus on for the next day to keep the response ongoing.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: OSHA also has a role under the National Response Plan. I want to put this in perspective here. The National Response Plan was signed by all cabinet secretaries last December. It went into effect in April.

The first time we had an opportunity to exercise the National Response Plan was during TOP OFF III of this year. This was the first incident that the National Response Plan was used and activated. It only happened to be the largest natural disaster to hit the country.

So there were a lot of lessons learned in here, and we're still learning as we go, but it was the first test. Too bad it was one of the biggest ones that we had to face.

Under the National Response Plan, the Secretary of Homeland Security has established an interagency incident management group which is staffed by representatives throughout Department of Homeland Security sections as well as each department.

Our representatives to the interagency incident management group are John and David, so they were there basically working with Department of Homeland Security seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

It basically is the brain trust for DHS and it's forward looking and forward thinking. What are the issues that are going to be coming on the horizon that we need to be preparing for now.

The National Response Coordination Center is FEMA's coordination center our of headquarters. We had staff over there. The Secretary of HHS set up a HHS secretary operations center. We are a support function to HHS.

We staff that with both industrial hygienists and occupational physicians to provide worker health and safety support to them and questions and answers to their questions. We also provided OSHA liaisons to them in the field at the joint field offices.

Our biggest role is under the Workers Safety and Health Support Annex. We are the coordinating agency for the Workers Safety and Health Support Annex.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Under this role, we provide technical assistance during an emergency, during the initial response and recovery phase, and we also coordinate the activities of the cooperating agencies to the annex.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: The Worker Safety and Health Annex was activated on September 11th, and we received a mission assignment from FEMA on September 19th that basically supports all our activities that are ongoing under the annex in this response.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: The Worker Safety and Health Annex gives us the coordination role, but it's the only support annex of the National Response Plan that requires activation, and as I said we were learning as we go. We didn't get activated right away but we were activated and we were integrated into the response.

One of the things that we established early on at the joint field offices and at the site is an interagency safety and health committee made up of all the Federal agencies, Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, HHS, all that are responding, that are dealing with safety and health issues.

We had safety and health committee meetings on a daily basis. We're now, in some locations, meeting weekly and other places twice a week.

The different Federal agencies maintain their primary responsibility for the safety and health for their employees. There are very specific duties identified under the annex and these really link back to our activity at World Trade Center.

We provide a safety and health technical advice. We will take the lead on developing health and safety plans. We will do 24/7 safety monitoring if required. We will coordinate incident-specific training for the responders. We will establish a PPE program.

We'll coordinate with appropriate medical authorities which we did, for example, for inoculations and vaccinations that might be needed in the area. So it's really whatever the incident calls. There are specific activities that can be called into play when this annex is activated.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: The goal is really to address all the worker safety and health issues that can be raised in a response and to be proactive. Again in an incident command system, we may not be the incident safety officer, but the annex and the liaison person that's in the field is to support the safety officer in the incident command system.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: What were the potential hazards that we were facing or that we had identified in this type of response? They were many. Asbestos, we had buildings, as you can see, that went back, that could be 150 years old that were being destroyed.

Noise from a number sources, chainsaws, generators, personal protective equipment, carbon monoxide, electrical safety, poly-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from burning of plastics, molds, fungi, cranes, bacterial, both from sewage as well as hand hygiene. People were going into these waters. They were coming out. How do we deal with those bacterial issues?

Metal fume dust, handling human remains, we specifically worked with HHS on that, and went to ships that they were working with and to provide assistance to them on the proper handling, safe handling of human remains.

Heat stress, horrible generator silica particulates. Rodent, snakes and insects was a big issue down there, particularly with water moccasins, and psychological stress. So it really had the gambit of number of different types of hazards that we were facing.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Here is a summary chart, and this was up-to-date as of Friday of last week. One of the things that we've done is we've taken a number of samples. We have sampling ongoing in all three states, and on our website, on the public website.

You can click on a page that will give the sampling results. There's a summary page such as this, and there's also a map where you can click on like the State of Louisiana, and it will list what samples have been taken, what occupations, what were the sample results, were they over the permissible exposure limit?

You can also click, for example, on gases and vapors and just get all our gases and vapor sampling results. But you can see, for example, we've taken over 2,000 samples at this point. Most of our samples have been non-detected. We have some samples that are above the permissible exposure limit. These are in the areas of silica, noise and particulate dust.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Potential safety hazards. Many of these you would expect: falls from heights, unstable working surfaces. Work zone traffic safety is a major one for us.

Building entry and structural collapse. Particularly in Louisiana you had buildings that were basically closed up in close spaces. So we talked about how do we deal with reentering these buildings. They're not really confined spaces, but what are safe entry procedures for these closed buildings, if you will.

There's work going on over water, so there's drowning hazards, and the other issue we were concerned about was oil and chemical plant startup, and we worked with the association in Louisiana and contacted them to make sure that these issues had been addressed. Remember you have a high absentee rate because people aren't available. They're there taking care of their own homes and so forth, so we wanted to deal with that issue.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: OSHA's roles to date. What have we done? I talked about the utility power restoration assistance. We have been providing technical advice to the joint field offices. We've done field interventions, and I'll show you a chart that lists the thousands that we have done.

We've assisted the other Federal agencies with job hazard analyses, worked very closely with EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers.

We developed a comprehensive IH monitoring plan as to what we should be sampling for at different phases of recovery. First thing we did was we developed a health and safety plan for hurricane response that was then shared in the joint field offices and each Federal agency could come up with its own health and safety plan, based on that.

Under the annex and under the mission assignment, we have tasked NIEHS to provide training and they have gone down to the JFOs, provided briefings on the type of training that can be provided and as the Federal agencies require training, then they can work with NIEHS to provide that training.

We're working on a psychological first aid. We're working with HHS on that, and we're coming up with pre-deployment, inter-deployment and post-deployment materials to deal with the psychological first aid of long-term deployment.

We've developed and distributed a number of technical information fact sheets, quick cards, public service announcements. Jonathan Snare has done public service announcements. We've done public service announcements in English and Spanish. They have been run at Home Depo Stores. They've been run on the radio nonstop. I hear it down in New Orleans. A number of fact sheets and the website was really updated daily with the new material that was being provided.

We are also involved in the distribution of PPE. PPE gets worn out quickly. If they need goggles, if they need some type of Visi-Vest, something like that, that's what we're providing.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Hurricane response activities to date. This is as of December 2nd. You can see the total. The total interventions to date is 11,829 interventions. Some of these are annex related. Some of them aren't.

A number of workers that have been removed from hazards exceeds 36,000. Removed from possible serious imminent danger types of situations is over 17,000. We've distributed over 40,000 fact sheets thus far, and the work is continuing.

We have staff not only from our Region 4, but from around the country. We have Katrina response workers who are going down from our regions from outside Region 4 and 6, to assist in these efforts.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: Many of you might have seen our web page. If you get on the OSHA website, you can basically click on the box that talks about hurricane response. It will take you to a second page, and there you will get all our outreach materials as well as our sampling results.

(A change of slides.)

MS. McCULLY: So it has been a large effort for us, and it will be ongoing. We figure that with Louisiana and Mississippi, we'll probably continue on for another nine months, and Louisiana will probably continue on in the New Orleans area through the balance of FY '06. So it's a large response or recovery effort.

In preparing for this meeting, I talked to the director of construction. There's two areas here that we think that it would be really beneficial for us as an agency to get input from you all since you are in the construction industry.

As we start to focus on the rebuilding of the hurricane affected areas, particularly in New Orleans and Southern Mississippi, we are interested in input, for example, as to what type of strategies or approaches should we be looking at, should we be focusing on, on basically a very large rebuilding activity or rebuilding program in these large geographical areas of Southern Mississippi and in Louisiana.

And the other thing is we go to what they call lessons learned, hot-washes type of thing, we do them internally. But we have our own lessons learned. We'd be interested, for example, with the folks that you've had on the ground and what your experience is, is what your lessons learned have been from the hurricane response, and the sharing of that information that would help us in the future to do a better response and have things more focused on where we should be or how we could better focus our response activities.

So that is my presentation, and we're open for questions and comments.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick. Comment. Last week we had a presentation by Tim Gallagher, which is one of the incident commanders, that responded from the Texas response team, I would assume, but Tim is a real good resource, and he noted that while the area was flooded, they were very touchy about what was the contaminate level of the water that they were in and all of those kind of things.

They did a study and did some research and did testing on the water and everything and one of the things that was noted was that while it was diluted, it was relatively non-hazardous, so to speak.

But one thing that he recognized after going back down a couple of different times is as it receded, it started to concentrate those contaminates in small areas, and they became very, very toxic-type situations.

So one of the things that would concern me if I were sending people into that area would be those pockets of contamination and just how are we going to control the exposure to our people on the ground, irregardless of who that is supplying men there, if somebody really has taken an overview of what they're going to do from a transport or remediation of those pockets, and so that's just information that Tim passed along to us.

When I say us, it was a safety directors forum in Las Vegas that NUCA holds on an annual basis, so it touched a broad area of contractors and a broad area of the country that are supplying people to be on the ground during the rebuilding process.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks, Greg. To your last point, we do have one committee member that has been very active, Tom Broderick, with the Construction Safety Council. I think he would be a great resource to your group to talk about what he is seeing. He's involved in training and education of the contract community or a piece of that in the Gulf States.

Then I, as acting chairman, would be happy to get a group together and talk about what are the things that contractors need to know as we go forward. We've had a lot of discussion about this, and I suspect there are many contractors that don't have a clue.

They're coming from different states, and they have no idea what they're up against, and I would like to figure out a way to educate them before they get there, so that we don't have this 17,000 or whatever that number was, imminent dangers, and we don't see a huge spike in the BLS statistics in 2007 that we had significant number of fatalities and serious injuries as a result of this natural disaster.

The other thing that I thought about, and I would like at some point to talk to you about, is this happened. What are we doing about the next one? I would really like some feedback or discussion on how do we prepare contractors when the earthquake hits California or when the airplane hits a building in San Francisco.

I don't know how well the contract community is prepared, and yet it was very interesting when this storm struck. Tom and I were called quite a number of times to see contractors wanting to get on FEMA's list because we want to run down there and make a bunch of money.

I said, "Well, have you really thought about what you're getting into here?" So I would be happy to work with you and a group of these folks to try to give you some of that feedback.

Quite honestly, Tom would be a great resource to you, because he's living down there now with his crew, trying to do some training.

MS. McCULLY: Okay. I really appreciate that because that's what we keep on looking at, too, is that although I dread the next hurricane season, it's going to happen again, and we look at this an opportunity to get things in place, so that we can be prepared for the next season.

What we will face is what we're facing and dealing with now in Florida with Wilma, where you have rebuilding, and then a storm comes through and then you basically have that interrupted, plus with more destruction from the storm.

So it's not only the construction but it's all those utility and the trades that come in, too, that we need to start getting them trained and up to speed.

MR. SWANSON: One of the real life problems that Ruth and I and others have been discussing is we understand that a lot of times you have contractors in Idaho or Maine or Montana who after the hurricane in Louisiana or the earthquake in California, say "There's work down there. I have excess capacity right now. How about I go down there with a couple of crews?"

Well, it is hard to anticipate -- although Ruth has the date of the next hurricane for next summer -- check with her -- but it's difficult to anticipate when you're going to have the need, and then the far more difficult task is who are those out-of-staters whose crews are going to need the training and please tell us that a year ahead of time.

It's an almost impossible task to make the correct predictions. So Ruth has that assignment. Any input you can give her, I'm sure she will appreciate.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Bruce. Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Scott Schneider. Thanks for your presentation, Ruth. It's very impressive. I was wondering a couple of things.

One of them is could we get a breakdown of the interventions that have been done like how many have been for trenching problems or fall protection or do you have any other kind of backup data that could help us identify, particularly focus on the areas that are greatest need from your perspective.

MS. McCULLY: We don't have it readily available, but we are collecting that data, and we're at the point where we are basically putting in that data manually. So we don't have it available yet. But we will have it available, so we can break that down.

The good thing about that is that you can then look at it over time. I mean the whole response recovery follows the life of its own. You move from one phase to the next, and we could use that to identify the hazards as we go from one phase to the next.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yeah. I think it would be very helpful.

Second is, is when you do an intervention, how often or how many times, from your experience so far, have you gone in and done intervention and the people refuse to listen to you or make any improvements or you come back the next day and they're back to doing things the old way?

MS. McCULLY: It really varies and in reading the situation reports -- we get dailies or now we're getting them several times a week but we were getting daily situation reports -- in the early days of the response, we would get immediate abatement; and, in fact, oftentimes we would go out there and we would ask, if they didn't have chaps on or they didn't have goggles or whatever, but the they had the equipment in their trucks, and then they would go and put it on, and so early on we saw pretty good abatement, and people were very, very appreciative.

I mean it's like anything. You're going to go back now. It has been a while and so you have to really stay on that and really remind them again that it's like you're slipping.

The other thing that we've done now is through this mission assignment is that we do have the ability to provide ad hoc personal protective equipment. So if we're going to a debris site and things are in a situation where personal protective equipment is worn, it's worn out basically, we can provide it to them, so that's helpful, too. But clearly as things start to move away from the event itself, it becomes more and more difficult.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I was thinking more about the imminent danger situations, things like that.

MS. McCULLY: Well, and the imminent danger situations again are a reflection of where you are in the response and recovery. I mean early on when you have a tremendous amount of debris, and you have down trees and down power lines, that creates a hazard in and of itself. So you are in a situation where it's not as controlled, and you're finding more people in a more dangerous situation then than where you are now.

The first two or three weeks of this response, the focus was really on life savings and lift sustaining. So you really had to stay on that, because that was the focus.

Now we're in a situation where we're finding that we have more time to plan. Folks who are planning on going in and doing debris destruction and that type of thing, they have long-term plans.

That mound of debris that I showed you, they're bringing in special grinders to work with that debris. They're having time to test that. Does it work, how does it work, that type of thing. So we're in a different phase of recovery at this point.

MR. SCHNEIDER: In terms of suggestions, one thing that I think would be really helpful is if OSHA made a big push to make sure that everybody that's working down there, had at least an OSHA 10-hour training class.

I mean that would make an enormous difference, because there's so many people coming on there that haven't had any safety training, and I know there has been a lot of money put into the Harwood grants to do training related to Katrina. So there is capacity there to do stuff like that, and I think everybody needs to have that, and that would make a huge difference.

MS. McCULLY: And I think that's the work group that we're suggesting that we get together, to really talk about as we're now going to this phase, and we know long term there's going to be very long term, years of rebuilding going on.

What are the different types of strategies, approaches? What are the types of things that we should be promoting now with contractors, large construction companies and so forth? This is the opportunity that we could really work together on identifying that, and making those recommendations.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: Greg Strudwick. We talked in depth with Tim as far as a group is concerned on training issues, because he had attended a "Train the Trainer in Hazard Response" and what you could expect to encounter whenever you're going in one of these areas.

Some of the things that came back from that, I told him about, Tom, about your grant and your development of the training in that thing, and Tim was very interested in talking with you, but in the construction large contract type of construction projects, a lot of times, we confirm their orientation based on a sticker on their hard hat or some recognition that you don't have to come up and walk, or walk up and ask them about whether or not they had been trained because the sticker represented the fact that they were.

Now if they weren't using their PPE properly, then it was also an accountability issue, okay? You've been trained. Why are you not doing that? Can we trust you or not? And then remove them if they continue to break the rules that they have been made aware of.

So from our standpoint, some of those simple recognition systems where you could drive by and look and see how many people are supposed to be there, versus ones that aren't, and then rotate out the ones that aren't into those orientations and training sessions that could be considered 10, 4, 5, 8, 10 hour, give them different elevations of training so that they could be exposed to different types of exposures.

Tim has great ideas about this, and so we're going to -- George Kennedy is sitting in the back of the room -- we're going to work with him in the near future to develop some of those types of training modules that will identify that and hopefully we'll be able to contribute to someone like Tom who has the charge for actually producing that under the Harwood grant system.

MS. McCULLY: Right. You know that is so key. World Trade Center was so different because we had a 16-acre site where you had basically some type of access limitation, you know, access point. 90,000 square miles, you don't have that.

MR. STRUDWICK: Right.

MS. McCULLY: So how do you grapple with issue of the accountability? If you want a World Trade Center, you didn't get on unless you had an orange card which indicated you had a safety briefing.

So these are the types of things that we need to grapple with over a very large area and those types of suggestions, those types of things that we can put forward are what we're going to need in the long term.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom.

MR. BRODERICK: Before I came back on Saturday, I attended every Saturday morning at Belfort, there is a 10:30 meeting of the debris removal forces, and it was pretty much run by FEMA and the Corps. It lasted a couple of hours, and in that couple of hours, the only mention of safety and health came up when one of your COSHOs talked about removing debris from canals and water that the operator should be wearing PFEs in the cabs, which makes sense.

There have been, I guess, fatalities in Florida where people that tried to reach a little too far and their machine ended up in the drink.

But I didn't get any sense from the Corps or FEMA that worker safety was an issue. My understanding is that the Corps is directing the first-tier contractors and they are requiring of at least the first-tier contractors, both first aid CPR cards for someone on the crew and OSHA 10-hour training.

I didn't get a sense that that is being enforced. So I think if there could be some coordination, at least in enforcing that part of their contracts, and I know that it's not the popular thing. When they're out there going through these piles and occasionally finding people in the piles, that there's a sense of urgency to get this done.

I guess that was another frustration for us was talking to contractors who said, well, we really don't have time for training.

Well, if we remove hurricane from the equation, as safety and health professionals, we often look to the owners to layout the safety and health expectation for the contractors that they're hiring to build a building for instance.

First of all, the owners oftentimes pre-qualify contractors to make sure that they do have a safety and health program and then they monitor and make sure that it is being followed through. I think that FEMA and the Corps really need to ratchet up that part of their responsibility.

One of the things that -- and we've kind of split up when we've been down there -- my guys heard a lot of, "Gee, if you could stay for another week, we could give you 150 people a day to go through first aid and CPR training."

Well, the Harwood program, to me, the $5 million that was cut out for the organizations to go down to the Gulf and mobilize to do training on behalf of OSHA, there is a some sort of a doctrine within the Office of Training and Education that prohibits Harwood grantees from doing first aid and CPR training which is sort of an interesting thing since OSHA has taken a position that public automatic external defribulators are a good thing.

My organization is trying to push that on the construction industry and along with the deployment of AEDs would go a CPR course. So I'm just wondering out loud now if for the purposes of responding and doing training to this disaster if these Harwood grants could not include first aid CPR, whether it would be the grantees providing it directly or our approach has been more of a train the trainer situation.

We've made contact with community colleges systems in both Mississippi and Louisiana, who have indicated that they would like to have all of their construction technology people become 500 trained so that they can teach 10-hour courses. But we've got to figure out how to get the people into them.

MR. SWANSON: I think, Tom, as Ruth has already indicated, she has requested feedback from the committee. I know the chairman is going to be putting a committee together here of volunteers shortly.

One of the issues is how do we modify the Harwood grant? Is the present set of Harwood grants modifiable? That's an internal question for us. If so, how so? And then what needs to be done, as we've already touched upon, done for next hurricane season? And then let's not become specialists in hurricanes because there are other forms of disaster that we have noted around the country.

All of those topics should you feel that you're in a position to give us knowledge input, please get on the committee that the chair is going to form and we'll have a more in-depth discussion than we have time for here.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Bruce and I really appreciate you spending the time and all of the good things that OSHA has done as a result of Katrina and the other hurricanes.

Before you leave, just so we follow through, I'm going to ask for three or four volunteers from the committee to form a group that can provide feedback on the issues such as but how do to first aid training when they need it or what should they know before they get there kinds of things.

So with that I am going to volunteer for that committee. Greg?

MR. STRUDWICK: I volunteer.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom? Linwood, four and Tom. We can get feedback from others and get that to you so there will be five of us that will begin to work on that so that we can start getting some feedback to you. So thank you very much for that opportunity.

MS. McCULLY: Right. And thank you for volunteering. We look forward very much to working with you on this. Thanks.

MS. SHORTALL: Ruth, I was wondering if you would have a copy of your Power Point presentation?

MS. McCULLY: You want a hard copy?

MS. SHORTALL: Yes, please. And I'd like to mark that and enter it into the record as Exhibit No. 13.

(Whereupon, Exhibit No. 13 was marked for identification and entered into the record.)

MS. McCULLY: We'll get you one.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much.

MS. McCULLY: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We're going to do one more presentation and that's NORA, and then after that, we will take a short break, and we have a couple of other presentations after that.

I wanted to remind everybody that's sitting in the back of the room that there is an opportunity for public comment whenever we complete the rest of the proceedings. So, Matt, if you would be so kind as to do the presentation on NORA, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

MS. SHORTALL: Mr. Chair?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Yes, Sarah.

MS. SHORTALL: As Mr. Gillen is getting set up, I'd like to mark and enter into the record as Exhibit No. 14, the NIOSH Construction Program drafts, Strategic and Intermediate Goals and Performance Measures, and as Exhibit No. 15, a construction fact sheet from NIOSH.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 14 and 15 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thanks, Sarah. Okay, Matt.

NORA

MR. GILLEN: Okay. So I'm Matt Gillen. I'm the NIOSH construction coordinator, and Jeff Kohler, who's our associate director from mining and construction is home sick, unfortunately isn't able to be here today, and he asked me to apologize for him and also to do this presentation on his behalf.

Basically, I wanted to provide two sort of updates on NIOSH topics raised in previous NIOSH presentations to ACCSH. You may remember back in February, at the February ACCSH meeting, we described how we were going to be developing strategic goals, NIOSH was.

Also in June we described how we're going to, under NORA, the National Occupational Research Agenda, be doing a construction sector research council. So I want to thank Bruce and ACCSH chair for putting us on the agenda today and those previous times.

Basically based on Dr. Howard's leadership, NIOSH is really kind of restructuring our approach to research. We want to make sure that our research makes an impact and produced results. We want to link thought different projects more to build towards achieving some specific goals.

We want to increase the number of projects and involved partnering with stakeholders. We want to pay more attention to translating research into practice that stakeholders can use. We want to begin using performance measures to track how well we are doing.

We're also going to be using external reviews organized by the National Academies of Science to evaluate our programs, and we want to target our researches and projects on topics that are relevant and compelling for stakeholders.

We're confident that we know how to do good science. But we want to get your input to make sure that projects that we pick are relevant for you and are most likely to produce results.

So what we've been working on, we've got teams of NIOSH researchers working to develop draft strategic goals and those are the draft ones that you have in front of you today. There are eight of them, and we're making them public and we're asking for comments.

We found this as a really challenging process to do. It has forced us to focus on a subgroup of issues where we think NIOSH can make an impact because a long list would spread our resources too thin, so not everything, not every worthwhile topic can be included in our strategic goals. So it forces us to make choices.

It has been difficult developing performance measures. There are injury statistics available. There's less data available for health, for exposures and for illness. So that's challenging.

It's really very ambitious for NIOSH to try to set goals that would reflect outcomes, but we want to try to do that, so we want to set goals like things that would reduce the national fatality rate and all. It's tough also because NIOSH is a research agency, and we don't really directly influence outcomes. We have to partner well and work with others, influence other groups to show results. So selecting the strategic goals I relatively straightforward, such as I think on anybody's list of strategic goals would be improving performance on falls.

It's deciding what intermediate goals, what particular stepping stones will actually be the most use. It has been difficult, and that's one area where we would like the input from ACCSH members.

We had used guidance from OMB in creating the goals. For example, the goals are organized by outcomes such as injuries or illness over more general topics. So we're looking for comments over the next month or so, and we're looking to sort of finish this up and then begin tracking our projects to meet our goals.

We're interested in your opinion on the relevance of the goals and we want to hear from you if you think there are other topics that are more worthwhile, or if you think there's different steps that we could take, would be more worthwhile than the ones we've described. So anyway we're looking for feedback.

So I'll go through just quickly some of them as an example to give you an idea of the types of goals we've chosen and to get you thinking about them in a minute.

The other issue is on NORA, and, again, NIOSH first started NORA in 1996, the National Occupational Research Agenda, and we used where we got stakeholders together to create what's a national agenda for things when research is needed.

We said at that time we would revisit them after 10 years. So we've been doing that, and what we decided for the next decade is to sort of orient NORA around sectors, and what this means is that each sector will have its own research agenda.

So we'll be having a construction sector research council that will work with us to help create national goals and different issues like that that we want research to be done on construction. So right now NIOSH is holding a series of town hall meetings around the country to get input from people, and we're doing that.

Each meeting has like a general session in the morning and it focuses on a specific sector in the afternoon. The one on construction is coming up in Chicago on December 19th. It's going to be held at the University of Illinois School of Public Health.

We have a brochure on that. We've been partnering with Tom Broderick and the Construction Safety Council to hold that meeting. If anybody is interested in attending or providing other comments, we would really welcome that.

What we will be doing is we will be starting up the sector research council. Probably in February or March of 2006 is when we'll start doing that, and it's a little bit confusing because we began this process of setting goals prior to the decisions about the NORA, and we want to finish up the process so that we have something that we can provide to OMB per our original plans.

But the whole sector research council discussion is going to give another opportunity to talk about national goals and our NIOSH goals would be as subset of those. So that's just a little bit of background there.

I thought what we could do is briefly just go through and I might pick out six or seven goals, just to give you an example for the kind of things we're trying to do and maybe get you to think about how these sound to you or the kind of things you would like us to put on our agenda.

Now copies are also available in the back, and this here is a general handout for basically the kids you serve in orientation to what we're doing and how to submit some comments.

But you can see each lists a strategic goal, which is a general statement, for example, reduce construction worker fatality and injuries caused by falls to a lower level. Each strategic goal has an overall performance measure. What we'd like to do is support an ambitious 20 percent reduction in fall fatality rates over the next decade.

We have some background text and then we have intermediate goals. There's seven different draft intermediate goals for fall, so if you go to page 2, for example, 1.3 is inventory, current fall protection practices and fill gaps where technical approaches are needed for fall prevention or else where existing ones perhaps could be modified to be more cost effective for smaller employers. So we have that as an example.

Or 1.4 is expand the use of safe-by-design practices by demonstration projects and outreach. We'd like to work to use design to design in safety more as an issue, so we identified that.

If you look at the bottom of page 2, we sort of have an optional goal. We said to work with construction partners to develop and implement a national campaign to reduce fatal and severe injuries associated with falls. We're interested in feedback. What do you think?

I mean the falls have been a big issue in construction, the biggest issue, and is there anything we could working together to have a campaign that might feature commitments that people might make to achieve safety performance targets where companies or trade associations or unions could make a commitment to try to make progress, where OSHA and NIOSH could work on public service announcements, things of that sort, or we could use it as a platform for reaching out to other communities such as the design community and things of that sort. Is this the type of thing that might be a useful way to make progress on falls? So we put that one in there to see what you think.

If you go to page 7, again, I'm trying to just quickly give you the taste of some of these. At the bottom we have a goal to reduce noise-induced hearing loss among construction workers as a goal, and we would like to increase the use of audio-metric programs and reduce hearing loss by a certain amount, and we would see partnering with OSHA there.

But example, if you go to the next page, page 9, in the middle there, we have intermediate goal, 5.6, so we're suggesting that we could look at the issue of developing and evaluating multi-employer systems that could accommodate mobile construction workforce.

You're all familiar with how training, portability of training certificates has been an important development in construction. Is there something similar that could be done for hearing testing, where not every employer would have to do hearing testing, where somebody could get hearing testing done once a year and it would be portable. Is that an idea that would help make that kind of testing more cost-effective. So we've put that down as an example of the kind of issue we could work on.

Strategic goal six we talked about reducing occupational illness by reducing inhalation exposures to lead, silica and we've added welding fumes based on some input.

If you go to page 11, for example, some of the draft ones we've thought about, the top there, draft 6.1, improve recognition of high exposure tasks in job situations by expanding the use of field portable methods by construction employers. You cannot help design or evaluate direct reading instruments that might be easier for employers to use to help identify high-exposure tasks.

Is there something like that, that we could do that might facilitate recognition of this kind of issue?

Or 6.2, improve recognition through improved sharing of construction exposure data. Is there a way that NIOSH could help create a database that people could contribute data to, so that it could examine what tasks similar to what they might be doing and get a better idea of what exposures could be.

6.3 talks about having a better understanding of obstacles to implementing existing effective control methods.

If you go to page 13, at the bottom there, we have a strategic goal just to improve surveillance, the availability of injury data to improve that. It's interesting that the work group yesterday on residential fall prevention, the group was discussing issues and they were really saying, "Gee, it would be good if we had particular data that would give us a better understanding of where the problems are, and then we could then tailor what we want to do and things that sort."

We would like to improve the quality and quantity of injury data that's there to assist groups like ACCSH and others. We'd like to, 8.2, develop perhaps a centralized reporting and retrieval system where some data was in a centralized location, make it easier for everybody to get access to.

So I'll stop now. I mean these are some ideas that we've had. And, again, what we're really interested in is getting your feedback as stakeholders, how you see OSHA and NIOSH working together, the types of activities you'd like us to see performing, so over the next few years.

If you want to write comments on these and send them to me, if you want me to call you, we can do that, any variety of ways, but we would very much like to have your input.

So with that, I'll stop, and if there are any questions or --

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Yeah. Scott Schneider. I just wanted to commend NIOSH on the effort, because I think it's really, if you read over the strategic goals and the interim goals, I think there has been a lot of thought put into them, and a lot of thinking outside the box, thinking about really what makes a difference, what could make a difference, in the next five, you know, ten years, and I think it's commendable.

I mean I know we've had a lot of discussions of it over the last six months or so, and I'm very impressed and I'm looking forward to the meeting in Chicago later in the month.

MR. GILLEN: Great. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Any other comments? Question?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, Matt.

MR. GILLEN: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity to make this presentation.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We're going to take a 10-minute break and please be back here at two o'clock.

(Whereupon, there was a brief recess.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Could I get everyone to take their seats, please, so we can get started.

Now that we have everybody seated, we can get started once again. First of all, there was a question from one of the committee members I think we should address now and it was on dates for future meetings and website.

Scott, if you go ahead and do that and then we'll get to you, Matt, right after that. Thank you. Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I think it was difficult for all of us, having this meeting scheduled so late and not having a lot of time to prepare and I know that MACOSH and the MACOSH Marine and the national advisory committees schedule their meetings like a year in advance and over the coming year.

What I'd like to propose is that we develop some sort of better process for scheduling dates in advance, at least two or three months in advance, so that we all know and it would make it much easier for public participation and the work groups in addition to that.

So I don't know how we want to do that in terms of proposing dates. I mean what I was going to suggest is in terms of our next meeting, we often meet in conjunction with the Construction Safety Council in Chicago, which is going to be the very first week in April, and I mean that might work in terms of setting a next date for another meeting, but all I'm saying is I do think we want to set them on a more regular basis and farther in advance so that it makes it easier to plan and I'd be happy to see if anybody else on the committee wants to second that.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I second.

VOICE: I agree.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Yeah, planning is a good thing.

MR. SCHNEIDER: So the question is how do we do that?

MR. STRUDWICK: I think your suggestion that we meet at the Chicago Land Safety Council meeting is a good idea. We've done that before. I don't think it's unreasonable now, and April is far enough away I think that that could be the first meeting of the year.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom.

MR. BRODERICK: Although I would be honored to do that, Mr. Swanson and I have had a discussion about it, and my impression was that his feeling was that this coming April that ACCSH wouldn't be moving to Chicago. Is that a fair characterization?

MR. SWANSON: Question mark on the end of that statement?

MR. BRODERICK: Yes.

MR. SWANSON: Yes. Bruce Swanson. As Tom has indicated, he and I had a discussion. We tried as an experiment a couple of years ago moving this meeting to Chicago once a year, to hold it in conjunction with the Construction Safety Council meeting, the thought being at that time that what a wonderful opportunity for middle America construction people to fill the room, and I think the first time, we even probably aired on the side of getting a room too large.

But it has been the experience, it seems to me, that we get far less public turnout in Chicago than we get in Washington, D.C. Now if the committee as a group wants to have the meeting in Chicago, that's fine. We can schedule that, or we can attempt to schedule that anyhow.

OSHA is under some budget restrictions. We are continuing to cut back all the time, year-to-year, on our travel arrangements. You can see by what we've set up here that having the support staff available to set the room up to bring in the contractors to service your meetings is far more convenient and far less expensive here in Washington, D.C., than it is offsite as in Chicago.

Nonetheless, if it's the strong will of this committee as a whole that you have that one meeting in Chicago, I will, of course, relay your wishes to the powers that be that make these decisions and said committee wants to meet in Chicago in April and we'll see if it can be done.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: I'll get to you, Michael. Help me understand. We made a motion to plan the dates for the ACCSH committee meetings. I don't think we've talked about the place. Then there was discussion about tying it to a conference that this year is at a different time that it normally is.

But I think your motion, Scott, and seconded, was just to plan a year out for when, what dates, these meetings are going to occur; is that correct?

MR. SCHNEIDER: That's the primary focus.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We had a second, and is there more discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: All those in favor?

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: So moved.

MR. SCHNEIDER: So the question, how do we accomplish that? Bruce?

MR. SWANSON: Yeah. My question exactly. What has happened for the last dozen years at the end of a meeting, the chair asks the committee what dates, approximately three months away, work out for them, and people sit around with back then, paper and pen, and now Blackberries, and see what dates they still have open.

If you want to do it a year in advance for four meetings, it gets a heck of a lot easier because most of you don't have six months or nine months or twelve months out reserved yet for a lot of things. As we get closer, there will be a lot, my experience, a lot of requests to move that date.

But we will act as a central point if you wish to set the next three meetings or four meetings actually. If you want to set the next four meetings, I think the way to do that would be for you to email your preferences.

You think the meeting three months, or the Spring of '06 meeting, should be, according to your calendar, it should be -- let me pick on you, Tom -- you like this week in March, and so you tell that's your first preference. Your second preference would be another week and move it around.

Then we will play the mix-and-match game and after we get the 15 preferences iterated, we will see where we get the largest number of people able to attend and we will send that out as a draft meeting date, and then we will look for a room. That works.

Then we do the same thing six months and nine months and whatever.

One of the problems with this meeting and the date sliding around, we were not able to get a room for the four meetings this week. It being the month of December, there are other festivities that certain personnel had planned for these meetings.

So those whose Christmas party we ruined today, thank you. But we found office space for the four meetings, four days of meetings that we've had this week, and it will just be easier if we've got a year's notice as to what we need for next December and what week we need it.

So, yeah, we can do that. But you guys email to my attention your preferred dates, and let's say three options for each of those time periods. If we can't work out some combination, we'll back out to you by email.

MR. SMITH: Do we need to look at certain months?

MR. SWANSON: Yeah. I would look at three months out, six months out, nine months out and twelve months out.

MR. SMITH: Start with March?

MR. SWANSON: Yeah. I'd March of '06 as the first date.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I have a question. In the past we've had some discussions about having meetings outside the building, like we have meeting space in our building, for work group meetings in particular. We had meetings at Tom's office in August. So are those options we should consider or not?

MR. SWANSON: I'm sorry. I didn't hear the end of it. The Chair was beating on me.

MR. SCHNEIDER: I said we've had some discussion in the past about having options of having meetings, like work group meetings, outside of this building. For example, we had meetings at Tom's office in August, and we have meeting rooms in our building, for example, that we might be able to use to have a work group meeting. So should we explore that or consider that as an option?

MR. SWANSON: As you point out, we've had work group meetings outside this building in the past, and I would encourage you to continue to try and have work group meetings wherever it's convenient for the folks that you anticipate will be attending the work group meeting. That does not appear to be an option for this meeting, however.

MS. SHORTALL: I have one thing that also might help OSHA plan out their yearly schedule, and that would be in mailing in or emailing in your preferred dates, if you could also identify those dates that you know of that you're not available because your organization has a conference. It's important for you to attend, or you belong to an organization who will be having a conference so that we can plan around those and maybe "X" out ones that we know of right now wouldn't be available for people.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Okay. So thank you very much. I'm glad we resolved that. On the second issue at the February meeting, as you can see in the minutes and at the June meeting, I raised this issue about putting links on the ACCSH web page to all the information, all the work products that are in the docket, and also putting meeting minutes from the ACCSH meetings up on the ACCSH web and so they're easy to find.

I provided a copy of all the ACCSH work products on CD to the committee members and to OSHA. So I guess the question is apparently that hasn't been done yet, and I guess the question is where is that in the process? The committee voted at the last meeting in support of this, so when can we expect that to be up on the website?

MR. SWANSON: OSHA is aware of your desires, and I don't have a date.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We have three other presentations yet this afternoon. The next group that's going to speak to us is Mat Chibbaro. He's going to cover fire guidance document, Andy Levinson, emergency preparedness and Dave Wallis, electrical power transmission, and they are the gentlemen in the back that are ready to give us a presentation.

Matt, if you would be so kind.

SUB PART V - ELECTRICAL POWER TRANSMISSION/EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS RFI/FIRE GUIDANCE DOCUMENT

MR. CHIBBARO: Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm here to give you a thumbnail sketch of an upcoming publication of ours. It's called Fire Service Features of Buildings and Fire Protection Systems. It's going to look something like this prettied up in its final publication form, key word being guidance. It's a voluntary document.

It's meant to educate designers on fir service operations and the purpose is to improve the safety of firefighters who are in and of themselves workers and in turn increase the safety of building occupancy, including employees.

The way the approach in the manual is there's a narrative on different features, such as fire apparatus access, fire department connections, damp pipes, fire alarm systems. It's mostly looking ahead to the final building product, but there are some things in here during the construction phase by your operations, things like access and where you put the fire department connections, things like this.

The idea is based on the fact that a lot of these design professionals don't have experience in the fire service, and it's just meant to give them that kind of knowledge so they can talk intelligently to the fire department or if there's not a fire service authority to have some kind of guidance on what to do.

It includes a number of photos and diagrams, both good and bad examples of the different features, and then there are consideration boxes which sum up the recommendations and here again they're only recommendations. They're only voluntary guidance. There's a lot of different ways that fire departments operate, so we really have to be kind of general with this whole thing.

The status is it's in its final clearance phase, and we hope to distribute this on our website through trade associations, professional societies, co-developing groups and if you guys have any other ideas on ways to distribute this thing to get it in the hands of the designers, I'd like to hear it. So please get a hold of me. You have, I believe, the spelling of my name and you have access to my phone number and email through our website.

So are there any questions on that? Like I say just a brief thumbnail sketch, it's not something we have out yet, but it's coming.

Okay. If there's nothing else, the next speaker --

MR. BRODERICK: What's your website? Tom Broderick. I would just recommend that you might want to publish, if you could get a list of all the ACCSH members from Mike, and disseminate it to each of us, we could then share it with our respective constituency and perhaps find some good outlets for it.

MR. CHIBBARO: That would be great. I heard in the back a question on our website. OSHA dot gov. Is there anything else?

MR. BRODERICK: Wait. You just confused me.

MR. CHIBBARO: Yes. We will distribute this to you when it's published.

MR. BRODERICK: Okay. I see. Okay.

MR. CHIBBARO: You can get my email address or phone number through our website, and when it's published, you'll be able to get it through our website through the publications link on our home page.

MR. BRODERICK: But we will get a hard copy?

MR. CHIBBARO: Yes, you will. Sorry to confuse you. Anything else? Any questions for me? I apologize for having to step out. The next speaker will be Andy Levinson.

(A slide presentation.)

MR. LEVINSON: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Andrew Levinson. I'm with the Office of Biological Hazards in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, and I'm going to be talking to you about the emergency response and preparedness request for information which is something that is in development right now.

To give you a little bit of background about how we started looking at the top of the emergency response and preparedness, following 9/11 there was a lot of introspection within the agency about our role in emergency response and preparedness, certainly looking at what happened at both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center site.

We participated extensively in a series of NIOSH, that's National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and RAND reports evaluating emergency response and preparedness.

We also are in the process of developing a manual on personal protective clothing and equipment requirements for emergency response and preparedness. We evaluated a number of other government reports, and, of course, as I'm sure many of you know, the Federal Government has instituted the National Response Plan, and OSHA has a special role within that National Response Plan to look at worker health and safety under the Worker Health and Safety Annex.

(A change of slides)

MR. LEVINSON: One of the things that we noted is that within emergency response and preparedness, particularly in the general industry side, that there are a number of standards that cover emergency response and preparedness, and you see it in primarily in a piecemeal fashion.

You see HAZWOPER, which is a broad standard, but only applies to a very narrow range of circumstances. You see the fire brigade standard which again covers a narrow range of circumstances, and then you see some of the large standards that are more expensive, but don't necessarily provide details on emergency response and preparedness in the level of detail that one now sees within the emergency response community and it's not necessarily reflective of the way that the emergency response community had evolved its activities outside of the OSHA regulations.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: We proposed that a request for information would be an appropriate next step for the agency and the Assistant Secretary of Labor, Mr. Henshaw, directed that OSHA put an announcement into the semi-annual regulatory agenda.

This went in December 13th of last year, and the RFI is in development. For those of you who don't know, an RFI is a preproposal phase of rule making. We haven't committed to do anything other than ask questions, and it's something that we certainly have done before under a number of other circumstances.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: If you look at the regulatory agenda from last year, we made a series of four statements. The first one is that we recognize that many of our standards were written decades ago, and none of them were really designed as comprehensive emergency response standards. So as a result, the issues are dealt with piecemeal in a variety of standards.

We also recognize that our standards don't address the full range of hazards that emergency responders currently face, for example, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents as well as technical rescue issues. We don't address major changes in the performance standards of personal protective equipment; for example, firefighters' turnout gear standards have changed substantially in the 25 or 30 years since we've written our standard.

And finally that our standards don't address the major developments in health and safety practice in the emergency response and preparedness community, and a prefect example of that is the incident command system which now you find only in the HAZWOPER standard but not required in any other elements of OSHA standards.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: Just to give you a little feel for the RFI process. It's starts with the initiating office which, in this case, is the Office of Biological Hazards. It then has to go through clearance by the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, the Assistant Secretary of Labor, the Department of Labor Policy Planning Board, the Secretary of Labor, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then it goes back to the Assistant Secretary for signature and finally it's published in the Federal Register.

So when the RFI is finally developed and approved, it will be published Federal Register for the public to respond.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: In preparing the request for information, we had three philosophical underpinnings. The first one is we're not trying to prepare everybody in the country to respond to a 9/11 type event or a Katrina or Rita type event. We're focused on the emergency response events that are daily activities.

We're also interested in systems of emergency response that will allow resilient networks and agencies, and we're interested in a performance oriented approach like HAZWOPER where we're not telling people how to do necessarily every little detail of the job.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: Because this standard or because this issue is so expensive, there are elements of it that fall under health standards and elements of it that would fall under safety standards and accordingly we have two different offices that are working on this: the Office of Biological Hazards and the Office of Safety Systems.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: In the RFI, we've announced five broad categories that we plan to address. The first one is the scope of emergency response and preparedness. The second is personal protective clothing and equipment, training and qualifications, medical evaluation and health monitoring, and then finally safety.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: When you look at the scope of emergency response and preparedness, what we're talking about is fundamentally the types of work practices that are performed in emergency response events and who's doing those.

One of the things that we certainly recognize is that the construction industry has a great role to play in this if you look at what happened at 9/11, if you look at what happened in Katrina and Rita. Certainly skilled support workers, as they're called in the HAZWOPER standard, were right there alongside emergency responders doing a great deal of work during the emergency phase of the incidents.

So we're looking at classified and clarified, who's involved and what types of tasks they're doing. What the time frame is for emergency response, how do you tell when an emergency event has begun? How do you tell when one has ended?

And then similarly as you're looking at these issues, what types of things should we look at? Are we looking at preplanning? Are we only looking at emergency response? Or are we also looking at remediation and recovery activities following an emergency event?

One of the other challenges that we have is that many of the emergency responders are public employees and in state with OSHA approved state plans, those state plans have jurisdictions, so certainly there's a significant amount of time and a number of questions addressing state plan issues.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: When you look at personal protective clothing and equipment, we're looking at new technology and when we say new technology, we're defining that as anything that has happened since the time OSHA last addressed these standards which in some cases again can be 25 or 30 years. As examples, firefighters' turnout gear, personal alert safety systems which are devices that give an alarm if an emergency responder or skilled support worker doesn't move for a certain amount of time based on the assumption that during an emergency, if they're not moving after 30 seconds or so, that there's something wrong.

Proximity firefighting gear, that's dealing with flammable liquid fires, self-contained breathing apparatus for emergency responders and then PPE for other more specialized events.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: When you address the issue of training and qualifications, some of the things that we're considering putting in the RFI are training for emergency responders like firefighters and incident commanders, emergency medical technicians, industrial fire brigades, and then also, as many of you know, one of the challenges is how do you address for skilled support workers like construction workers who are on site who may not be emergency responders or trained in emergency response when they're needed during those types of incidents. How do you address their training and their safety on site in an immediate type of nature?

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: Medical evaluation. We're looking at medical evaluation both for emergency responder before incidents as well as what type of evaluation and ongoing monitoring would one do on site during an emergency, looking at issues, for example, like heat stress, potential cardiac issues, et cetera.

(A change of slides.)

MR. LEVINSON: On the topic of safety, again, the incident command system or incident management system right now is only found in the HAZWOPER standard which applies to a very narrow range of emergency response activities. The National Incident Management System has certainly expanded that, and we're looking at how the incident command system fits in right now, particularly how do you deal with safety management at multi-employer sites when you have multiple fire departments, police department, emergency medical personnel as well as construction workers from a number of different situations, all blending into one site management structure.

How do you address those issues and whether or not written standard operating procedures are important for this group in these types of incidents? How do you deal with communication again when you have multiple emergency response organizations and/or skilled support workers? What type of terminology are people using? What type of communication hardware are people using? How do you address the issue of risk management at these type of incidents? When is it appropriate to send a worker in and when perhaps may it not be appropriate? And most importantly, ways to incorporate flexibility to address these types of emergency response situations.

That's it. Thank you very much. Do you have any questions?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Scott.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Hi. Thanks. I was wondering. I noticed in the Halloween Federal Register notice that it said this is going to be a 1910 standard, and that they're going to publish an RFI in December. Could you comment on both of those?

MR. CHIBBARO: Well, I guess the best place to start is this is just a request for information. So at this point nothing has been made. We haven't made any decisions beyond asking questions, and that's all the agency is formally committed to, and then, of course, once we get the answers back from people, we'll see where that information takes us. It really requires a lot of analysis and careful thought.

So I wouldn't necessarily look too carefully to either the 1910 or 1926 designation at this point.

And as far as time line, it's going through the clearance process and as you all know, that's a lengthy process. The regulatory agenda is our current statement of when we believe it's going to come out.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, Andy. If there's no further questions, we're going to have Dave Wallis, director, present next, but before we do that, Sarah needs to enter a document into the record.

MS. SHORTALL: I would request that the Power Point presentation on emergency response preparedness RFI be entered into the record as Exhibit No. 16, and that the presentation on electrical power transmission distribution be entered into the record as Exhibit No. 17.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 16 and 17 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Andy, and Dave, if you would, please.

MR. WALLIS: Sure. My name is David Wallis. I'm the director of the Office of Engineering Safety in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance. My office is responsible for writing primarily electrical and mechanical safety standards.

We have been in front of ACCSH several times on this proposal. I don't want to spend a lot of time, but in case there's a couple of new members, I do want to give a brief background on what the proposal is intended to do.

OSHA has two standards covering work on electric power transmission and distribution lines and equipment: Sub Part V of Part 1926, which covers the construction of these installations and 1910 269 which covers maintenance and repair.

Employees performing work covered by these two standards suffer 74 fatalities and 444 injuries annually. Both standards address the same hazards, primarily electrical hazards posed by the lines and equipment and fall hazards posed by working on overhead support structures.

Sub Part V was issued in 1972, actually before I started. I've been working with the agency for over 30 years, and that's one of the standards that was issued before I came on board, and 1910 269 was issued in 1994.

The existing construction standard is over 30 years old and is inconsistent with the updated general industry standard. Affected employers must meet two different standards depending on the nature of the work, and quite frankly, the difference between construction and maintenance really isn't all that substantial if you look at the scope of the two rules. If I go to hang a transformer on a utility pole, if I'm replacing an existing transformer and I'm replacing it with a transformer that's just like the old one, that would be maintenance work covered under 1910 269.

If I go up and replace it with an improved transformer, it's got a higher rating, it's a different size, that would be considered as an alteration. That would be considered construction work and would fall under Sub Part V.

What we're doing in the proposal is we're proposing to revise the standard addressing the construction of electric power transmission and distribution installations.

The proposal makes the construction standard consistent with the standard for maintenance and operation of these installations. The proposal revises both standards to reflect current technology in protecting employees from hazards associated with work on transmission and distribution installations.

I want to make it clear here. We don't want to just update Sub Part V without introducing maybe a little bit of new technology on the 1910 side, so in a couple of areas we're proposing new requirements for 1910 269. We're proposing the same requirements for Sub Part V.

We're revising related standards for electrical protective equipment. The 1910 standard is 1910 137 and the 1926 standard, I believe would be 1926.97. That would be a new section.

We've gone through the SBRFA process in 2003 with the SBRFA panel report issued on June 30th, 2003. We received formal ACCSH recommendation on May 18th, 2004. The recommendation was to go forward with the proposal.

I didn't notice this on my outline. I forgot to include it, but we have actually published a proposed rule. The proposal was published on June 15th, 2005. That's this year.

Most recently on October the 12th of this year, we extended the rulemaking period by 90 days. We had several requests from electric utilities and contractors who were heavily involved in the hurricane restoration and response efforts. They told us that they needed more time to respond to the rule making, so we extended the rulemaking period by 90 days.

Between the SBRFA panel and the comments we've received so far on the rule making, we've identified a couple major issues. I don't want to imply that these are the only issues that are raised by the rulemaking participants, but these are the two primary issues.

One deals with host contractor requirements. The proposal has provisions that deal with that particular issue. Power line contractors have a fatality rate double that of electric utilities. That's the main reason why we proposed requirements in this area.

The proposal would require host employers to inform contractors of hazards that the contractor might not recognize and would have to report observed violations by contractor employees to the contractor.

The proposal does not include a requirement, although we have been accused of this in some of the comments, the proposal does not impose a requirement on the host employer to actually supervise contractor work. There's no obligation for the host employer to actually watch the contractors do the work.

However, if they are a site where the contractors are working and notice a violation, they would have to report the violation.

Contractors would have to instruct their employees in hazards communicated by the host employer, inform the host employer of unique hazards posed by the contractor's work and unanticipated hazards found during the course of work, and lastly would inform the host employer of measures taken to correct reported violations.

I want to note here, this again is not in my outline, but I do want to note a provision that was probably in the last draft that we had the ACCSH review, it was the same. I believe it's the draft that the SBRFA panel reviewed, also had a requirement in it for the host contractor to evaluate the safety performance of potential contractors. The proposal has dropped that draft provision.

The other significant issue is some requirements we proposed on protection against electric arcs. OSHA estimates that there are at least two fatal and 12 non-fatal burn injuries caused by electric arcs each year among employees performing work covered by the standards. The proposal would require employers to assess flame and electric arc hazards and provide flame resisting clothing appropriate for those hazards.

OSHA has provided guidance to help employers comply with the rule and I note here that some of that guidance is new. In response to the SBRFA recommendations we've added some tables to help employers quickly assess how much or what level heat energy their employees would be exposed to and what kind of clothing would be required under the standard.

Lastly, the proposal does not require employers to pay for the protective clothing required under the provision. However, the economic analysis estimates that the estimates are based on the assumption that employers will pay and the preamble raises questions on this issue. We actually expect that to be one of the major issues that the public is going to respond to during the rulemaking period.

The current time line, the comment period closes on January the 11th, 2006. The notices of attention to appear were due by November 11th. That period has expired by now. I think over 40 participants have requested time to appear and testify at our hearing.

Hearing testimony and documentary evidence is due by February 1st, 2006, and the public hearing is scheduled for Washington, D.C., starting on March the 6th, 2006.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Dave. Questions, comments?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much for your time.

MR. WALLIS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Next, we are going to have Dr. Goddard talk to us about the SDAC economic analysis update. Thank you, Doctor.

DR. GODDARD: Thank you.

CDAC ECONOMIC ANALYSIS UPDATE

DR. GODDARD: Mr. Chairman, committee members, if I could take the opportunity to just give you a brief update on a subject that I addressed with you last time on lead in construction. Last time I think I spoke to you all and to this committee we were talking about extending the public comment date. It was changed from September to November '05.

We have received 20 comments with 60 exhibits and we're in the process of evaluating and reviewing those comments with the exhibits. We plan on completing the review and publishing this report in FY '06. So it will be midsummer depending on the progress we make incorporating and reviewing the comments. That was the last time I was on the agenda to talk to you about lead in construction.

If I could also ask for a little bit of your time, I'll be brief and get into CDAC soon. There was a question this morning about the value of settlement agreements to Mr. Snare. I think you, sir, raised a question about the value of settlement agreements to Mr. Snare. You were talking about settling cases informally?

MR. STRUDWICK: Yes, I did.

DR. GODDARD: Yes. I just wanted to share with you that we have an evaluation study in my shop. We do all the look backs like lead in construction, and in my directorate, we also do program evaluation studies. So we have one in the pipeline on voluntary protection programs.

We have several in the pipeline, and one of them that I'd like to mention, to answer your question, looks at litigation of OSHA cases as opposed to settlement agreements. We're looking at corporate white settlement agreements as well as individual case settlement agreements.

We're working with the University of Tennessee Construction Industrial Research and Policy Center on this research that we're doing, and we hope to get more than just the anecdotal, "we think this is working." It's like a site-specific target in program study that we did where we prove that we're getting double-digit illness and injury reductions out of high-hazard notification letters and site-specific targeting.

So we're looking for more than anecdotal. We want to quantify the benefit of settlement agreements, and that study should be done in early Fiscal Year '07, and I'll be more than happy when that's done to share that with you.

MR. STRUDWICK: Were you here during that comment period?

DR. GODDARD: Yes. When you asked the question, I was standing in the back.

MR. STRUDWICK: Okay. You and I were sitting -- yeah. But the historical fact came from my observations in each of the individual area offices that I was exposed to. So I just wondered if anybody else had observed the same thing, and if in fact there was a study similar to what you're just referring to. So I appreciate the fact that you made me aware of that and we'll expect the results, because I think it's worth it.

DR. GODDARD: Yeah. What we have done actually, we have completed a data collection stage where we have sampled just about all area offices and gathered information on specific cases that have settlement agreements, corporate-wide, as well as just individual job site settlement agreements.

We are processing that information now before we actually kick off the analysis of the benefit of it, composed of those that have been litigated. So that should be an interesting outcome.

Today I was asked to share with you one of the projects that we've been working on intensely. The cranes and derricks advisory committee rule on the economic analysis that we've been doing on that. What I want to share with you, and Assistant Secretary Snare talked about it this morning a little bit, is that our office has produced a draft economic analysis of the CDAC rule, and it's undergoing another review in my office.

We will shortly make this available to the rest of OSHA like the standards and guidance people that you just heard from as well as the Solicitor's Office for review.

As this fell behind on the schedule that we had original set for it, limited resources and competing priorities were the reasons particularly hexavalient chromium, the court order for it, we've devoted a tremendous amount of resources to meet our January deadlines for deliverables on hexavalient chromium.

We have also devoted quite a bit of resources to meet our commitments on doing a preliminary regulatory analysis on beryllium as well, and those were two major initiatives that we undertook that have this slightly schedule slide a little bit.

However, within a week or so I'll have that document. We are doing some internal review, and we're going to have that document forward to the rest of OSHA and the solicitors within a week or so. So it's something that's put on our front burner to deliver on, and what I would like to do with you this afternoon is share some of the highlights of some of analysis that we have done to date that might be of interest to you in terms of the CDAC economic analysis.

One of the things that I'd like to share with you is the scope of the analysis that we are doing, and the industries that we are focusing on in terms of the impact of the rule change or revisions to the rule, particularly there are five industry categories that are affected that we are doing analysis on, and we are concerned about these because they have the great potential.

It's crane rental, small businesses with operators, cranes that are rented with an operator, crane rentals without operators. People who rent cranes and have the rentee provide an operator. People who own cranes and rent them part time with operators, own cranes and do not rent them, have their own on-staff operators, and crane renters in the construction industry.

We have to divide this up and look at each element of it. We've done that in the industry profiles because each variation has presented to us different factors of costs and benefit to meet the requirements of the rule.

Most of this data that we gather comes from the Bureau of the Census, special data runs that we request, so we're looking at the different NAIC's codes and North American industrial codes that gives us information on how many of these businesses actually fit one of those five categories that I mentioned. So this is just a preliminary part of the economic analysis that we have completed.

We also wanted to share with you today that most of the affected employers have been defined or have been identified as being small businesses by the Small Business Administration criteria, the site standards that SBA sets. More specifically 90 percent of the employees that we are looking at have been identified as small businesses.

Some statistics that might be informative to you, we think, is that 123,000 small fumes by SBA standards, 134,000 are small establishments, and the number of employees are 2,639,000 employees being affected by this rule change.

So those are pretty significant statistics that we have to be very careful how we do the analysis on in terms of the cost and benefits that we are doing to determine the economic feasibility of the rule.

The main provisions that we are doing is comparing the old rule, the old sub part into the changes in the proposal that was submitted to us, and we're looking at significant impact in the assembly and disassembly and ground condition element of the proposal.

There's a significant impact there, and a significant impact particularly on what's near and dear to me is the crane operations near power lines because I just share a brief story with you in the past. Throughout state legislators, there's a large move to change what we call our line voltage acts which are pieces of state legislation that control the distance of booms from high voltage lines and with new types of cable coming out, there is a move in the country to reduce some of those dimensions that is going to affect workers safety. That's just something that's going on nationally.

The crane inspection provisions of the proposal are going to have some significant cost impact that we're going to be looking at in terms of certification and operator training.

Then data that we think that's important in terms of our benefits analysis comes from BLS data as well as from our IMS data, and some of the things that we're looking at in terms of the benefits analysis is an average of over last ten years of 1100 fatal occupational injuries -- that's CFOI data -- in the construction industry of which 228,000 lost days occurred, more specifically crane-related accidents, there have been an average over ten years, we're looking at about 75 annual fatalities that are crane-related. So these are just statistics that we put in and we try to quantify in our analysis.

We also believe that the proposed draft standard will prevent 30 to 50 avoidable fatalities and 15,000 avoidable injuries. So those are the numbers that we are coming up, 15,000 avoidable injuries and 30 to 50 avoided fatalities by applying the new proposal.

So like I said the draft economic analysis is complete. We will send it to the second floor to the Assistant Secretary's Office within a week, and the determination, I guess, the next step would be the agency review of the analysis to make the determination as to whether we shall continue to finalize and develop the rule and probably make the decision of our going through the small business regulatory enforcement FINIS act panel, whether the process would be initiated to set up SBRFA panel, and that final decision would come through the Assistant Secretary's Office.

As many of you are aware of how the SBRFA panels work, the goal would be to consider the burden of small business and to look at alternatives to goals as far as the OSH Act is concerned.

OMB gets involved through the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs, and it's a schedule of a 120-day process where drafts of the rule as commented are sent to the Small Business Administration and OMB. The panel chooses 10 to 25 small entity representatives.

What happens with the small entity representatives is that we're looking for people that have small businesses that are actually running proactive safety and health programs to give us feedback and give the panel feedback in terms of evaluating the alternatives that are proposed.

So we would welcome nominations for the SERs, the small entity representatives, and that's something that you can do through Mr. Swanson. We have some names already, internally, but that will be something that's coming up for consideration for SBRFA panel hearings, if that path is decided, chosen path.

Questions?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Frank?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Well, first does anybody else on the committee have any questions they think they might ask? Thank you.

First I'd like to make a statement. Dr. Goddard, I appreciate your coming here and presenting your group and letting us know what's going on to the best of your knowledge.

My organization and I can say as one of the only members of ACCSH actually sat on CDAC, but I represent quite a few other entities that sat on it and have asked questions of me to ask here today, and hopefully, we can get them answerer.

Like I said, along my organization, along with others, spent a year developing the materials that was actually gotten to you through the chain. We met three days a week, sometimes met on the telephones, talking things over. And then there were little sidebar meetings.

A lot of time and money was allotted to this by all of the organizations, and we were given a year to actually have our task complete. We did that in July. We finished a year from the time we started in July, and from what I think I just heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, your group has completed your analysis of the cost and benefits of this whole thing. So you're done with this then is what you're saying?

DR. GODDARD: Right now I am reviewing it internally in my shop, and within a week or two I'm going to pass it on to the other offices in OSHA that have an impact on it.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay. When did you actually get CDAC given to your office? How long ago?

DR. GODDARD: I'll have to research that.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Ballpark? Month? Two months?

DR. GODDARD: No. It has been a while longer. Two months ago we were diverting resources to beryllium and hexavalient chromium.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Yeah, you said hex was number one on your list.

DR. GODDARD: Yes, because of the court order.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: And that's a court order, I understand.

DR. GODDARD: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: And you said you have hex and beryllium also in your statement today, that you have that to do the economic analysis on also.

DR. GODDARD: Correct.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: So with two ahead, say of CDAC, how much resources did you actually put on it the whole time you had it, manpower-wise?

DR. GODDARD: There was a point that it's more than just the manpower that I put on it. There was a change in departmental contracting strategies in terms of the consultants that we used to develop some of these industry profiles, and there was a window of time where we were looking at changing the GSA schedule for people that would do this type of analysis for us.

So there was a period of time there where it wasn't just dependent on the one or two economists that we have. We have had a guy full time that was one of his projects to develop the industry profiles which is quite intensive. We had to go through a new contracting process to get that done.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay. So what happened is it started and then it stopped and then a couple of other things -- well, hex was always there first.

DR. GODDARD: Right.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Beryllium jumps in there, and then it was sort of sitting by the wayside with maybe one or two people working on this, and then pushing it forward.

I know in the semi-annual register agenda in May 2005 that it was initiated. The small business review process was going to happen in September of 2005. This deadline wasn't made. The latest October 31st, semi-annual regulation agenda says OSHA will issue a report at the end of February. It's December. Do you think we'll make February?

DR. GODDARD: I just want to get back to a comment that you made about the hex chromium and the beryllium. We're well ahead in meeting the time frame for the hex chrom. We've submitted the report to OMB, so that's not impeding the resources that we've put it into CDAC at this time.

It did a few months ago but that's moving ahead. We have the analysis done on the proof on beryllium as well. So I'm optimistic that given the slides that we've had in the past, I'm pretty optimistic that we could commit the resources to have these competing with the hex chrom and the beryllium.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Well, hex, like you said, hex will probably --

DR. GODDARD: Yeah.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: You've got that complete on beryllium, but do you think optimistically we'll make February to have this out there or I mean the next group gets it?

DR. GODDARD: My office is going to be committed to getting this analysis done. I think the valuable work that the committee did bringing it up forward to us has to be acknowledged in terms of the quality of the product that came to us. So I don't think that it would have to go back through, but that's just my personal opinion in terms of the fundamental, technological shifts that we've been through since 1971 to now.

My sense is not being as controversial maybe as some other issues we've been working on, I remain optimistic.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Yeah, I would say because not only the year that the committee put in on this under ACCSH was also the over two years that was put in on a subcommittee through ACCSH, so a lot of work was done. What we had to do was take it all and put it together.

It just seemed like with the time schedule we were given to believe that was going to happen, it's well over that time slot, and we just want to see where it's at, where it's going to, and like I said, I'm the only one on this committee that actually sat on here, and I had a list of questions and I appreciate your answering them.

Hopefully we can get done here and you can get back to the office and get them people cranking it out here, and we can get going. Thank you.

DR. GODDARD: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Frank. Any other questions?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, Doctor, for a great report.

DR. GODDARD: Thank you, sir.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: The next topic we're going to cover, we're going to have Noah Connell talk a little bit about what's going on with the construction safety standards. He's going to give us an update.

After that, we will take a short break so I can get organized on the minutes for the last two meetings, and then we'll complete that and any other lose ends we may have and that will be the end of the day for us. So, Noah, if you would please.

CONSTRUCTION SAFETY STANDARDS UPDATE

MR. CONNELL: Thank you for inviting me. I'm Noah Connell, the acting deputy director of the Directorate of Construction. We have three standards projects underway in our office as I think all of you are aware.

Little brief update on where we are. Confined space. We are preparing the notice of proposed rule making. What that really means right now in our offices we are attempting to finalize the preamble, and our schedule calls for publishing the proposed rule by March. That's going to be tight, but we're going to try to make it.

Slippery surfaces of skeletal steel. There is a provision in the steel erection standard which was originally scheduled by the terms in the standard itself to go into effect July 18th, 2006. We reopened the record sometime ago on that one provision, and I have analyzed the comments that were submitted on that. We had committed in a settlement agreement to decide to either affirm, modify or revoke that provision by January 18th, 2006.

We are in the last stages of getting departmental clearance on this project, so I'm optimistic that we will be able to make the January 18 date, so hopefully we will and that's when the decision would be issued. Now that's slippery surfaces of skeletal steel, not to be confused with others.

CDAC, as you just heard my colleague described the status of the economic analysis. My office is one of those offices that's going to be receiving their draft for review. I look forward to that.

As Frank pointed out, the current reg agenda calls for issuing a SBRFA report if we do SBRFA by February '06. As Frank alluded to, it's December. That's a 120-day process from the convening of a panel. A panel has not been convened so you can do the math, so that's where we are on our three standards. I'd be happy to take any questions.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Frank.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Frank Migliaccio. Thanks, Noah, for coming here and, as you said, we just did hear about the CDAC and I had a couple of questions on that from your office now.

Once you get it, you say you do the review. After that, it goes out to public. What happens next? What processes are left?

MR. CONNELL: First, we are going to have to get this draft economic analysis.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Yeah. That's what I said. Once Dr. Goddard's office gives it to your office and you do whatever you have to do, what's the next step then?

MR. CONNELL: Okay. While we're looking at it, they will also be giving it to the Solicitor's office. So hopefully there won't be many changes that will need to be made to it.

Once the changes are made, a decision will have to be made by our front office as to whether -- well, the economic analysis, first of all, will tell us are we required under these Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, to go through the small business review process. If certain threshold conditions are met as established in the economic analysis, if it's over that amount, then we will have to do SBRFA.

Of course, even if we are not required to go through the SBRFA process, in other words, if the economic analysis showed that we were below those thresholds, the department could still choose to go through the process, so the next step will be a decision on whether we're going forward with the SBRFA.

If we do go forward with SBRFA, we first have to go through certain steps to convene the panel. In other words, we have to select the SER representatives. The SER representatives have to be given the information that they need. They will given the CDAC draft. They will be given the economic analysis and some other materials. They're given a chance to study that.

Then there's a meeting -- there may be a couple of meetings -- with the SERs, the small entity representatives -- that what SER stands for -- and from the point that the panel is convened, by statue, we have 120 days to issue a report on the SBRFA review.

Once the report is issued, then the agency has to consider what was said in the report. Now you have OSHA, OMB and the Small Business Administration are the panel members on a small business review panel. That's the group that puts together the report to OSHA.

The report will come to OSHA and then OSHA has to consider any recommendations and comments that are made through that process. So then at that point, a decision would have to be made as to whether we need to make changes to the CDAC draft before publishing it as a proposed rule.

We also will have to complete the preamble, and that's a major project. Now we have been working on the preamble since August of last year, okay? So we have been working on the various steps, you know, we've been doing concurrently.

We've already done a tremendous amount of work on the preamble. There's a lot more work left. We will have to go through the concurrence process with the Solicitor's Office. On that, that's a very intensive process. It will be a combination of, assuming we do SBRFA, finishing SBRFA, considering what comes out of that process, determining whether changes have to be made, and concurrently, at the same time, finishing up that preamble, and then we will publish the proposed rule.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay. Now in your best guess, looking at having to go through everything you're stating here just now, what year are we looking at?

MR. CONNELL: Right now I'm 49.

(Laughter.)

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Don't tell me you're going to retire. Any idea?

MR. CONNELL: No, no idea. And the reason I have no idea is because a lot of the steps that will be taking place are not completely within the control of my office, and we have a department that is doing a lot of different things. So that's one of the reasons why it's so incredibly difficult to come up with accurate predictions about how this is going to go.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: So I could be retired before this comes into law?

MR. CONNELL: Well, I mean it's a priority with us, and it's our number one project.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I knew it was. That's why I was wondering what Dr. Goddard would say.

MR. CONNELL: Yeah, and we, in DOC, feel particularly close to it because we were so involved with it, and we feel a real commitment and debt to the folks who participated in the CDAC process itself. We feel like we owe them to get this thing out as a proposal.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I would like to commend you for your honesty, because you're the first person that hasn't given me a date. Thank you.

MR. SWANSON: Frank, or Mr. Migliaccio, excuse me.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Oh, it's Frank.

MR. SWANSON: The Secretary of Labor is also on record as this being a high-agenda item with her, although she might -- maybe, maybe not -- be older than Mr. Connell. There are other limiting factors on her career here, so I would expect to see it in her administration.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I'll still be working then. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Michael.

MR. HAYSLIP: Quick question. Mike Hayslip, NESTI. Noah, if it comes under your umbrella, can you speak to the issue of payment for personal protective equipment? That may not be something that directly relates to you. I remember there are some rules or discussions on that topic. It there anything you can tell us?

MR. CONNELL: Yeah. That is not being handled by our office.

MR. HAYSLIP: Okay. Then I pull the question.

MR. CONNELL: That's a different office.

MR. HAYSLIP: All right.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Greg.

MR. STRUDWICK: I just have one comment for Noah, and it was the first meeting that I had here, I think 2002, this time of the year. Mr. Ahern gave the overview of the document that was being submitted for approval and said that I made the comment or the question that what about this training? Is it going to take care of itself, and what about the certification requirements?

And I just want to let you know, that in the last month, I've reviewed four proposals for certification and accreditation type of reviews and so when he said that it would take care of itself to a certain degree while the process was in process, it has.

So the people are actually becoming very ready for the final proposal and/or the preliminary. It doesn't really matter, but it's all working internally in the industry, and it's very interesting to watch this happen. But it is working and Mr. Ahern was correct.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Any other questions or comments?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, Noah.

MR. CONNELL: Thank you. Appreciate it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We're going to take a 10-minute break. That's 10 minutes.

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: And then we're going to come back and finish up with the minutes and a few other odds and ends that we have left.

MR. SWANSON: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Yes.

MR. SWANSON: You and I have had some conversation about skipping an agenda item, OSHA Challenge for Construction. It's the challenge partnership arrangement and Mr. Burkhammer was going to give a quick and dirty update on it.

Is it the sense of the committee that, seeing how it's 3:15, that you do have the time for this? If so, Mr. Burkhammer will be here after break and we'll have it done.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. We'll do it.

MR. SWANSON: Okay. Thank you.

(Whereupon, there was a brief recess.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Let's go ahead and get started and do the last few things we have to complete for the day.

Before Stew does his presentation, Bruce would just like to take a few moments to talk to us about a couple of things.

MR. SWANSON: Yeah. Actually, just a single thing. We had a presentation, or had several presentations this morning on trench rescue, and they were very, very good presentations. I appreciated, and I think all you did, appreciated the aspects of hearing what's available out there in new technology for training purposes and for the actual rescue purposes.

However, that being said, you note that on many of those slides, there was an individual manufacturer listed, and we are not in the business nor are we going to get in the basically of endorsing individual products or helping manufacturers come in here and give a docummercial on whatever it is they have to present.

So if you will, in your minds, just categorize that presentation as indicative of the genre of products and services, that are out there for you to utilize in the future in your world, it would be appreciated. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Bruce. Stew, if you'd go ahead and give us an update or what's going on in the challenge program, I'd appreciate it.

(A slide presentation.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I shared with you at the last meeting, the new cooperative program that they implemented in May of '04 -- OSHA challenge is a construction piece and a general industry piece of challenge and I'm just going to talk about the construction piece -- had been a phenomenal success.

When we first developed challenge, we developed it for a niche, if you will, of small employers to medium employers, to get them into a program where they were participating with OSHA and helping them build a program from scratch or improve a program that had some pieces, but not all the pieces.

Secretary Henshaw, at the time, we had a big kickoff meeting here at the Department of Labor and launched the program, and we had seven administrators, original administrators, Tom Broderick being one, that had signed up to help us get the program started. I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about where we've come in that short period of time.

For those of you that have never heard of the OSHA Challenge Pilot, it's three stages or phases, eight steps in each phase, for a total of 24 steps, and you can enter anywhere in any of the 24 steps, based on where your program is evaluated by the administrator.

Once you get into that program, depending on where you entered, when you complete the first eight or the second eight or the third eight, you get recognition from the Assistant Secretary and after completing the third eight, you're eligible for advancement into a VPP demonstration program for construction.

The Challenge administrators initially committed to sponsoring 10 participants, and then the administrator may appoint some coordinators to help him administer the programs.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: The benefits of Challenge are again it's an increased commitment by management that they want to improve their program and want to have a good safety and health program in the company, increase safety and health activities for the employees.

As you build your safety and health management system through these 24 steps, there's activities and ongoing commitments by employees, by management, to help coordinate and build this program and go on to the next step and the next step.

Improve management system is a given because if you have nothing and you start at ground first step in phase one, and you work all the way through step 24 in phase three, you build a complete system.

Or if you have pieces of the system, the administrator puts you in where you need to grow from there and you've already got some pieces of the system and you go on through the 24 steps and build the rest of it.

And a big pointer, a very key point, is the fourth one and that's employee involvement in your program, and that helps you grow in those 24 steps also.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Reduced injuries and illnesses as you're going through your steps and implementing new processes and new programs in each of these steps, every one of these programs helps reduce injuries and illnesses.

We've learned from some of the participants in the program that once they've graduated -- I'll talk about the three companies that have graduated -- use this in their bidding process against other companies and it's helping them win work. Each of these three companies that have graduated through our program credit them graduating from OSHA Challenge as getting them some extra work that they may not have won otherwise, and as you reduce your injuries and illnesses, of course, you reduce your cost of insurance.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: Currently, we have 37 construction participants in Challenge. We have eight administrators who have 27 coordinators under those eight administrators, and we have eight new administrators who have applied that are in the pipeline that we're working on approval now.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: In 2004, the companies, those 37 employers, worked 17,071,111 hours. Construction employees covered by that is 15,060, and various union participation throughout those 37 employers and 71 different locals are participating in the program.

As I said, three have graduated and completed the 24 steps.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: The first graduate we had was Weitz Construction in Ohio. They had a pretty good program when they came in. They only had a few things to do. As you see there from August of 2004, through August of 2005, one year, they had zero accidents and that was the first year they had ever went in the history of the company with zero accidents and you can see they won the AGC grant award winner. They were an AGC-sponsored company.

C.R. Meyers was another company that came into the program and grew and graduated. They greatly enhanced their management commitment and direction of their company, their employees. They recognized their employees as their greatest assets and have done a lot things to help their employees now who really enjoy working for this company. It's a great company.

Some of the employees that have been talked to just rave about how this company has changed its culture and safety has grown greatly in the company. Every work activity, every task, everything they do is safety, has a safety piece in it.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: The last one is Garber Brothers Precision Concrete. This was kind of a unique company because when they started, they didn't have much, and in a very, very short period of time, with a tremendous amount of effort by the management of the company, they finished their 24 steps. They graduated from the program, and safety now is an integral part of every single operation that this company does.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: You can see the current year 2004 averages of the 37 companies in Challenge, 3.8, which is 44 percent lower than the '03 BLS data and the dark rate is 2.2, 39 percent. So the companies in this program have really made a strong commitment and are showing tremendous responsibility, dedication in reducing injuries and illnesses.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: We just completed the evaluation. It's still in draft form. I'm sharing with you some of the things from that draft. Some of the things that we think are future challenges for Challenge, if you will, we need to more clearly define the program expectations, and we keep saying three phases, 24 steps, and we need maybe to go into a little more detail of what some of those steps are, and when you finish that program, what all have you accomplished and what all have you done?

Increase coordination among the administrators. There doesn't seem to be a lot of intercommunication. Maybe we could grow the program a little more and get some more companies in if we had a conference call maybe quarterly or semi-annually set up with the administrators so they could share thoughts and ideas and trade some success stories.

Increased training for administrators. We haven't done a very good job of this from the beginning. We've thrown this out there, and we've given them stuff and we have trained them somewhat, but some of the administrators think we could have taken a little more time and taught them a few more things before they started.

Some of them kind of winged it and did a good job winging it, but as they did that, we learned some new things, and so we're going to be working on that.

Increase recognition for administrators. Once we blow the horn and say how great these administrators, we're more than happy they signed up, and they think we let them disappear, and they don't hear from us much after that.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: We have to decrease the time and paperwork burden even though we think it's greatly reduced to what some of the other programs are. Some people think we can reduce it even more and reduce the time.

Our data collection. Improve the data collection method. They're working on that. Increase marketing is kind of a secondary piece of this, and also we greatly want to increase state plan participation and hopefully Challenge will be picked up by some of the states and implemented there.

(A change of slides.)

MR. BURKHAMMER: That's the report, Mr. Chairman. I'll be happy to entertain any questions.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom.

MR. BRODERICK: Stew, now that we have three people that have graduated, and I assume you weren't promoting any one of those three contractors at all?

MR. BURKHAMMER: No, I was not.

MR. BRODERICK: Are they making any gains in terms of getting into VPP? Have we created a bridge yet?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Where's Paula when I need her? As you know, Tom, VPPC is still a ways away. What we have done or are working on doing is taking the Region 5 demonstration program that we developed for Region 5 that several contractors signed up for, and we've worked with the Solicitor's Office in gaining approval, which we hope to have early next year from the second floor in expanding that nationwide. So that will be the bridge, if you will, until we get VPPC finalized.

MR. BRODERICK: I'm just asking that really more for some of the people that we have that are not able to bridge.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Okay. Yeah. No, as I said, hopefully once we get the final package put together and down to the second floor and hopefully get approval, that will be our bridge while we wait for VPPC.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Michael.

MR. HAYSLIP: Mike Hayslip, NESTI. Mr. Burkhammer, there's two questions. One, is there any element on return on investment? Dollars spent in safety might translate into increased production, any other financial gain? Is that an element in this?

MR. BURKHAMMER: It wasn't in this evaluation that has just been completed. As you saw up there, one of the things, improved data collection and that's something we hope to gain in the future.

MR. HAYSLIP: Is there any quantifiable data that says as a part of being in this program, people have in fact gotten better? I see the rates are lower, and you wed expect that. Is there any quantifiable data that says over the "X" years, period, this guy was at this level, and he has since become at this level?

Is there quantification of that result?

MR. BURKHAMMER: I think when some of these companies graduate, we use that, or when they're in their program, we get a baseline from them of where they started in the program. As they go through the steps in our improved data collection, hopefully we can see, well, when they got in the program, they were "X," and when they graduated from the program, they were "Y," and we can use that as an improvement factor.

Right now we just have anecdotal.

MR. HAYSLIP: Okay. So it's akin perhaps that people that drive red cars get a lot of tickets. Well, the question is, is it the red car or the program or is it the fact that people that tend to drive fast, happen to buy red cars, meaning people that get into this program are naturally going to be safe entities anyways. Do we know it's the program or do we know it's the red car?

MR. BURKHAMMER: As of yet, we don't know.

MR. HAYSLIP: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Kevin.

MR. BEAUREGARD: I just wanted to make a comment. Kevin Beauregard from North Carolina. First of all, I think the OSHA Challenge Program certainly is a good program and I'm glad that you all are pursuing it.

Several of the states do have VPP construction programs, North Carolina being one of them. We have a Building Star Program, and we get some of the first building stars or building VPPs in the country and when we look at the Challenge Program, we think it's a good program, but we also have our set of requirements under Building Star, and so we're somewhat hesitant to switch over to a Challenge Program unless it's a stepping stone to the Building Star Program, or in your case, a VPP construction program.

MR. BURKHAMMER: That's a great question. The whole purpose of Challenge when we developed and we put it in place was to grow people into the VPP, not in place of VPP. When you finish these 24 steps, you've basically put together the management system piece that allows you to qualify for VPP.

So the Region 5 demo program is a VPP program. It was just tailored down a little bit to fit one region. So now that we're going to expand that, when you graduate from Challenge, you will also be able to fit into the VPP Demonstration Pilot from Region 5, which will now be a national. So it's not a replacement. It's a stepping stone to get you into.

MR. BEAUREGARD: And I was just responding to you said that you were hoping to get some other states into it?

MR. BURKHAMMER: Right.

MR. BEAUREGARD: And that's just one thing from our state. We have something that we call the Rising Star, which I think is somewhat similar to this, and then we have the Building Star and we have the Star Program for the general industry. So we're working towards that, and I think it's a great idea, and I hope it catches on across the country.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Thank you. Appreciate it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Mike.

MR. HAYSLIP: I would echo exactly what Kevin said. It's an excellent program and kudos to the propagation of further endeavors that it keeps going. It seems to be good, and what I've heard is it's nice. People are indeed getting something out of it.

MR. BURKHAMMER: Super. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you very much, Stew.

MS. SHORTALL: Mr. Chair, request that Mr. Burkhammer's Power Point on the OSHA Challenge for Construction Project be entered into the record as Exhibit No. 18.

(Whereupon, Exhibit No. 18 was marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Well, we're down to a few other items and then we can adjourn this meeting. The first thing, Michael, is to go back to the minutes from June 23rd and 24th and you had some discussion about some changes on those particular minutes.

And then we need to approve those minutes, and then if the committee members would be so kind, you also got a copy of the February 17th minutes, and we need to take a look at those and do what we need to do, and then get those approved.

Finally, there is only at this point, one persons signed up for public comment. So, Mike.

MR. HAYSLIP: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to make the following motion to reflect my understanding of conversations held during or last meeting, June 23rd through the 24th, and that those notes be reflected in the minutes of this so-mentioned meeting, specifically let it be noted a report was requested to be prepared and presented to the OTI work group from OTE, with respect to three elements in the program.

Element No. 1, a listing of what training programs have been produced or will be produced through the Harwood Grant System.

No. 2, what is the status of each, especially with respect to getting the information out into the public domain.

No. 3, if the program is not currently out in the public domain, what is the projected date when it might be placed into the public domain? That's all.

MR. SWANSON: I think we already had a motion this morning, and a second, and there was some discussion on it, and he just clarified what was in his motion.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Do we have a second?

MR. SWANSON: Well, I think we had a second this morning.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. And then all those in -- I guess I'll take the vote. All those in favor?

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. So moved. Now we need to approve those minutes for the -- well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

MS. SHORTALL: Mr. Chair, there are a few other technical corrections that need to be made to the minutes from June 23 and 24. Some of the sectors represented or some of the members are incorrect. So I would suggest that the sector represented just be crossed off completely for all persons, and that the name of John Ferris be deleted since he's not one of the members of the committee.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Second?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I'll second.

MS. SHORTALL: It's not a motion.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. All right. So we're in agreement with that, so now we need to get these minutes approved as revised.

MR. HAYSLIP: So move.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Second?

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Second.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: All those in favor?

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Opposed?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We're good to go. And then if you would be so kind as to look at the February 17th minutes. Any discussion, corrections, deletions, on those particular minutes?

MR. SMITH: I move they stand approved as read.

MR. HAYSLIP: Second.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay. All those in favor?

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Any opposed?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: So moved. So the February 17th minutes have been approved to be submitted as they are.

MS. SHORTALL: Mr. Chair?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Yes.

MS. SHORTALL: I would ask that the approved, revised minutes for June 23 be placed in the record as Exhibit 19, and that the approved minutes from February 17th, 2005, be put into the record as Exhibit 20.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 19 and 20 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you, Sarah. Before we close, there is always opportunity for public comment and as I mentioned earlier today, there was a sign-up sheet in the back of the room, and we're at the point on the agenda where we'd like to have public comment. Right now I only have one person on that sheet, and that's George. If you would like to come up, please and state your name and who you're with and what you want to comment on.

PUBLIC COMMENT

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you. My name is George Kennedy, and I'm vice president of safety for the National Utility Contractors' Association.

I would just like to discuss for a minute with the committee and possibly look at a review of these comments, maybe at this meeting or a future meeting, related to disaster site worker training programs that are coming together at OTI now.

We had a speaker at our safety directors' forum last week, and Greg had mentioned Tim Gallagher, who is a retired Phoenix division fire chief and also, as I understand, was in command of rescue efforts out at Katrina.

He recently went to a 16-hour training program for disaster site worker training. Like me and Greg, he believes that utility contractors are going to be some of the first contractors on site, following a disaster to get the water, sewer, gas and everything up and running again before other contractors can get in there and do their job.

But one of our concerns is this 16-hour training. I haven't taken the program, so as Tim indicated to me that somebody who has gone to an OSHA 10-hour program has had at least half of the training that is required under this 16-hour training.

We were thinking that maybe this committee should possibly consider and maybe make recommendations to OTI that there be some credit given to people who have attended OSHA 10-hour programs so that they don't have to go through 16 hours of training.

Maybe they will have to take a six-hour or a 10-hour, one-day training program, two hours of which might be a brief refresher and the other six to bring them up to speed on some of the issues that are not included in 10 hours, such as WMD, maybe a little bit more specific training on respirators and chemicals, things of that nature, that, again, are not covered in a lot of depth in an OSHA 10 hour.

So that was the first suggestion is that we look at that from a different perspective because a lot of contractors are going to want to go down and help, some as volunteers, others later on obviously to make a living.

A lot of them are not going to be ready to step up to the plate and do 16 hours of training before they send the guys down there. So many of them have already put their people through 10-hour training program. So that's first consideration.

The other one is the trainers themselves. I know Tom has invited me to the train-the-trainer program up at Construction Safety Council, and I'd love to go, but because of time and in some cases not only my budget, but other people's budgets, Greg and other people like that would like to be trainers, but because of time and money sometimes, we can't get away for five days to go to a training program.

But there are a lot of us out there, myself included, who are certified safety professionals, certified industrial hygienists, and even a lot of the OSHA outreach training program instructors who are highly qualified and almost ready to go, and maybe we should look at the possibility of these people also being given some credit for their knowledge and experience so that maybe instead of attending a five day, they can go to a two day and become trained as trainers.

I, for one, would like to start something within our organization and get trainers out there to around the country, maybe some of our current instructors to help teach and train the workers so when this happens and some of our employers are called in to situations like 9/11, one of our contractors -- Kramer from New Jersey was one of the first in on 9/11 -- and they're there. They're up front and they're probably not first responders, but maybe second responders, second-level responders coming into do cleanup as well as the utilities.

That's basically what my recommendations are is that the committee look at this and possibly discuss it and pass some recommendations on to OTI to make this program better and to make it in many cases more affordable and easier for contractors to ensure that their workers are trained and ready to go, God forbid, something like this happens again.

So that's basically my recommendations. I know the committee is a hurry, and I don't want to take your time, and I thank you very much.

MR. HAYSLIP: Can I ask a question?

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Absolutely. Go ahead, Mike.

MR. HAYSLIP: Question, Mr. Kennedy. With respect to the 10-hour topics that already have been covered, would you think it's possible that if they go through -- granted it could be a doubling up, if you will -- that there may be a different spin on some of these training topics when it's taught in the context of a disaster site relief training, that even though it's the same training, it could have a little different taint or different spin when it's in the context of another --

MR. KENNEDY: Well, that is where I believe the refresher, let's say a two-hour refresher, and then the six-hour additional training to bring them up to 16 or 18 hours of training, I think could address those issues, because we're only looking at hazcom. That doesn't change much. Personal protective equipment doesn't change much. Use of equipment and tools doesn't change much. We're not going to get involved with scaffolding or things like that too often until later on. So I think that it can be done?

MR. HAYSLIP: Couple of other thoughts? Does it matter when that 10-hour training was taken? Would it matter if it was ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago? Is it a good idea for someone that's giving out this disaster relief training card, or certification or whatever the right wordage is, to assume that it's given out based upon someone else's

training that isn't necessarily checked or quantified.

I have a concern with quality control. I understand the balance between cost effectiveness, but my ultimate concern would be quality and I don't know if that guarantees the quality. Comments.

MR. KENNEDY: My comment on that would be when it comes to OSHA 10-hour training and the timing of it and how often you have to take it, I think that is an issue that I have my own personal opinions on and I do believe that, you know, we should probably have to require people to take it more often.

As far as the quality of training, if these guys are outreach trainers and they teaching the program according to the way OTI has laid it out, they should be getting the information, as I see it, that they need. I mean let's face it. Most of the situations are going to deal with general construction safety to PPE, and things like that. It's also going to deal with where we need some additional training is probably a higher use of respirators, more information on the chemical hazards, definitely more information on WMDs and other areas like that.

So again that's something I think OSHA needs to look at. Retraining, I'm a firm believer in repetition is the key to learning. But, again, we're trying to get people through training so they're qualified and I do believe that right now down there in Katrina, there are a lot of people who went through a quick four-hour course and were thrown into a situation that maybe a lot more dangerous than they think, especially since the water levels have gone down and the concentrations of chemicals are in the ground now instead of being mixed in with water. They're laying on the ground and they're kicking up as dust and things like that.

MR. HAYSLIP: Mr. Chair, one final comment. I don't disagree with Mr. Kennedy. It's a valid concern and I tend to agree with him in part.

Is it possible, Mr. Kennedy, you could pencil some of these thoughts on paper and make it something that we can consider, maybe vote on? You ask us to do it, but I think I need a little more push than that. Can you pencil some of your proposals to us, and we can consider it at the next meeting?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, I would be willing to sit down -- I mean I've been talking with Gallagher on this for since the program first came out. I'd be happy to contact him and discuss it with him. I know Tom is involved. I'd like to talk with Tom about it more and Greg Strudwick I'm sure would step forward. So, sure, we could probably get something to you.

MR. HAYSLIP: Through Mr. Strudwick, I would entertain the conversation providing you gave us a little more proposal.

MR. KENNEDY: Well, it's just more detail, yeah. It's not a big deal. It's just a matter of organizing our thoughts a little better.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: George, we have another question from Linwood.

MR. SMITH: Yeah, Linwood Smith. Mr. Kennedy, I agree with your comments, and I agree with Mike is saying. But I don't want us to limit this, and I do think we need a group. I think it needs to be a formal group from this body to appoint, that sits down and looks at this and comes up with recommendations.

But I'm not certain that we aren't limiting ourselves in saying have 10 hours of training. I think this 16 hours of training, we're saying there should be some performance to it, and it should stipulate substantial in effect or equivalent training in other areas.

A lot of companies do have a 10-hour training, working exactly right, everything was current, and they shouldn't have to go through it again. But, also, there are companies, I hear that have the respirator training and some of the other training and that should qualify also.

So if you've had the training that's prescribed and you can document that you had it, and it's current, with whatever current is, then equivalency should be what we should be looking for and not specifying just one course.

MR. KENNEDY: I agree with that, and I use respirators as an example. Again, discussing this with Tim Gallagher, there are a lot of people out there who have been to a hazmat training already. So do they really need to go through a full-fledged crash course, I guess, on hazmat, maybe some reminders.

I agree with that, and that's why I'm suggesting this group maybe down the road might want to put together a work group. Well, we did create a work group today. Maybe that work group needs to look more closely at this.

Tim indicated to me that he was not happy with the program as it stands right now. He felt it was sort of thrown together. We knew it would be done, quickly, because of emergency situation, but it should be thought out a lot more and in more detail.

If you're a college student, you can carry your credits from one college to another. If you've been trained in safety, especially if you're a certified person or something like that, I think you should get some credits for your knowledge and your experience and maybe it should be in the form of modules or something like that, or possibly even something -- I'm not saying necessarily to do this, but maybe we could even do some of it online.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Linwood and then Frank.

MR. SMITH: Yeah, one other comment. I would put that in a form of a motion that we establish a work group to make recommendations to this body based on the Chair looking at it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Yeah. I was hoping that we would get Mr. Kennedy to submit this to the Chair in some sort of document that we can take a look at, and then figure out who should take a look at it. We may have an existing work group. We may be able to use the four or five volunteers from today that said they would like to take a look at what do we need to do in a disaster and share that with OSHA.

So I don't know if you want to continue with that motion or just --

MR. SMITH: I'll amend it then or withdraw it based on the Chair looking at it and deciding if it fits into an existing work group or any work group.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: And then we'll get to you, Frank. Go ahead.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Frank Migliaccio. Two things, Linwood. We have the OTI work group already in place that Mike and I both chair or co-chair. So that could go through the committee there and be put forth to the whole committee if Mike is agreeable.

MR. HAYSLIP: Uh-huh.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay. The other thing is Mr. Kennedy, you said that Tim felt as though this was thrown together quickly for the hurricanes. This wasn't put together for the hurricanes. This was put together for 9/11, because I sat on that committee.

MR. KENNEDY: Well, it was after 9/11. He was involved in that, too, yes.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: It wasn't just for the hurricane. That was put together and started back then. I sat on protect workers rights, and then OTI got involved in it with us.

MR. KENNEDY: The bottom line is, again, I haven't attended the program, so I'm basing this on his comments to me, and he has expressed his comments to Kathy Cronin up in OTI and actually is going to work with her on the issue, but he just felt that there was a lot more that could be done to make it better. He's not knocking it. He definitely believes there's a need for it, and so do I, and I know Greg does, too.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom Broderick.

MR. BRODERICK: Couple of things.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Tom, could you announce your name into the mike?

MR. BRODERICK: Tom Broderick.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Thank you.

MR. BRODERICK: I think that it would be fair to get someone like Bernie Thompson from OTI Training Institute to visit our next meeting, and I wish my memory were better, but we had a meeting in Seattle with him the last several months of all the incidents directors, and there was some clarification about the 16-hour, 7600's class and the four-day, 5600 instructor class.

I seem to recall that we could at our discretion combine an OSHA 10 hour with the 16-hour class and do a two-and-a-half day class and issue cards for both. But that's why we need to have someone from OTI that actually could make that statement.

The original course that Frank is talking about, not only were ironworkers involved, but the fire service was very involved. They came to all the meetings and they gave input, and I guess that the course is not a required course.

In other words, I bet you there are maybe ten people that have responded to the Gulf that are actually doing work that have had the 16-hour disaster site worker program. All of the ed centers were bemoaning the fact that neither the 7600 or the 5600 had been very popular courses because there's no requirement for that to have them.

The Corps of Engineers or FEMA said this is going to be a requirement in the contract. Then that would be more of an issue, I think.

So the issue I think we would have a lot more success in discussing and debating the merits of the program if we had someone from OTI that's very familiar with it, because they did take the original 9/11 response, 16-hour class, and completely reconfigured it for natural disasters, sent us out new CDs and it's really a good course.

MR. KENNEDY: Well, of course, I know you've been working on this issue and you've been heavily involved, so you obviously understand what's going on and what is happening a lot more than I have, because I haven't been involved in those.

I'm just passing on information that has been brought to my attention and what came out of some discussion following our forum last week after Tim's presentation and some of the things that were brought up.

From what you indicated, there is FEMA is looking at possibly making it a requirement. I mean if it comes to pass and that's what's going to be, then we really need to look at a way to get people interested in the course and the longer you make the training, unless except for those few that are really going in there and they're just going to go right in, and it could be any contractor from anywhere in the country, because I mean let's face it. Down in Louisiana, they're wiped out.

Contractors down there were hit as hard as the people, so a lot of their equipment and everything is down, so people are coming from all over the country and this is what I was trying to get across to our class the other day is that you may live Wisconsin. You may have a construction firm in Wisconsin, but they're going down there to do utilities.

Based on what Tim told me about the situation -- you've been there, so you know more than I do -- that situation can turn in or has the potential to turn into a long-term problem such as 9/11 with the respiratory issues. I mean there's talk about a Katrina cough now that was written up. I read something recently about that.

So I think this is an issue that's important, but I think this committee, being the construction group, should look at it and just not let this thing be thrown together in a way that it's not going to be feasible or practical for the average contractor to make sure he gets his people up to speed and ready to go.

Yeah, there could be levels. We talked about levels and modules and I mean there's different ways to approach it, but I think I got a closer look at it. I don't want to delay the issue, obviously. We need something, because next season is coming.

MR. BRODERICK: Well, then I guess the final thing is -- this is not to cast any negative dispersions to Mr. Gallagher -- but he's arguably one of the best trained people in the country and he's recognized expert in fire rescue and so forth.

So for him to go through a 16-hour program that is meant for just Joe worker that might be thrown into a hazardous situation, I can see where he would think that the class was very remedial and we did build it to have a lot of class participation, hands-on kind of stuff, and I can see where that could be interpreted as something being thrown together.

MR. KENNEDY: From my understanding, he went to the train-the-trainer course. That's number one. And number two, knowing Tim for many hears, he's the kind of guy that looks at things from the level at which it's going to be presented. Even though he's very well trained and very knowledgeable, he puts himself down at that level, and when he presents things, he presents it at a level that people can understand it, too.

I know Greg has made arrangements for you to work with, or at least to talk with him. I think you'll find that he can be a big help and he wants to help, because he also comes from a construction background, and he doesn't want to see contractors hurt or injured, so I don't think he was evaluating it from that standpoint.

I think he was more or less evaluating it from the point of what's the material, what's already been presented, the realistic world of how many contractors are really going to put their workers through 16 hours, when they already have a 10 hour.

The idea that you can carry your credits over a little. If you've been trained in one area, maybe we can look at ways to do it so we can get more people through a good course and in the long run, let's face it. No matter whether these guys ever end up on a disaster site or not, the training is still going to be valuable.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Bruce.

MR. SWANSON: Yeah. Just a comment. I don't know how this committee can best help OSHA, but let me put into words a plea that has been an undertone here about four times today, starting with the Assistant Secretary.

We realize that what we have done with the Susan Harwood Grants which we think is the best thing that we could do, that's about money we had available. People needed training. We transferred some funds from column "A" to column "B" to make training available down in New Orleans area.

Unfortunately, we didn't predict three months before Katrina that it was going to be there, and it was going to be that bad. But even if we had been able to predict it and had offered a particular type of training, I'm not sure who out there would have had the foresight to have accepted that training anyhow.

The problem is, and we need your help, and by your help I mean the construction industry's help, in telling us a better way to get things done. There's a couple of associations still left in the room. The request goes to you guys, too, and talk to me later, later today, later this week, later this month, later in life, as to other ideas that you or your associations have.

Here's the problem. You have a disaster. You have all of this wreckage down there, and something has to be done about it yesterday. FEMA is not going to put in their contract and enforce it that you have to have these nine merit badges or we're not letting you on the job site.

A qualified construction employee is someone who can stand on his own, or her, two feet and say, "I need a job," and they will put you to work in construction down there today.

So to suggest that, well, we make them 10 hours of training before they can go to work. That's not going to happen in the middle of a crisis. Forty hours is four times worse than that. That's not going to happen either.

Well, why didn't you think of taking this last summer? Well, because I didn't know I was going to be down here last summer.

To suggest that the solution is in the hiring entities or the contracting entities to put these requirements on, you know what kind of pressure they're under to get the job done as soon as possible. So you really get into a Catch 22. When do you give the training?

You ought to give this year's training for next year's disaster. Where is it going to be? What's it going to look like and who are the employees that are going to want to go there at the time? Nobody knows any of that.

So any insight that anyone has, any clever thoughts, please forward them.

MR. KENNEDY: Well, it's a tough sale, as you know, Bruce. I mean like you just said, which contractors are going?

MR. SWANSON: Right.

MR. KENNEDY: Some contractors will make up their mind in a situation like this. We're going to do what we can, and maybe will go to the extra step, but Tom just indicated the ed centers are having problems selling this course and getting people to take it, and I agree with that.

MR. SWANSON: Yeah, we heard comments.

MR. KENNEDY: I'm having a tough time selling my membership. I'm selling safety directors. We're doing another presentation with Tim at our expo this year, again to try to see if we can win over the contractors and make them understand if you want to go to do something, you need to be prepared, whether it's required or not. You need to ensure that your workers are prepared and ready to walk into that kind of situation.

MR. SWANSON: We, as an industry, have more capacity to give 10-hour training in the Louisiana, Mississippi area today than we have people who want to take 10-hour training down there.

MR. KENNEDY: Sure. I agree.

MR. SWANSON: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: We have a couple other items to take care of here. First of all, Sarah needs to enter some things into the record.

MS. SHORTALL: This will be the last group. I request that the items that were provided, or handouts provided to ACCSH members at the start of the meeting, be entered into the record as the following exhibits: 21, the agenda; 22, the fall protection proposal from HBA; 23, the semi-annual regulatory agenda dated October 31, 2005. Department of Labor 2005 regulatory plan dated also October 31st, 2005 is Exhibit 24. The ACCSH work group membership list is Exhibit 25, and the current ACCSH membership list is Exhibit 26.

(Whereupon, Exhibit Nos. 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26 were marked for identification and entered into the record.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Kevin, we had a little discussion at break, and you wanted to bring up the discussion on terms and what was going on there.

MR. BEAUREGARD: Earlier we were talking about everybody submitting their schedules for the next year, which I have no problem with, but when you look at the terms, half the members here, their terms have expired. The other half will expire in June, and I don't know if there's much sense of having all the members submit their availability for the next year not knowing whether or not people are going to be on the committee or not on the committee.

MR. SWANSON: The only response to that that I can give, Mr. Beauregard, is that for this advisory committee, unlike all other advisory committees of OSHA, the members continue to serve -- of course this is ever since the 14th Amendment we can't make you serve -- but you are free to serve and continue to sit in your seat until the Secretary has named a replacement.

So although half a dozen terms, I guess, have expired as of early December of this year, you continue to serve until notified that someone has been named to take your slot.

Given that background, I don't know how long, for instance, I see that there's a gentleman here, Dan Murphy, whose term expired on the 5th of December. It's the 9th (sic) and he's here. We're all happy for that. But Dan will continue to serve until a replacement is named.

I don't know if Dan Murphy is going to be an ACCSH member in three months or in six months or in nine months, whether this term is changed or not.

I also see certain problems with Scott's suggestion that we do it a year ahead of time, but I don't know how else to do it, and I don't see the hardship in Mr. Murphy saying when he would be available for the next 12 months, and if three months from now, he finds out, or even three days from now, he finds out that he has been replaced, what's the damage?

MR. BEAUREGARD: I don't think there's a hardship on anybody. The thing is if you end up appointing six new people out of the 12 or 13 that are here, maybe they have things scheduled the four dates that you decide to have the meeting, so you've kind of gone through a fruitless exercise, because then you're going to have to reschedule them anyway, which is, I think, your point about it's good to schedule things in advance, but at the same time, when you don't know all the components of it, it's a hard thing to schedule things in advance.

MR. SWANSON: Well, if you're concerned about I and my office going through a fruitless exercise, you ought to be around here more often, Mr. Beauregard.

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: As a result of that discussion, Kevin, I think you're supposed to submit the dates you can be here in March.

MR. BEAUREGARD: We'll do it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: I wanted to just take a moment of your time. It's always fun to be with this group of people. I learn a lot. I really appreciate you spending all of your time getting here and spending a very long day with the ACCSH group and with that, I would like to entertain -- oh, Frank, no.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: I just have one statement. It won't take long.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Okay, Frank.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Frank Migliaccio. At this time, I'd like to take this opportunity to show my appreciation to the Department of Labor through OSHA for holding the ACCSH meetings during the human rights week and to keep up the good work being done for workers' rights and safety and health protection. I wish everybody a safe and happy holiday and a safe trip home.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: That was very nice, Frank.

MR. MIGLIACCIO: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Linwood.

MR. SMITH: I move that we adjourn.

MR. HAYSLIP: I second it.

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: All those in favor.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Opposed.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN MURPHY: Meeting is adjourned.

(Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

This is to certify that the foregoing proceedings of a hearing before the Federal Advisory Council on Construction Safety and Health, held on Thursday, December 8, 2005, were transcribed as herein appears, and this is the original of transcript thereof.

_______________________________

Lisa Dennis

Certified Verbatim Reporter