U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) Wednesday - December 2, 2015 Frances Perkins Building 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

U.S. Department of Labor
Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Advisory Committee on
Construction Safety and Health
(ACCSH)

Wednesday - December 2, 2015
Frances Perkins Building
200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C.

Reported by: Christine Allen,
Capital Reporting Company

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

Opening Remarks Mr. Pete Stafford, Chairman
Introductions
Agency Update and Remarks Mr. Kirk Sander Chief of Staff, OSHA Exhibit 1
Directorate of Construction Regulatory Update Mr. Dean McKenzie, DFO
2015 National Safety Stand-Down Update Ms. Jessica Bunting, MPH CPWR Exhibit 2 - Slides
Eliminating Requirements for Employee Social Security Numbers from OSHA Standards Mr. Andrew Levinson, Deputy Director Directorate of Standards and Guidance Exhibit 3 - Slides Exhibit 4 - Write-up
Break
OSHA Data Update Dr. Rebecca Bilbro Office of the Assistant Secretary, OSHA Exhibit 5 - Slides
Temporary Worker Workgroup Report Mr. Tom Marrero Exhibit 6 - Report
Training and Outreach Workgroup Report Mr. Roger Erickson Exhibit 7 - Report
Health Hazards, Emerging Issues and Prevention through Design Workgroup Report Dr. Christine Branche Exhibit 9
Public Comments Mr. Mike McCullion, SMACNA Ms. Nancy Stieler, Electronics Research Exhibit 10 - ANSI Working Group Exhibit 11 - NATE Report Mr. Matt Compher, PLH Group
Adjourn Mr. Pete Stafford, Chairman

ACCSH MEMBERSHIP ROSTER

Erich (Pete) Stafford	Chairman, Director of Safety and Health North America's Building Trades Unions	Employee Representative
Alejandro G. Beltran	Director of Training International Union of Painters and Allied Trades	Employee Representative
Roger Erickson	MOST Administrator International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers, AFL-CIO	Employee Representative
Palmer Hickman	Director of Safety Code Training & Curriculum Development Electrical Training ALLIANCE	Employee Representative
Steven L. Rank	Executive Director of Safety and Health International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers	Employee Representative
Kevin R. Cannon	Director of Safety and Health Services; The Associated General Contractors of America	Employer Representative
Cindy DePrater	Vice President, Director Environmental, Health and Safety - Turner Construction Company	Employer Representative
Thomas Marrero Jr.	National Safety Director Tradesman International	Employer Representative
Donald L. Pratt	President and CEO, Construction Education and Consultation Services of Michigan	Employer Representative
Jerry E. Rivera	Safety Director Washington, DC Chapter National Electrical Contractors Association	Employer Representative
Steven D. Hawkins	Administrator, Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration	State Representative
Jeremy Bethancourt	Co-Owner and Program Director, Arizona Construction Training Alliance	Public Representative
Christine M. Branche	Principal Associate Director, and Director, Office of Construction Safety & Health CDC-NIOSH	Federal Representative
Dean McKenzie	Office of Construction Services, Directorate of Construction	Designated Federal Official
Damon S. Bonneau	ACCSH Coordinator, Office of Construction Services, Directorate of Construction	Committee Contact
Lisa Wilson	ACCSH Counsel, Office of the Solicitor, DOL	Committee Counsel
Adele Abrams	American Society of Safety of Engineers	Also Present
Aline Der Alexanian	American Wind Energy Association	Also Present
Troy Armstead	Department of Defense, Air Force	Also Present
Garvin Branch	OSHA, Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Tony Brown	Consultant	Also Present
Jessica Bunting	the Center for Construction Research and Training	Also Present
Veneta Chatmon	Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Matt Compher	PLH Group	Also Present
Wayne Creasap	the Association of Union Constructors	Also Present
Nigel Ellis	National Safety Council, OSHA Alliance	Also Present
Mark Hatch	OSHA, Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Bill Hering	Regional Manager for Matrix North America Construction, Northeast	Also Present
Ken Koroll	Directorate of Training Education, Office of Construction Safety Training	Also Present
Mike McCully	Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association	Also Present
Michele Mihelic	American Wind Energy Association	Also Present
Robinson Vasquez	the American Road and Transportation Builders Association	Also Present
Courtney Murray	OSHA, Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Michael Payne	OSHA, Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Jarrett Quill	MasTec	Also Present
Bruce Rolfsen	Bloomberg BNA	Also Present
Scott Schneider	with the Laborers' Health & Safety Fund of North America	Also Present
Matthew Shaw	National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators	Also Present
Kathy Stieler	representing the National Association of Tower Erectors	Also Present
Jens Svenson	OSHA, Directorate of Construction	Also Present
Jane Terry	National Safety Council	Also Present
Chris Treml	Operating Engineers	Also Present
Rod Weber	PENTA Building Group	Also Present
Wes Wheeler	National Electrical Contractors Association	Also Present
Lauren Williams	Associated Builders and Contractors	Also Present
Tom Whitaker	from Harness Safety Software	Also Present

OPENING REMARKS & INTRODUCTIONS

MR. STAFFORD: Find your seats please. I think we have a quorum of committee members, so we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order.

My name's Pete Stafford. I'm chair of the committee, a labor representative. I'd like to welcome you all to this morning's meeting. We have just a half-day meeting, which is a little bit unusual for our schedule, so we have one break this morning and we are due to break overall at noon today, and I appreciate you being here.

For those folks in the back, please sign in the sign-in sheet. This is a public meeting, so we want to know everyone who participated and came here today, so there's a sign-in sheet in the back.

As always, if you wish to make public comment, there's a separate sign-in sheet for that, as well. We will take public comment to the extent that we have time to do that and we'll put that at the end of the meeting, so I'm going to guess we're going to hold -- I'll try, depending on the schedule, starting maybe at about 11:30 or so we'll start the public comment period. We have two folks that have already signed up for that and we'll get to as many others of you as we can.

So with that, we'll start with introductions. We'll first go around the table and then I'd like for each of you in the room to introduce yourselves and then we'll get on with our agenda for the meeting. I understand Dr. Michaels, I think, maybe had a conflict with NACOSH, so we're happy to have Mr. Sander join us today to tell us what's going on at OSHA, and we'll start with Kirk on that agenda item.

Jim Maddux, unfortunately, will not be able to join us today. Jim has been ill all week, and for those of us in the workgroups, you noticed Jim wasn't around yesterday. So I believe Dean McKenzie will fill in and give us an update on what's happening at the Directorate of Construction.

Before we do intros, Lisa, anything we need to add, or Dean? Okay, well, let's go around then, starting with you, Cindy, and introduce the committee.

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater with Turner Construction Company, Employer Representative.

MR. CANNON: Kevin Cannon, Associated General Contractors of America, Employer Representative.

MR. PRATT: Don Pratt, Pratt Building Company, Employer Representative.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Jeremy Bethancourt, ACTA Safety, Public Representative.

MR. RIVERA: Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep.

MR. HAWKINS: Steve Hawkins, Tennessee OSHA, State Plan Safety Representative.

MR. HICKMAN: Palmer Hickman, Employee Rep.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH, Federal Rep.

MR. MARRERO: Tom Marrero, Employer Rep.

MR. RANK: Steve Rank, Ironworkers International, Employee Representative.

MR. ERICKSON: Roger Erickson, MOST Programs, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Employee Rep.

MR. BELTRAN: Alex Beltran, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, Employee Rep.

MR. McKENZIE: Dean McKenzie, Designated Federal Official.

MS. WILSON: Lisa Wilson, ACCSH Counsel.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you. Let's go ahead and start in the back. You have a microphone? Okay, Damon's over on the right. So Rod, we'll start with you.

MR. BONNEAU: Damon Bonneau, ACCSH Coordinator.

MR. WEBER: Rod Weber, PENTA Building Group.

MR. McCULLY: Mike McCully, Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association.

MR. WHEELER: Wes Wheeler, National Electrical Contractors Association.

MR. SCHNEIDER: Scott Schneider with the Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America.

MS. ABRAMS: Adele Abrams, American Society of Safety of Engineers.

MR. ELLIS: Nigel Ellis, National Safety Council, OSHA Alliance.

MR. BRANCH: Garvin Branch, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

MS. CHATMON: Veneta Chatmon, Directorate of Construction.

MR. ROLFSEN: Bruce Rolfsen, Bloomberg BNA.

MR. KOROLL: Ken Koroll, Directorate of Training Education, Office of Construction Safety Training.

MR. HERRING: Bill Hering, Regional Manager for Matrix North America Construction, Northeast.

MR. CREASAP: Wayne Creasap, the Association of Union Constructors.

MS. BUNTING: Jessica Bunting, the Center for Construction Research and Training.

MR. SHAW: Matthew Shaw, National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators.

MR. ARMSTEAD: Troy Armstead, Department of Defense, Air Force.

MR. COMPHER: Matt Compher of PLH Group.

MR. QUILL: Jarrett Quill, MasTec.

MS. STIELER: Kathy Stieler representing the National Association of Tower Erectors.

MR. WHITAKER: Tom Whitaker from Harness Safety Software.

MS. TERRY: Jane Terry, National Safety Council.

MS. DER ALEXANIAN: Aline Der Alexanian, American Wind Energy Association.

MS. MIHELIC: Michele Mihelic, American Wind Energy Association.

MR. VASQUEZ: Robinson Vasquez, the American Road and and Transportation Builders Association.

MS. WILLIAMS: Lauren Williams, Associated Builders and Contractors.

MR. TREML: Chris Treml, Operating Engineers.

MR. SVENSON: Jens Svenson, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

MR. HATCH: Mark Hatch, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

MR. MURRAY: Courtney Murray, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

MR. PAYNE: Michael Payne, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

MR. BROWN: Tony Brown, Consultant.

MR. STAFFORD: Does that cover it, Damon?

MR. BONNEAU: Yes.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, thank you. Thank all of you. Again, if you would like to make comments, please sign up and please sign in the attendance sheet that you area here.

Well, Mr. Sander, I'm on the agenda to introduce you. Other than saying you're the Chief of Staff now or have replaced Debbie Berkowitz, this is the first time I've met you so I don't know much about your background, but it's great that you've taken the time and come to talk with us, so maybe you would like to start with giving us a little bit of your background, if you don't mind, and then we look forward to your comments.

MR. SANDER: Well, thank you and part of that is also -- I usually like to be the guy behind the scenes, but Jim has decided that, you know, maybe it's time to bring me out from behind the curtain. And with Dr. Michaels being scheduled today, it makes it a little easier.

Well, thank you for having me here. Prior to being at OSHA, I was at the White House in Presidential Personnel. And then my background is in environmental science and policy. So the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, when I first met with them, their first question was what was your highest level of chemistry? And I guess I passed the test because they're still talking to me.

So it's been great to be here at OSHA. I've been here for about a year and a half now. Dean has really put me through the ringer, trying to give me the look-around. I see the world in a very different place since I've been here, so I am excited to be part of the OSHA family. And is there anything else you'd like to know about me?

MR. STAFFORD: No, that sounds good.

MR. SANDER: And I know Cindy's taken us on a couple tours already, so thank you for that.

Well, first, I'd also like to thank all of you for being here today. And being that this is my first time addressing you, Dean has told me that I should welcome Alex Beltran and Steve Rank to your first meeting, but since it's also my first meeting you could have put anybody on this list. So welcome and thank you for serving for your first meeting.

So things going on at OSHA. We are in a busy time right now, lots of things are coming up, and so I'll look to go through it.

One of the big new announcements we had is the inspection weighting system. As many of you know, we do approximately 40,000 inspections a year and each inspection gets counted as 1. Moving to this new inspection weighting system a more complex inspection will have a higher value, so that it's more - - the resources we allocate towards it will be more reflective in the inspection weighting. So, for instance, PSM inspections, such as at a chemical facility, will have a higher inspection weight than, say, a rapid response investigation that we're doing with the new severe injury reporting or chemical exposure. So if we take the last two years we've been looking at how long inspections take, so as part of that, making sure that the inspection weight is comparable to the amount of time we're taking.

One of the new things that we just released this past month was our Safety Health Program Management Guidelines. This is an update from our 1989 guidelines that was to help small- and medium-sized employers. The biggest addition to this is a multi-employer section. It's the new section at the end of the document. And as part of that, we invite all of you to come back next week. We're having a public meeting on December 9th from 1:00 to 3:00 in the Great Hall to have a discussion about this. It's going to be a modified Town Hall with Dr. Michaels and we can get the information out to you on that.

Another document we released is we have an updated Whistleblower Protection Guidelines for employers. This was put out by one of our other FACAs, the Whistleblower Protection Committee. And it's currently under -- we have it out for comment till January 19th, so we ask that you take a look at it. It's to help employers so that they know how to deal with employees who raise concerns.

As probably many of you know, our Severe Injury Reporting Rule went into effect on January 1st. Currently, we're on track I think to hit about 12,000 reports. We're getting about 200 to 250 a week, depending on how many you get -- depending on the week. And right now we're inspecting around 35 to 40 percent, depending on which region you're looking at. And then our rapid response investigations are getting about 50 percent. You see that it doesn't add up to 100 percent there because we determined some people like to tell us more than they need to, and so they actually aren't under our jurisdiction, so we count it as we got their call, but we didn't respond to it.

And as part of the ROI we ask each employer to do a root cause analysis of that. Well, "whoda thunk" is we need a little more than that. So as part of that we're putting out a class at OTI on incident investigations and we're putting out a guide, as you can see, on incident investigations and non-accident investigations. And so this guide, we'll be putting a class out. It should be up for public view and it should help especially small- and medium-sized businesses on getting through incidents on how you conduct it because this might be one of the first time a company reports to us and they need to have that background.

Probably more of the things that -- more interest, the Confined Space Rule. We've delayed enforcement till January 8th. We are currently under litigation on that and in negotiations.

Silica, our team's working very had on it and moving forward on that. Hopefully, we can get something out by the end of the administration.

Recordkeeping modernization, we're moving forward on it. It's currently at OMB and so we're awaiting their final pass back to us.

And the Fall Protection Campaign, again, it's going to be -- we're going to do it again this year. Thank you all for participating on that. It's going to be the week of May 2nd, and so we're looking forward to having another successful Fall Protection Campaign.

Do I dare say any questions?

MR. STAFFORD: Hold on. Okay, Cindy first, then Steve. Okay, Cindy.

MS. DePRATER: First, Kirk, thank you. I appreciate the brevity of the presentation and I think it was very succinct. Two questions. Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep.

On the workplace violence, why that focus? What's driving that?

MR. SANDER: Well, it's not so much a focus on workplace violence, but it's on -- workplace violence inspections take longer than other types of inspections, so putting that value there. So that's why, we're just showing different inspections that take different lengths of time.

MS. DePRATER: Okay, so it's not necessarily a focus that's driving the inspection.

MR. SANDER: Right.

MS. DePRATER: Okay. And under the Severe Injury Reporting Rule, is there possibly a breakdown by industry or region that we can look at the data on that?

MR. SANDER: I don't know if there is, but I can find out and I can get back to you on that.

MS. DePRATER: Okay, thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Steve? Identify yourself, Steve, for the reporter.

MR. RANK: Steve Rank with the Ironworkers. Hi, Kirk. Welcome.

MR. SANDER: Hello.

MR. RANK: I just had a question about your slide, your second slide, on new inspection weighting system.

MR. SANDER: Yes.

MR. RANK: Back before you worked at the White House and probably when you were in elementary school they had the Focus Inspection Initiative for construction. I don't know if you've ever heard that term.

MR. SANDER: I had not.

MR. RANK: Back in the '90s, they had a Focus Inspection Initiative, the Agency, that was very, very popular. And that policy would focus on the four major causes of fatalities in the construction industry, which was falls, electrical, caught between, and struck by.

MR. SANDER: Okay.

MR. RANK: Very, very popular. So my question is, is the new inspection weighting system kind of a spinoff of the Focus Inspection Initiative back in the '90s?

MR. McKENZIE: Dean McKenzie, OSHA. The Focus inspections still exist as they always have. That has not changed. The weighting is trying to capture the resources taken. If you do a PSM inspection, you might be on that inspection for six months.

MR. RANK: Right.

MR. McKENZIE: To have that equal to a three-hour inspection was troubling. So many different types of inspections take a long time and what we're trying to do is incentivize the compliance officer to do the harder inspection instead of doing 15 simple little inspections, you know, that have 2.2 citations per inspection in a week. Let's go get something that has impact, that has meaning, and they are harder. You know, a health inspection with sampling, you might spend two or three weeks there and then a couple, three weeks getting the analysis and everything else. It's a lot of time. So that's what the intent is, to try to -- all inspections are very important to us, but there are some that Dr. Michaels wanted to incentivize a little bit to try to do the harder things, but the Focus inspections is not related in a lot of ways.

MR. RANK: Does this system also contemplate making sure that you have the right type of compliance person doing the right inspection, such as an Industrial Hydrogenist going to a chemical plant to do an inspection versus someone from construction? Because that has been a big issue in the past when people have been dispatched to a serious or imminent danger thing, where maybe they didn't have an IH that should have been dispatched or vice versa a construction expert to go to a project, a construction project. So does this new system take into consideration making sure you have the right trained compliance officer to do it?

MR. McKENZIE: It's not identified in the program as such, but it will in effect because you have more points. And if you need to take two guys or send another referral out, you're getting the enhanced score for the more complex inspections.

MR. RANK: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments? Jerry and then Steve.

MR. RIVERA: Kirk, this is Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep. Welcome and thanks for the presentation.

I just wanted to ask what has been at least on the new the raise of OSHA fines. You know, is there any strategy that you could share at this point with the Committee about what the approach is going to be on that angle?

MR. SANDER: Well, right now on that we're waiting for the full budget to come out on that and we're interested and we're going to be working with OMB to see what does that language exactly mean. And so, I hate to say this, but we're in a waiting pattern to understand that language.

MR. STAFFORD: Steve?

MR. HAWKINS: Steve Hawkins, Tennessee OSHA. I talked to Dr. Michaels at the ACCSH meeting and also talked to, I guess, Tom Glassy (phonetic) about Dean used the word "incentivize" COSHOs to make the more difficult inspections, but are they rewarded for the number of inspections they make? How does that incentivize them?

MR. McKENZIE: The OSH Act prohibits putting any kind of performance analysis on how many inspections you do. But an area office is held accountable for how many inspections they do and this will adjust within the office, not the individual COSHO. The area director will have the opportunity to know he can make his numbers doing fewer, more impactful inspections.

MR. HAWKINS: Okay. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the words that Dr. Michaels used is "recognition" as opposed to "incentivize."

MR. McKENZIE: Right.

MR. HAWKINS: Because I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with -- Ms. Cindy DePrater asked the question is there a focus on workplace violence? Well, if you're saying they're incentivized to make these inspections, then there is a focus on workplace violence. And personally, I think we're more comfortable with recognition for work done. You're not going to go out and necessarily look for workplace violence inspections, you're just going to be given credit when you encounter one and there's a complaint and you make that inspection.

Otherwise, if you look at the strategy, it looks like you are focusing Agency resources on those areas like heat stress and workplace violence at the exclusion possibly of others. So I don't know if that's something Mr. Sander can speak to.

MR. SANDER: I think part of it was to look at Dean was saying, where one inspection -- and I went out on an inspection and it took us a half a day, but then I talked to our guys in the South Houston office where they're on PSM inspection and they're up against a six- month deadline.

MR. HAWKINS: Six months, right.

MR. SANDER: And that takes the whole inspection. And those guys are going, well, I just spent six months on something and this person spent one day and we actually did two inspections because we saw someone up on a roof without fall protection.

MR. HAWKINS: Right. Right, and so truly recognition for the work that's been accomplished, not to incentivize one over the other.

MR. SANDER: Right.

MR. HAWKINS: Is that accurate?

MR. McKENZIE: That's accurate.

MR. SANDER: Yes, that's where the start of this started of saying, hey, we want to recognize our COSHOs for the work they're doing.

MR. HAWKINS: Okay. Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Cindy, you have another questions?

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. And I want to tagline off of Steve. You know, my concern was, on workplace violence, are we seeing more and more of those that would take OSHA resources to be able to inspect? And so that was really the concern with why is that a focus, so thank you for the explanation on that.

MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments?

MR. RANK: I do, Mr. Chairman. Steve Rank, Ironworkers.

On the Whistleblower Protection slide, I recently had a conference call with one of the regional administrators in the country and there was a whistleblower, he actually had a title. And I just need to know in each region is there an Assistant Regional Manager that's designated for the whistleblower protection policy and program?

MR. SANDER: Yes, I believe we are moving to that, having an ARA.

MR. RANK: Okay. I was unaware that each region had just created a special position for someone to handle nothing except whistleblower complaints. And I didn't know if that was going to be a growing policy where you fill those slots, and it sounds like you are.

And secondly, on this particular case, we were informed that even though labor and management wanted to move to close this complaint, the Agency informed all of us that they could not close the complaint because they had a time duration or it had to stay open and certain things had to be done before they could even close the complaint. And so I didn't know -- I just need a little bit of clarification on why a complaint had to stay open for X-amount of months despite labor's input and management's input that there was no merit to the complaint?

MR. SANDER: That's the first I've heard of it and I'll definitely get back to you on that.

MR. RANK: Well, I'll get your card and I'll give you some details. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. STAFFORD: You're welcome, Steve. Any other questions or comments?

I have a comment. Mr. Sander, first, thanks again for coming. You know, we had our workgroup meetings yesterday and that's where a lot of the work of this Committee gets done. And over the last four or five years we've whittled our workgroups down from a total of seven to three we've settled on, for lots of reasons. We're trying to align our work with the needs of the Agency.

Well, one of those workgroups is Training and Outreach. They're training OSHA's policy with respect on how you deal with construction safety and how training is important to everyone on this Committee and our individual organizations. And we have made several recommendations and gone to a lot of work over the last couple years on dealing with training and education issues.

We have been disappointed, I think it's fair to say, and I would say this individually to Dr. Michaels or Jordan, as well, but since I think that we had this discussion yesterday it's appropriate for me to say this on behalf of ACCSH that there's a frustration when our workgroup talks about training and education issues, that we do not have a participant from the OSHA Directorate of Training and Education participate. And what we find is that through our deliberations and recommendations we have a disconnect between what we're doing and what's happening at the DTE.

We had a good discussion and for the first time, and Ken was here yesterday in the back that came and talked to our group because we're developing a leadership training program that we envision that will be embedded as an elective in the OSHA 30 Program because, whether OSHA likes it or not, the industry is leaning on the OSHA 30 for supervisory training. Eighty-six percent of the employers in this country are using the OSHA 30 for their supervisory training and there's -- we agree as in that's why I'm speaking on behalf of ACCSH here that there's a gap in that training and we're trying to fill it.

We have gone way out of our way. We've had an inclusive curriculum development team that includes a lot of stakeholders in this room, representatives of the Directorate of Construction, and representatives of the OSHA training side. And we are still struggling with getting a commitment that despite the fact that everyone around this table, and I would venture to guess everyone sitting in this room, thinks that it's important for our industry that we get a commitment from OSHA, the training folks, that once this is done -- and we've involved them in the process so that we're working hand-in-hand on this -- that we are going to proceed down the road and have this done after a lot of investment of our time on this Committee and the investment of the research that's going into the development of this module.

So this is a long way of saying, I think, that we would appreciate and we appreciate Mr. Koroll, who's in the audience today, coming for the first time in several years, that our Training Workgroup has actually talked to folks in the Training Office because they've pleasured us with their participation at our meeting, that we would have from now on -- and I know Ken is going to go back on the staff level. We talked again this morning to raise that, but it would be helpful, I think, if the leadership of this agency would engage the training folks with our Training Workgroup so that we're in alignment on what we're doing.

MR. SANDER: I will definitely take that back and I'll push for that.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, I greatly appreciate that. Any other questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Mr. Sander, thank you very much for your time.

MR. SANDER: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. So next on the agenda is the report from the Directorate of Construction. As I said, Jim Maddux is ill and won't be joining us, so Dean McKenzie will be doing that presentation.

MR. McKENZIE: Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. I'd also like to welcome Steve and Alex. ACCSH is often a meaningful commitment for these folks to come in and do. I know it's always fun, it's always convenient, and D.C. is beautiful in the winter when we have meetings, but we do appreciate the work of the Committee.

Jim is indeed ill and I think we're probably happy he's not here. He's complaining of flu-like symptoms, so we will let him stay home today. He's very disappointed he couldn't be here. This would have been his last meeting. Jim is retiring at the end of the month and will be moving on, so I know that he's been looking forward to the meeting and having the chance to in person speak to everyone.

We have made an official date now for the 2016 Fall Prevention Stand-Down will be made the week of May 2nd. We look forward to everyone's participation and involvement in that. This thing has caught fire as an outcome of the Fall Prevention Campaign for the safety community and OSHA and its partners to engage. We're pushing close to 5 million, 4 million people have been touched by this Stand-Down in 2 years. That's pretty incredible. I'm ready to call Guinness and get that record officially stamped. It's a great thing and I like to tell people it's one of the few times we don't tell you how to do something. We just say go do something, have a Stand-Down, however it works for you. It's been a huge success.

As Kirk mentioned, confined spaces is in -- he was a little off. It is in full enforcement for everything but residential construction, residential building, right now. We are still in pending litigation and we're working through that process right now; hope to have that done in the coming months. The residential extension will expire January 8th.

Silica is still working. They did three weeks of hearings and got thousands of comments. It's a lot of work to get through that. It's going to be a big impact on the Agency when we get that done and free up a lot of folks. I don't know much of anybody that hasn't touched a piece of it or another.

On our regulatory front, out of DOC we've got a lot of thing hanging. Crane operator qualification is very close. We hope to get it into the clearance process. We are in queue, if you will, to get it into the clearance process. We're very close.

The Standards Improvement Project that you are going to hear, one new item to attach, SIPS 4. The Standards Improvement Project is ready to go into clearance if we can get it into the system, but if it isn't going to make it, we've got one additional items we're going to try and get ready and plug in.

The crane amendments, you've heard several of the amendments that were coming in, adjusting the scope on forklifts and stabilizers and some of those things. That is in SOL for review. We hope to have a Small Business panel in the spring on backovers and try to get backover prevention rolling, get something moving on that, maybe in June.

Comm towers, communication towers, are still a big issue for us and we're very engaged with that. There is talk right now and we're fairly close, I think, to having another joint FCC meeting in 2016, and try to keep moving that forward. There's been quite a bit. One of the people that have signed up for the meeting is going to talk about the new ANSI standard on comm towers that is coming out. That'll be a positive thing coming up.

We are still working on the comments from the RFI. That little RFI, we managed to get 1,300 individual comments on that RFI in an industry without organized labor, without many of the trappings you would associate with so many other industries. That's a pretty remarkable outcome to get that many comments, so we're still trying to pick our way through that.

And we hope to have a best practices guide published sometime in early 2016 on comm towers that will address everything from the wireless carrier down to the crews and boots on the ground that are going to climb the tower.

And as part of the settlement from the crane standard when it came out, the American Railroad Association filed suit and we have settled the case, but it will call for a rulemaking. The crane standard right now goes through 1926.1441. There will eventually be a 1442, and so we've got that drafted, trying to get it into the clearance process, as well.

So with that, that's kind of our update. I'm happy to take any questions.

MR. STAFFORD: Jeremy?

MR. BETHANCOURT: I have a question. We've talked about the Stand-Down being May 2nd. Are we going to planning to have another two-week-long Stand-Down?

MR. McKENZIE: No, one week.

MR. BETHANCOURT: So just one week, May 2nd.

MR. McKENZIE: We have kept the certificate page open for months after each Stand-Down, so we will try to concentrate OSHA's effort, per se, in presenting and publicizing and doing all that to one week. If an employer does it three weeks after, a month after, they could still go get certificates.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Is there any thought to rekindling the arrangement I think it was with the National Safety Council to have certificates available on their website? I believe that was something at --

MR. McKENZIE: That is likely.

MR. BETHANCOURT: -- last year, so that folks who are nervous about --

MR. McKENZIE: We've been partnering with them all along and already had meetings with them. I believe that will continue. And it is going to coincide with the Construction Safety, Executive Safety Week. And we're trying to engage as many people as we can.

MR. STAFFORD: Christine?

DR. BRANCHE: Another partner's going to be ASSE for their national North American Safety Week, as well.

MR. McKENZIE: Yes.

MR. STAFFORD: Is that the week of May 2nd? Oh, good.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Yes, it's always that week.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, excellent. Any other -- yes, Steve Rank?

MR. RANK: Steve Rank with the Ironworkers. Can you kind of summarize what the Agency's takeaway was from the last July meeting when we had the huge stakeholders from the crane industry testified here? And if you could just kind of summarize the unanimous position that the stakeholders took and the Agency's response to that and moving forward what we can expect just to clarify for some of the folks that maybe weren't there.

MR. McKENZIE: Well, we heard the comments and we have addressed many of those comments in the proposed rule that's getting ready to come out. And we've abbreviated the proposal and cleaned it up from some of what was published last spring and we anticipate getting that out as early in the year as we can.

MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments for Dean? Go ahead, Kevin. Identify yourself.

MR. CANNON: Kevin Cannon, Employer Rep. It's a follow-up on Steve's comment. Is there going to be another round of ACCSH review for that or it's going straight to the Federal Register? Because I thought it was very helpful for ACCSH and the stakeholders to get a preview of what you guys had drafted.

MR. McKENZIE: I believe that we've done that and the next step will be to publish the proposed rule.

MR. CANNON: Okay.

MR. STAFFORD: Good. Any other questions, comments for Dean? All right, thanks, Dean. Thanks very much.

MR. McKENZIE: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Well, we're a little bit ahead of schedule. I don't know if Andrew Levinson's in the audience or not, but I know Jessica Bunting is because I see her from here. So, Jessica, if you're ready, why don't we move you up on the agenda since we've been talking about the Falls Campaign anyway?

MS. WILSON: Lisa Wilson. If I could I'd just like to enter Mr. Sander's presentation as Exhibit 1 of the meeting. Thank you.

(Exhibit. 1 was marked and admitted into the record.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you. Well, by way of introduction, Jessica works for CPWR, the Center for Construction Research and Training. We are a partner with OSHA and NIOSH on the Fall Fatalities Campaign, as Dean mentioned earlier. One of our activities, responsibilities at CPWR is that we've been taking a look at OSHA data that they've collected when folks are -- as a part of the campaign, coming in and getting their participation certificate. And so Jessica is in our Research to Practice Office. And I guess this is Jessica's second year of actually handling the data for OSHA in terms of doing the analysis of participation in the campaign. And I think it's timely based on Dean's comments.

So, Jessica, we move her up front to talk a little bit about the reach that the campaign has had because I would like to echo what Dean said earlier. I mean, we're talking about 4 million people that have been touched in one way or the other on this campaign, which is a pretty impressive start from a lot of us that are just volunteering our organizations, just doing a lot of elbow grease and not a lot of resources in terms of the national campaign. So it's been really very healthy.

This is the kind of partnership that I was talking about yesterday with OSHA. When we agree on something, the stakeholders agree on it and we partner up and we do it together. And this is the kind of partnership that I was hoping that we would have and still hope that we'll have in our Leadership Training Program with OSHA.

So with that, Jessica, please.

MS. BUNTING: All right. Thank you, Pete. So today I will actually be presenting on just a portion of the numbers. So these numbers are based on the certificate database that we were a11 talking about earlier. So they only -- oh, thank you -- they only include the information that was received when people went to the website to get a certificate and filled out the information.

And one caveat I should mention is that there was a portion of time where there were certificates being printed, but information was not being collected. So we had 891 certificates that were printed and we used that number. And based on averages we just extrapolated some information, but we did not actually have people filling out the database for a portion of time.

So this is just some pictures from successful events and that's what the certificate looks like. And then these are the numbers. Again, the top numbers are based on the inclusion of the 891 certificates, so when we average everything out it looks like in 2015 just from the certificate database alone we reached over 1,041,000 workers. So the actual number of entries was lower than 2014, but the number of workers reached was higher.

Then if look at the numbers based on who participated for both years versus 2015 only and 2014 only, those numbers we didn't have the information for the 891, so they could be off a little bit, but our estimates show that we got about 1,500 new companies. And then we had the companies, 2,400, that only participated in 2014, and then we had a number of companies that participated both years. And one thing that is not mentioned here is that we got a lot more descriptive data in 2015 versus 2014, so people actually took the time to provide more information than just the drop-down boxes we had. About 78 percent of entries included descriptive information this year compared to 60-some last year.

And then looking at the frequency and amount of participation, we had more companies in 2015 participate on multiple job sites and on multiple days, so about 449 that did more than one job site compared to 409 last year; 467 who participated on more than one day. But then if you look at the participation for the full Stand-Down period, that really dropped. When we only did 1 week, we had 209 companies that participated every single day versus 85 for the 2-week period.

But we came up with a number at the request of OSHA to sort of look at reach and not just the overall number of workers, where in the total number, if a worker participated for five days, it was still just counted as one worker. So this adjusted total at the bottom sort of takes into account the number of times each worker was hit. So taking into account the multiple days, if we look at that, then we would have reached the equivalent of like 3 million we're calling it workers, by Stand-Down Day.

All right. And here we have a breakdown by type of construction. So I'm just going to mention that this is all self-report, so it's however the company or the person filling out the certificate identifies themselves. So there's not a ton of difference here in the actual stand-downs, maybe a little bit less commercial, more government.

The most interesting part is when we look at the number of workers reached. So here we have government skyrocketed from 2014 to 2015, and we actually dropped on workers on commercial construction, which we don't really have a huge explanation for it since, again, it's self-report. But that is one interesting thing and that comes into play later when we look at the regional information.

So we looked at small stand-downs. This is important to note, and many of you may remember this from last year, that we're not asking company size in the certificate database, so this is just the size of the stand-down, the number of workers who participated in the stand-down, not the size of the company. But we looked at this because the original goal of the campaign which we sort of expanded on was to reach smaller residential contractors and workers, so we just sort of wanted to look into that a little bit. And we found that this year it dropped a little bit, the number of stand-downs that had 25 or fewer workers, so 44 percent. And about half of the residential construction industry entries had 25 or fewer workers.

But then when we look at the really small stand-downs the numbers drop a lot. Only about 2 percent of residential construction industry entries were 10 or fewer workers. And we found that part of the reason that might be is that some of the smaller companies, and I'll get to this a little bit more in a minute, participated with other stand-downs. So if it was a subcontractor, they would go to the general contractor stand-down or they would send their workers to an all-day training somewhere else, figure out how to piggyback off of a different stand-down.

And we looked at some of the comments specifically from the really small stand-downs, 10 or under, and we found one thing of note was that they were really excited to participate. The first quote on here has somebody who held a one-on-one meeting with their one employee to discuss falling from heights and fall prevention methods. And the second quote about, "Even though we are few in number, the staff likes being part of this national event." That came from I think a four-person stand-down.

So people are excited to participate. I think we just need to figure out how to get this information into the hands of those smaller companies a little bit more.

And then we found, again, that many participated in another company's event or attending a training session to supplement their own activities, so you can see some quotes on that. And there is a full report that's available on OSHA's Stand-Down and Falls page. It's available on the Stop Construction Falls website and also on NIOSH's website. So it's about 25 pages. You may not want to read the whole thing, but we have a lot more quotes and descriptive information in there.

And then we had people who just sort of figured out how to make the stand-down work for their small company and just did something fun or got creative on their own, made their own materials.

If we look at the activities conducted, and this is on stand-downs of 25 or fewer people, there is not a ton of difference between either 2014 and 2015 or this and the next chart, which has the total activities conducted on all stand-downs. You can see that training and equipment inspection are the most frequently conducted activities in 2015 with meetings and handouts being the highest used in 2014. And then this is the chart for activities conducted on all stand-downs. Again, not too different from the 25 or fewer.

I should mention, again, that as this is self-reported data, we are relying on the descriptive data here, so they had to actually tell us what activities that they did. And I did an extensive keyword search and counted out the number of times that all of these different activities were done.

All right. And here we have information by OSHA region. This sort of matches up with what our overall numbers and percentages said, so we had a decrease in stand-downs in every region but number 6, but we had big differences in the number of individuals reached, specifically in 3, 4, and 9, and also internationally.

And then you may want to look at your handout and compare the two charts. I couldn't fit them all on one slide, so we have the breakdowns for 2015 and then 2014. And I sort of just have circled here what the major differences are, so you can see that the larger numbers for government are coming from Regions 3 and 4, and that while the number of commercial construction stand-downs in Region 9 only decreased by 97, the number of workers reached decreased by 195,000. So that accounts for the decrease in workers reached in commercial construction. Then internationally, though, we had a bigger number, a pretty similar number of stand-downs, 29 versus 21, but a big increase in the actual number of workers reached in commercial construction.

And then here are some maps. The report has all of these specific numbers and percentages in tables that provide more detailed information, but just so we can see at a glance, you know, what states participated the most, we have the darker states on the map had the most participation. So this is number of stand-downs in 2015 and then this is the number of workers reached. And again, the number of stand-downs in 2014 by state and the number of workers reached.

And then we had a section for comments and recommendations. And I think this has been really helpful in the discussions we have been having about how to improve for 2016 and we can improve reach and promotion by following some of this advice.

One thing that came up repeatedly in both years was that there were companies focusing on secondary hazards. So they were doing a stand-down focused on falls, but while they were doing it, they were also adding in things like heat. There were a couple of other topics that came up, but heat was the one that kept recurring, which obviously is timely.

And then another thing that we noticed actually before we ever did any data analysis, but has been confirmed, is that a lot of general industry companies are figuring out how to participate and make the stand-down work for them. And they would love to see more materials that are not just geared toward construction.

Another comment was that companies appreciated the materials that our organizations are putting out, but many of them got creative and made their own materials. They were big on contests and games that they just created within their own job site, and so that's something that maybe we can look at when we're coming up with new materials for 2016.

And another interesting item was that both in 2014 and 2015, people were doing community-wide, town-wide, city-wide stand-downs. We got more descriptive information on it in 2015, though, where people were describing at one point there was a mayor involved promoting it. We had a bunch of companies that just took it upon themselves to coordinate with each other and decide on this particular day we're going to do a stand-down. So I think that that could be something that we could suggest and promote, that people band together.

Another thing that kept coming up was real-life examples, and this came up in sort of two different ways. In 2015, much more so than 2014, we had a lot of people mention that, unfortunately, they had recent tragedies to draw from, either within their company, within their town, something that they'd heard of nearby, and so a lot of them were using real-life examples in their stand-down. And I think that that sort of coincides with the recent data coming out that falls are up, likely due to construction being up in the economy, but that's something to take into consideration.

Then on the flip side of the coin, many companies were requesting information on real-life examples so that they could share that and really make sure that their workers were relating to the lessons. So we just have to think about is there a way that we can better promote videos and case reports that include real-life examples. CPWR has fatality maps where you can click on each dot and learn about how the fatality happened. So we do have some information on this, we just need to get it out there to these folks.

And then we had some opinions on the format. We already talked about in 2016 it's going to be one week. We took into consideration this information that there were mixed reviews. A lot of people did like the two weeks because it gave them more time, more flexibility to participate while feeling like they were still in the stand-down period. But then when we actually looked at the numbers, which I presented earlier, we found that people were more likely to participate in the full stand-down when it was only one week.

And then we did get a lot of acknowledgement about it being paired with other safety weeks, and I think that definitely brought people in. We had people saying that they were participating as part of ASSE's safety week, et cetera.

And then finally, some participants appreciated the momentum generated by building on this same event year to year, and there were several positive comments that 2015 was even better than 2014. But in both years there were suggestions to keep the stand-down, but change the topic. However, in 2015, I think maybe people are getting used to this idea of a repeated stand-down on falls and there did seem to be more support for that.

All right. Additional positive feedback from both years, great marketing of the program, great resources, no changes needed. And additional positive comments for 2015, employees were very engaged, it was great to be part of a national event, and there was more notice than last year. And that had been a complaint in 2014, there wasn't enough notice or promotion, so that's good to hear.

Additional recommendations. Provide materials in other languages. This was a request languages beyond English and Spanish, so I think people feel confident that there are enough materials, even in Spanish, but they're looking for Polish and other languages that we don't really provide.

Expand audiences and add a wider range of information, general industry, families of workers. And this was a bigger comment in 2014.

Create ways for companies to share their efforts through social media. People are interested in posting pictures. This came up both years.

Let's see, create some competition. Like I said, people are doing that on their own, but they're saying they would love to see some competition at a national level, having OSHA or whatever organizations do a contest so that they have some motivation to participate. I want to say that this comment about more involvement from OSHA was bigger in 2014 than 2015, but people wanting their local, regional officers to actually come to their events.

Let's see, promote the event better and earlier. Like I said, that was definitely a bigger thing in 2014, but we still got that comment in 2015.

Provide more and better materials, especially videos. We did increase the number of videos available from 2014 to 2015, but people love videos, so that was still a comment in 2015.

Provide free web training with tests and quizzes afterward. Several folks mentioned providing hardhat stickers, which this came up both years and we provided them. We really handed them all out. Even in 2015, CPWR also had hardhat stickers in addition to OSHA's, so people either just don't know that they exist and we need to do a better job of getting them out there, but we ran out, so I'm not really sure what to do about that.

Confusion around the term "stand-down." This was by far a bigger issue in 2014, so it must be catching on, but it was still mentioned a couple of times in 2015. People didn't understand what a stand-down was.

All right. Additional recommendations in 2015. We had a few people mention that we should be consistent in the date and format of the stand-down, so comments like wasn't this in June last year? Going from June to May, some people didn't like. So now, I mean, that's fixed. We're doing it in May again.

Change of the materials from one year to the next, which we're just going to have to generate some new materials, I guess.

Improve the certificates. Several companies mentioned wanting more detailed certificates, so they want to put both the company name and individuals' names, for example.

Too many options, a need for more focus. And some people mentioned problems posting to the OSHA event calendar where they posted an event and it never showed up.

But all in all, I think it was very successful.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Jessica. Very good. Yes, we'll start with Don and then go to Steve. Don.

MR. PRATT: Jessica, thank you. How did you determine the difference or the numbers acquainted to more work in the industry? I mean, we definitely had more work in '15 than we did in '14. How did you adjust the numbers or didn't you? So is there any adjustment in these numbers that we can rely on? Because it doesn't seem to me with the increased amount of work that we've done that the numbers really justify more work going on in the industry, more workers out there that would participate in this.

MS. BUNTING: So you would expect it to be higher, you're saying?

MR. PRATT: Absolutely.

MS. BUNTING: So there is no adjustment. This is just based strictly on the information provided in the certificate database. But this, like I said before, is just a portion of the people that participated. We got a report from the U.S. Air Force, said they had I think 1 million workers of their own participate. We've also received anecdotal information.

So, Dean, do you know what the final estimate that you're using is for 2015?

MR. McKENZIE: Not off the top of my head.

MS. BUNTING: But it's definitely significantly higher than 2014. As far as why it's not as much higher as you would expect, that I don't know.

MR. STAFFORD: The short answer is, no, there is no denominator data, so that we weren't looking at the number of workers in the industry versus one year and the other, right.

MS. BUNTING: So part of the problem with that, too, is because this isn't just construction workers, it covers other industries, general industry and government, I did at one point try to figure out how to determine how many workers of the total number that we are reaching, but there was just no way for me to even get a denominator.

MR. STAFFORD: Right, yes.

MR. McKENZIE: If I can, this is Dean McKenzie, OSHA. You know, when we talk about the stand-down with our stakeholders and we try to say pull a certificate, this is what we do with that information. How do we improvement it? What do we do? But if employers don't pull it, we suspect, in 2015, that a lot of folks held stand-downs, but they already had a certificate and so they didn't go do that again. You know, if they don't pull that and don't tell us anything -- because all you have to do is tell us very little information.

We put free-form boxes in the certificate survey that people can tell us and that's where a lot of Jessica's stories came from, but as you reach out to folks or as you're talking with folks, if you can encourage them to pull the certificate, this is why. It's just this data helps us measure if we're having an impact, how far we're reaching, you know, what are we getting done here.

MR. STAFFORD: Maybe there's other ways we can think about, too, of trying to get the numbers beyond just folks downloading a certificate and some way tracking people that participate other than just getting a certificate somehow. I'm not sure of that.

Steve Rank and then we'll go to Roger.

MR. RANK: Steve Rank, Ironworkers. Jessica, I just want to commend you and the CPWR for this very detailed report. And looking at all the charts and the graphs that you've done here and the breakout from number of employees to different industries, I think you left nothing out and I wouldn't change anything. In fact, I would like to recommend that you leave the format the same so that we can do a comparison of what you have now on the categories, which I think are excellent, and compare them to your next report.

And my second question is, can this document -- and maybe I should know -- can this document be posted on the OSHA website? Because I think it's such a good, detailed report that it would maybe encourage big groups to get involved and look at this and participate maybe. So can this be posted on their website?

MR. STAFFORD: I'll look to Dean to answer that. I don't see why not.

MR. McKENZIE: It is.

MR. RANK: It already is?

MR. McKENZIE: It already is.

MR. RANK: Oh, good.

MR. McKENZIE: It has been for a couple of week.

MS. BUNTING: There's a more complete report that's posted there.

MR. RANK: Okay. Very good.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Thank you, Steve.

MR. RANK: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Good job, Steve.

MR. ERICKSON: Roger Erickson, Boilermakers. Just a question. There's a lot of great data in here, great program. I was wondering down the road are we going to look at participants in this program to see -- because I noticed under one of the additional recommendations where it's create some competition, as far as tracking how participants -- how their incident/accident rate from falls has been reduced, hopefully.

MS. BUNTING: Not that I know of.

MR. ERICKSON: I know we can track falls as a whole, but I was just wondering through these participants, through the contractors. Has there been any thought to that?

MR. STAFFORD: Are you addressing that, Christine? Okay, Christine.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH Federal Rep. You know, that's an excellent question, but I have to say, I guess I feel comfortable saying this because I'm not from the regulatory agency, we have to balance encouraging people to fill out information, then the people from whom they're getting the certificate is the regulatory agency. So there was already some trepidation we know registered by some that even go to the OSHA website to draw the certificate. And that's why this relationship with the National Safety Council and others has been a very good to continue to get information from an entity other than OSHA.

You can imagine that the researcher in me would very much like to be able to have a better handle on the denominator, but then we would wonder if that might limit people's participation if they suspected that somehow their putting information in a certificate might then have some relationship to their fall incidents. And I think we have to be careful that we aren't putting people in a position where they may be suspicious that information that they're filling out on the certificate might manifest an investigation or some sort of penalty. And this is the constant battle that we have to walk that line very carefully.

So, again, the researcher in me would love to be able to have that information so that we have a denominator that we can make a valid comparison. What we're going to have to do is simply track the BLS data and other sources of information. We do have that -- we're glad that construction starts have improved over the last few years, but, of course, that then makes for an increase in the fall incidents that we're trying to prevent.

So we're going to be in a little bit of this muddiness for a little bit until we get a better handle on how to analyze the data. So that's my response.

MR. STAFFORD: That was very well stated I think, Christine, and that is the balance. Do we know how many certificates that worked and people went to the National Safety Council versus going to OSHA?

MS. BUNTING: I don't know. Whatever happened with that? Did they --

MR. McKENZIE: We have the number. I don't recall it off the top of my head.

MS. BUNTING: Okay.

MR. STAFFORD: All right.

MR. McKENZIE: We can identify it.

DR. BRANCHE: Wait, wait, wait. I just have some other information, I'm sorry. We do have some information. Christine Branche, NIOSH, Federal Rep.

Fortunately, we do have some information that I received from the Air Force. And so that's an audience where they've participated in the stand-down and they were able to provide some information on their, fortunately, captive audience.

So the information that I have is that in 2012, when they did not participate in the stand-down, they had 1,210 on-duty falls of all sorts. In 2013, there were 1,115 on-duty falls. Their first year of participation in the stand-down was in 2014. They had a reduction, 1,043. And then in the second year that they participated in the stand-down, which was this year, 906. So that's an audience for which we have information to track their participation in the stand-down and a tracking of how it's affected -- they are attributing this reduction to their participation in the stand-down. Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: We do -- somewhere there's information about how many employers went to the National Safety Council because they did not want to come to OSHA to print a certificate.

MS. BUNTING: So I don't have that information. Somebody at OSHA, like Dean probably has it. I only have the information that was sent to me to analyze.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, it would be interesting to know because I think it reinforces Christine's point that employers are edgy enough to print a certificate out from the Department of Labor, that that scares them off, that they're going to the National Safety Council.

MS. BUNTING: And we have success stories that we've done with interviews from people that are on the Stop Construction Falls website where they told me all about their stand-down activities and then when I asked if they were going to print a certificate, they said, no, they weren't going to bother.

And actually, just to comment on Roger's question earlier, part of the problem with figuring out more detailed information is that because of the issues with people feeling like this information is going to be used against them, there are strict confidentiality policies involved. So even if I wanted to follow back with people while analyzing to ask more questions, I can't. We're not allowed. I'm not allowed to print their identifying information anywhere. We're not allowed to use this beyond the data analysis.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you. Steve, please.

MR. HAWKINS: Steve Hawkins. You know, what Ms. Bunting just said, if you were going to try to determine some effectiveness for the program you'd really have to look at the sites where the presentation was made and see what their experience was with falls over the next six months or not even falls, but even instances where people weren't tied off or weren't protected by guardrails, that kind of thing.

I'm not sure how to say this correctly, politically correct, but I don't feel a burning need to have that information. We know falls kill people. We know workers don't necessarily know what they're supposed to do. This is an outreach effort. And, frankly, just training them for an hour once a year is minimal. You almost wouldn't expect that it would have great measurable results as far as fatalities go. I guess to me it just falls in that category this is the right thing to do, we should be doing it, and if we can't measure it, to heck with it, we still need to do it because we know workers don't know exactly what to do and they don't know how important it is.

There's two things that happen: they get educated and it also puts them employer on notice. It's kind of like he placed or she placed themselves, the employer place themselves on this list of we think this is important. So if an employee a week later says, hey, are you sure you want me to go up there without my harness? You know, we just had that fall protection training.

So I just think there's so much good to come out of stand-downs like this that -- my fear is somehow if we can't document that the numbers went down and, as she said, it's so difficult to do, I don't even want to look because I don't think you could quantify. We just need to continue to do this. And I think ACCSH should go on the record with a recommendation that the Agency continue to do the Fall Protection Stand-Down without regard to whether results are actually measurable given the unlikelihood that people would report back and so forth.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay.

MR. HAWKINS: I know the work that NIOSH does, I know that you're all about quantifying that and that's great, but you would have to set this up on the front end to be able to do that.

DR. BRANCHE: We wouldn't be able to do it.

MR. HAWKINS: Yes, so I just want to say that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. STAFFORD: No, I appreciate that, Steve. So on the record in terms of proceeding beyond 2016 because it sounds like that's done. I mean, we are doing it in 2016. Is that --

MR. HAWKINS: Or not even in the form of a motion, just acknowledgement by what I think everyone at this table feels, that this is a great effort. And, you know, OSHA finds success sometimes in strange places, so I don't think anyone thought initially that this would gain a life of its own, just like I don't think anyone anticipated that the 10 and 30 hour would gain the life that it gained.

So we have something that appears to be working. We have a lot of participation. I know we were called to provide speakers in our state, which we did. And it's interesting that people said we would like to see that because they do like see that. It's strange to me to go somewhere and you say you're from OSHA and welcomed, maybe have your name on a little board.

(Laughter.)

MR. HAWKINS: That's pretty freaky because I've been at this for 29 years and it wasn't always that way, I can assure you. I had one guy once say, you're from OSHA. He said, well, thank god, the only thing worse would be if my mother-in-law showed up this morning.

(Laughter.)

MR. HAWKINS: So that was one of the funny ones in my early career.

MR. STAFFORD: Wow, yes.

MR. HAWKINS: That's what the employer actually said to me, the only thing worse than you showing up this morning would be if my mother-in-law came in. I never met her, but I take his word for it.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Well, we'll have that on the record for you.

(Laughter.)

MR. HAWKINS: Strike that from the record. It wasn't my mother-in-law, it was his.

(Laughter.)

MR. HAWKINS: You know, I just think we should encourage the Agency. We have to keep doing this. Tennessee wants to continue to participate. And we actually did two. We participated in this one and then we did a Health Hazards Stand-Down a few weeks later. Our AGC, ABC, Tennessee Road Builders Group put that together, kind of a consortium, and did that on our own, so we did both of them.

And I think employers -- I think what we find is people are very willing to do things if someone else does the work. You hand someone the document, the PowerPoints, here's what you do, here's the certificates, here's the stickers. And we had our own stickers made for the second one. You know, it seems like employers are willing to participate when you kind of got a canned program.

MR. STAFFORD: Right.

MR. HAWKINS: So hats off to the Agency, I think.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. No, I agree. I appreciate that. Cindy?

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. Steve created the perfect segue into my comment, which is not the mother-in- law, but the success that OSHA has had and the far-reaching success that they have had. Having participated the past two years internationally and personally in India and Malaysia, I see these numbers going up for the international group. Two comments.

One is I don't necessarily think we need to translate into a lot more languages because we do provide translators at the job sites. And I think that maybe mentioning that is -- you know, you do have verbal translators. You do have translators that can put it into another written language.

But I will tell you that lives are important, as we all know, and the impact that I have seen internationally is wonderful because those workers, on a lot of those jobs, don't have the same equipment, they don't have the same opportunities. And the training and the education and the demonstrations that I saw provided because of what this campaign has done are having far, far-reaching effects. And so that is a true positive statement for this program and it echoes what Steve said, that we need to continue to do this and not forget about the international groups and the lives that we can impact there.

The second is just a question on posting pictures. Are there opportunities to do that? And if so, can we make that more prevalent so that people know where, if it's Facebook, some sort of social media, or something? How do we capture that more readily?

MS. BUNTING: Dean, I don't know if you want to answer this. There was an attempt at a Facebook page.

MR. STAFFORD: Christine.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH. You know, NIOSH does have a Flickr site and we certainly are in a position to collect those photographs and then make them available. That won't be a problem. We can do that.

MS. DePRATER: I do see a lot of our groups that really want to do that.

MR. McKENZIE: We have done some, but, you know, I've got to be honest, the number that we could collect is daunting and the bandwidth it would take.

MS. DePRATER: Allow one.

MR. McKENZIE: One of our challenges this year with those certificates was our web servers were fickle, I'll say. You know, we had challenges getting everybody access to the certificate page. So we've looked at it and we have posted some from '14 are on the stand-down page, but to try to put all of them up, and if you start down that path, how do you select? And, you know, that seems a little challenging.

DR. BRANCHE: Right, same for us, we couldn't do them all. We wouldn't have the --

MS. DePRATER: What if we did set up a Flickr page? Because that's free. You can download pictures.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH. If someone would be willing to assist in the campaign and the stand-down by providing that effort for free and then allowing us to link to that site, I think that would be a great community effort.

MR. McKENZIE: Absolutely.

DR. BRANCHE: And if I can, Mr. Chair, if Ms. DePrater was finished. Were you?

MS. DePRATER: I yield the floor.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH. The issue of the language, Turner Construction and other large construction companies or even medium-sized construction companies are in a position to provide resources for translation onsite, whether it's in an international setting, as you spoke to, or in the United States or I should say North America in general.

But knowing that the campaign was originally designed for small construction contractors with messages to them, and we're trying to make certain that we are mindful of the fact that that's the group of people that we still need to affect with the campaign and the stand-down, you know, I would want to go back to our colleagues at OSHA and perhaps others who've done translations for their own use in languages other than in Spanish to see if we can provide the information in some languages other than in Spanish. I think we have Polish on the OSHA website and a couple of others. Because we do want to make certain that small construction contractors have the resources available to them as readily as they do in Spanish now. Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Christine. Any other questions or comments for Jessica? I can't take comments. If you would like to make comments, sign in at the back of the sheet and you have time at the end of the meeting.

Jessica, thank you, it's very good. We appreciate your time.

We are going to take a break. Before we do that, though, I think that we have Mr. Levinson in the audience. Yes, there he is, to talk about we've been asked to take a look or OSHA has asked our Committee to give an opinion about the elimination of Social Security numbers in the data.

So, Mr. Levinson, if you're ready to do that we'll have this conversation now before break. Damon, are you good? Andrew, you ready?

MR. McKENZIE: Come on up.

MR. STAFFORD: So Damon sent out the proposal that you all should have, right, and had a chance to take a look at it. It was about a one-page summary of the issues.

So, Mr. Levinson, thank you very much. The floor is yours.

MR. LEVINSON: Thank you. So given that I'm standing between you all and a break, I will be very brief. So I'm sure everybody here pays taxes and is familiar with Social Security numbers, and I'm sure that you're all familiar that they've gone and been used in an awful lot of places and ways that they were never intended when they were developed in 1936.

So one of the things that's becoming an increasing concern is identity theft. As you may or may not know, the United States Government itself has been the target of some identity theft. And as a result of the far and wide use of Social Security numbers, increasing concerns about identity theft, OMB, when we were doing the Proposed Rule on Silica, which is now being finalized, raised the issue of Social security numbers in OSHA's standards and asked us to deal with the issue in both Silica and then all of our other standards.

What we decided to do as a result of that conversation was try and address the issues of Social Security numbers in one fell swoop through all of the standards at one time. Now, Social Security numbers are used predominantly in our substance-specific standards. They are used for exposure records, surveillance records, and then very often in mandatory appendices that accompany the standards that have medical records or forms for medical personnel to fill out.

When you look at Social Security numbers, they're used in 19 different general industry standards, 6 construction standards, and 1 maritime standards. So, for example, in construction it's in 6 standards used 17 times. Those 17 times are generally an exposure record, a surveillance requirement, and then also an appendix that contains a form that a medical provider would fill out that includes a line for the Social Security number. And so that's how you get from 6 standards to 17 mentions of Social Security numbers.

These are the six construction standards that have Social Security numbers mentioned. Most of them substance-specific and then HAZWOPER.

And what we are proposing to do is in the upcoming Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for SIPS 4, which has I think it's May of 2016 proposed timeline for the proposal, that in SIPS 4 we would propose elimination of all of the mentions of Social Security numbers in all of the OSHA standards at that one time. We are not proposing to replace them with anything. We are just simply deleting the requirement that Social Security numbers be included in all places in the OSHA standards.

And with that, we're hoping to reduce identity theft and we ask the Committee for a recommendation to proceed on this proposal.

MR. STAFFORD: Any questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: So you're not replacing it with any kind of identifier?

MR. LEVINSON: No. No, trying to develop our own replacement for the Social Security system would diminish our resources substantially.

MR. STAFFORD: I can appreciate that. So any questions or comments? Yes, Don, please.

MR. PRATT: Don Pratt, Employer. Just a quick question. Does anybody know why it was ever requested to begin with?

MR. LEVINSON: Yes.

MR. PRATT: I mean, to weigh something like this, I really need to have the background. Why was it created?

MR. LEVINSON: Right. So the main reason was the concern that a company might have two John Smiths, and so it was a unique identifier that people could use to keep exposure records and surveillance information. It then ultimately was used by many people for surveillance research, as well, although there hasn't been as much industry-wide surveillance research as people initially thought might happen as a result of that. So that is one small piece of it.

We did have a discussion with NIOSH as we were preparing the proposal and they understand concerns and didn't raise any objections.

MR. STAFFORD: So how would you now make the distinction between two John Smiths?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Birthdays.

MR. LEVINSON: So, right, what we would do is we would leave it up to employers to figure out how to do that. In the same way, for example, schools used to -- colleges and universities used to use Social Security numbers and many years ago they moved away from that system. So it would be up to the employer to figure out how to do that. But any additional requirement to establish unique identifiers would have very substantial paperwork burdens and substantial costs on employers that we think that they can deal with without a requirement.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, Roger.

MR. ERICKSON: Roger Erickson with Boilermakers. How would you adjust that for the two John Smiths that worked for multiple employers, like a lot of our construction people do? I mean, if all the employers around the country don't have the same identifier, how are we going to be able to track the surveillance or whatever?

MR. LEVINSON: So the surveillance is for the individual employer, so it's up to that employer to do their own surveillance in the OSHA standards. Sometimes researchers do surveillance, but that's not something that is intended or covered or costed in any of the OSHA standards.

MS. WILSON: Lisa Wilson. I would just say I am involved with this project and one thing that many employers said when they comment on the Silica rule is that employers are currently coming -- many employers are coming up with their own identifying numbers. And OSHA has a couple interpretations out there that already allows employers to use their own generated numbers if those numbers currently can be linked back to the employee records. Because apparently, also, many employees object to providing their Social Security numbers on these kinds of records.

MR. STAFFORD: Right. So let's hear the employers, I'd like to hear from you. I mean, if it's your obligation to figure out how you're going to develop personal identifiers, what does that mean to you?

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. We do have unique identifiers and we are moving away ourselves from Social Security except for the tax, the 1099s, and all of that, but everything else is done by an employee ID.

MR. STAFFORD: Tom?

MR. MARRERO: Tom Marrero, Employer Rep. There's still a lot of things that we could utilize: date of birth, date of injury, and so forth we could utilize to identify that particular individual. So I don't see it being a problem whatsoever.

MS. DePRATER: And Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. Let me just comment on that. That's not just for Turner employees. That's for all subcontractors that come to work for us, as well. We do not use their Social Security numbers.

MR. STAFFORD: Kevin and then -- Don?

MR. PRATT: Yes, Mr. Chairman, Don Pratt, Employer. I am a little concerned about the small contractors. And Cindy, with all due respect, we're not Turner. We're not as big as you guys are. And it's going to be very difficult for us to create those numbers that are legitimate, that can be relied on for something as serious as what we use Social Security numbers on.

As an example, doing credit checks. So I'm just throwing that out. I'm not sure I'm going to vote against this, but I've got some questions.

DR. BRANCHE: I need to respond to that.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Christine and then Cindy and then Palmer.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH, Federal Rep. So, Don, I hear what you're saying about the small employer. There's nothing that says that it has to be a unique identifier number. It just needs to be a way to identify person X from person Y. You can do that by name, you can do that by where they were born, you could do that by a number of things without creating a separate number.

But, unfortunately, the tax identification number, the Social Security number, has been overused and it was something that was first used by convenience. And for a number of security reasons for many years now people have gotten away from this. So the tide is really against using -- continuing to use the Social Security number for anything other than getting your Social Security benefits.

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. Don, I just want to respond to that. When I said that was not all Turner employees, 80 percent or more of the contractors that work on our 1,400 projects are 10 employees or less.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, Palmer and then Jeremy.

MR. HICKMAN: Thank you. Palmer Hickman, Employee Rep. Pete, I'm glad you raised this. When I read the proposal yesterday about this, it was very absent, conspicuously absent, of the remedy. There's an explanation of why this went in, a couple examples that were in preambles of why this was necessary for these rules. And then I'm certainly supportive of getting rid of Social Security here and probably everywhere else other than Social Security. I mean, it's become ridiculous in many cases to use that Social Security number. Let's call it something else if it's not just a Social Security number, but that's a different topic for a different day.

So we've heard now, at least on record, that it's up to the employer. So the request for it to be removed, the explanation of why it was included, but really we don't see a plan laid out, at least in writing in the Power Point or in the proposal, of how this should be accomplished. You know, how the same assurance of tracking the employees can be made, I haven't seen spelled out.

MR. LEVINSON: Right, and we don't have a specific proposal. Employers would have flexibility. They need to accomplish the goal of the identification number, which was that they can link exposure records and surveillance information with particular employees. However they do that is up to them.

MR. STAFFORD: So who is it? Jeremy and then Alex.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Jeremy Bethancourt, Public Representative. So kind of on the same line of what Palmer was saying, that's one of the things that I was thinking is although we don't want to increase a burden, is there any thought to putting suggestions out there when you do have this removed? So that employers, if we're going to leave it open to the employer, hey, you figure it out, a lot of times that puts an employer off because they're worried, you know. Well, you're the regulatory Agency. What if I figure it out wrong, you know, is a thought process that they would have.

In our company, we're a small company, we don't utilize Social Security numbers other than for tax purposes. However, again, we're a little bit more in the know. As I'm sitting here obviously, we know a little bit more than others. I can see smaller companies being concerned, well, you just told us that we can't use this. What should we do. Oh, it's up to you. Well, that's just not enough.

So, I mean, something like a simple guidance document would be beneficial, in my opinion.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. Alex and then Steve.

MR. BELTRAN: Alex Beltran, Painters and Allied Trades. So if I'm coming right out of high school or college and I don't have an employer and I want to get trained in HAZWOPER or any of the requirements that require Social Security and we eliminate it, how does that affect me if I don't have an employer?

MR. LEVINSON: So I may be wrong on this one, but the requirements on HAZWOPER don't require that you have a Social Security number. The requirement is that you get training and that you have some certificate of training. So not having the requirement for a Social Security number shouldn't keep you from getting trained in the program.

The uses of the Social Security number are only when you are actually exposed or in a surveillance system. And so you wouldn't, hopefully, in your training program, be exposed.

MR. BELTRAN: Okay.

MR. STAFFORD: Steve, please.

MR. HAWKINS: Andrew, correct me, this won't prohibit the use of Social Security numbers. It just won't be required by the Agency.

MR. LEVINSON: That's correct.

MR. HAWKINS: The employer says I like using Social Security numbers and I'm going to continue to do it, they're not going to be cited for it. They can do it if they want to.

MR. LEVINSON: No, that's correct.

DR. BRANCHE: But then OSHA -- sorry. Sorry, Christine Branche, NIOSH. But then OSHA would then not be liable if there's a breach in security, so.

MR. HAWKINS: I don't think they probably are anyway.

MR. LEVINSON: We get sued for a lot of things, but we haven't been sued for that yet.

(Laughter.)

MR. HAWKINS: Giving me an idea.

(Laughter.)

MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments? Jerry, did you -- Jerry?

MR. RIVERA: No, I'm good.

19 MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments?

So I guess we need to frame this up. I mean, the question is what OSHA's asking us is to make a recommendation on what we think about this, so we need to do it in the form of a motion. And if someone would like to make it, I would be happy to listen to that. I would make it, if you would like, but I think that's what we're asked to do is to make a recommendation.

(Motion)

MR. STAFFORD: So the motion is that ACCSH recommend that OSHA delete requirements to include Social Security number on exposure, medical, and other records generated by current construction standards.

MR. RANK: Second.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any more discussion on it? Yes, Jeremy.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Jeremy Bethancourt, Public Rep. I just want to reiterate that in our recommendation that that be done, I think it's important that we also recommend that the Agency provide some guidance to folks that they don't feel like, you know, as to Steve's point, well, you can still do it if that's the way you're going to do it, but let people know that. That would be my one point.

MR. STAFFORD: I did not. Okay, well, I think that's a good point. I'm not sure that we need to modify the motion to make that at this point, Jeremy, but I think that's heard.

So we have a motion, we have a second. Is there any more discussion on it?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: All those in favor signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

MR. STAFFORD: Opposed?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, you have your recommendation.

MR. LEVINSON: Thank you all very much. And despite it not being in the motion, we will do some guidance on this for best practices. Thank you all very much.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Levinson. We appreciate it.

Okay, it's time to take a 10-minute break. Thank you.

(Break.)

MR. STAFFORD: All right, if you could find your seats, please, I would appreciate it. Okay, please, if you could find your seats, the Committee is reconvened.

Can you folks hear me in the back? Tony Brown, we're reconvening, partner.

Lisa, do you have three exhibits?

MS. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, Lisa Wilson, I'd like to designate the slides on the National Safety Stand-Down as Exhibit 2, the slides on removal of Social Security numbers as Exhibit 3, and also the write-up on the Social Security numbers as Exhibit 4. Thank you.

(Exhibits 2, 3, and 4 were marked and admitted to the record.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you, Lisa.

Next on the schedule we have an update on what's happening within the Agency on their data. We have Mr. Ricky Gonzales, I think, and Dr. Rebecca Bilbro. Is that right, Rebecca? Or are you on your own?

DR. BILBRO: Yeah, so it's just me today. My name is Rebecca Bilbro. I'm one of the data scientists at OSHA. Ricky Gonzales is my partner. He, unfortunately, couldn't make it today. He has another presentation. He sends his regrets.

MR. STAFFORD: I appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Bilbro.

DR. BILBRO: Before I get started, I've been asked to admit that I've added two additional slides to the presentation that you don't have in the version here, but they will be added to the meeting docket and they will also be emailed out to the Committee members today. So stay tuned for those. I'll also flag them when we get to them in the presentation.

So I would like to talk about specifically around data, around the serious injury report data that we've been taking in since January 1st and to tell you a little bit about what we've learned so far, particularly through the end of the last fiscal year. I want to note that OSHA data takes time to mature. You know, if we do an inspection of an employer, it takes six months before that data is mature because it takes a while to do inspections and to gather information. So most of the data that we have collected now is not yet mature enough to do a thorough analysis. We have about five months' worth of clean data that has matured and that we are able to do analysis on.

So we will have more data soon and especially as relevant to industries like construction, which are highly seasonal. I think it will be valuable to be thinking in terms of a full year of data which reflects sort of changes and seasonality over time.

So just to start with the counts of how many serious injury reports we have received, so through the end of Fiscal Year 2015, which is three quarters of serious injury reporting because we started January 1st, we received 8,586 serious injury reports; 523 of those were not valid, meaning that the employer who called to give the report wasn't required to report to OSHA. Of the ones that were valid, 3,094 of them resulted in inspections. That's 36 percent. And 4,969 resulted in rapid response investigations. That's 58 percent. So again, rapid respond investigations are where the employer is encouraged to conduct their own investigation of the incident and is sort of coached through the process by OSHA, but OSHA doesn't go and physically inspect the workplace. So on average, about 55 percent of amputations are inspected and about 31 percent of hospitalizations are inspected.

I think it's also interesting to look at what, if any, impact the serious injury reports are having or will have on traditional inspections, particularly traditional programmed inspections. The serious injury reports, of course, are unprogrammed activity. And as you can see and as we sort of hypothesized going into this, there has been an impact on the balance, the ratio between unprogrammed and programmed activity. You know, over the prior five years, the ratio held fairly steady and it's sort of inverted in the last fiscal year. We believe that that's, in large part, because of the serious injury reports, so being responsive to incoming reports about severe injuries that have happened in workplaces.

As it relates to construction, the total percent of construction inspections overall has declined. It has been declining. And if you were to draw kind of a line to show rate of decline, it's fairly steady over the last few years, so I don't think that we can specifically make projections about what impact serious injury reports alone have had on construction inspections. But I do have some data, this next slide is one of the ones that was added this morning. We do have some information about which industry sectors the serious injury reports are coming from.

So for construction about 17 percent of the reports that we've received are from construction. And as you can see, that's actually a large percentage relative to the other industries that are reporting, so about 1,500 or 1,600 reports have come in from the construction industry.

And here is another additional slide. Again, this will be added to the meeting docket and emailed out to the Committee members. But this is a top 10 ranking of the reports by industry, so the top is Postal Service; the next is oil and gas support; then hospitals; supermarkets; electrical contractors and wiring; commercial and institutional building construction; highway, street, and bridge construction; roofing contractors; and temporary help services are in the top 10 -- are the top 10 rather.

On the topic of underreporting, we do have the sense that we are experiencing underreporting with the severe injury reports. In the Final Rule that we wrote to update the reporting requirements there's a very lengthy discussion about how we were estimating about how many reports that we would receive annually, and our estimate then was 112,000 reports each year with all states reporting, so that includes federal and also state-plan states.

Currently, it's just federal states who are reporting. There's a lag in state- plan state reporting requirements. And we only have three quarters' worth of data and five months' worth of clean data of those three quarters. But if we sort of do some estimation to get a feel for the extent to which underreporting is happening, if we say we have 8,586 reports for 3 quarters, that's approximately 2,800 per quarter for just the federal states. And then if you multiply that by 4 for a full year, you get 11,448 for a year for just the federal states, which are about half the states in the nation. So if you double that, it's about 22,896 per year for all states, so that is about 20 percent of what we expected to be receiving. So we do have a sense that there are some several underreporting issues.

And also, I wanted to sort of note that when you compare the top 10 most frequently cited standards for all inspections and you compare those to the top 10 most frequently cited standards for serious injury report inspections, there is a significant difference. In fact, for the serious injury report inspections the third most commonly cited standard is the reporting requirements. So this seems to support our sense 13 that there is some underreporting problem going on.

I wanted to end by talking a little bit about what some of the goals are around using the serious injury report data and a sort of request for your assistance and what you might be able to do to help. The sense is that when we have more valid, clean data, we will have a better picture of the landscape of occupational injuries in the country than we currently do have now.

Particularly, we are interested in being able to identify places where we don't have good penetration through our programmed activity and through our traditional unprogrammed activity. You know, places where our emphasis programs are not reaching people, but that we know workers are at risk and where several injuries are happening. And we'll know that because of the severe injury reports. So those are the kinds of areas where we will be trying to focus our analysis, trying to identify those places where penetration is an issue.

And when we do have more data and more clean data, we will be making it public. And what we are hoping to ask you for is to help us identify some of those places that might be good candidates for outreach and education, particularly in the cases where, you know, when you look at the data. If you notice places where you are surprised that we are not getting more reports, places where we should be probably receiving more reports, but are not receiving those, those are probably industries or sub-industries where we need to do better outreach and education to employers so that they know what their responsibilities are under the updated reporting requirements.

And if there are areas where we are getting reports and we do not have programmed activity, those are places where we would be interested in ideas about developing new emphasis programs to make sure that those workers are being protected, are being covered, and that we are reaching them through programmed activity and not just through reactive unprogrammed activity.

And that concludes my presentation. I am happy to take questions, if you have any. And again, I apologize for the two surprise slides added of this morning. They will be added to the docket for the audience to be able to see and they'll be emailed out to you shortly.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Dr. Bilbro. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, Steve?

MR. RANK: Steve Rank with the Ironworkers. Is this information also rolled over into the IMIS system? I might have missed it on the serious injuries and how we look at the data, injury data, from nationwide on an annual basis. All this information also goes into the IMIS system, is that correct?

DR. BILBRO: It's going into the OIS, so the new -- this is the new database.

MR. STAFFORD: That is the old IMIS.

MR. RANK: Okay, yes. Okay.

DR. BILBRO: Yes, so IMIS is our old -- you ask a data person and we get really specific about the databases.

MR. RANK: Sorry.

DR. BILBRO: Yes, so IMIS is our old database. It's our legacy database and it still has archival information in it, but the new information is being populated into the new database system, which is the OIS.

MR. RANK: And I really appreciate when you said that you needed clean information. One of the things that we saw in the old system, the IMIS system, had incorrect information. And I think it starts with the very first -- when the compliance officer is dispatched to do, say, a fatality or a serious injury investigation, that is where it's garbage in, garbage out. And they have got to get the causation factors of the incident correct. If it doesn't, then it gives that whole data, that whole industry or that activity false information.

Unfortunately, we found that out when we looked at all the steel erection fatalities. Over a 10-year period there were 673 fatalities. And we looked at the data to only find out that over 50 percent of those 673 fatalities have nothing to do with steel erection, and that came straight from the field reports. And so that's why I really appreciate your efforts to get clean information and to make sure that the compliance people are giving you accurate information.

DR. BILBRO: Thank you.

MR. RANK: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Dr. Bilbro, what did you say about the states? Are they doing this, as well? So this is everyone's --

DR. BILBRO: They will be. There is a lag time and sometimes it's state-dependent, but they all will be eventually.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. Yes, Steve?

MR. HAWKINS: I can probably speak to that. Some are already doing it. Tennessee's already doing it, several states are doing it. Some had to enact legislation and that takes additional time and so that's the lag that Dr. Bilbro is speaking of. So it'll be a while before it's a national number.

DR. BILBRO: And some states were doing it before federal OSHA instituted the policy, so some of the states had the jump on us.

MR. STAFFORD: I just have one more question. I'm not sure you can answer it. I know a couple of years ago, OSHA discontinued its contract with the University of Tennessee to do the stratification of the Dodge data for job starts, and that's done in-house now. Is the inspection -- how is that -- can you tell me how that's working or same as before or is it different, different targeting mechanisms?

DR. BILBRO: I don't specifically work on the targeting program. I do think that the incoming data about serious injury reports will be helpful when we have enough data. It will take a while before we have enough to use that information to help us kind of understand maybe where we're not doing effective targeting or where we can do better targeting.

But, yes, insofar as the targeting program goes, it's a combination of our archival data and BLS data that kind of informs. And then for construction there's sort of specific additional data, but it's not a program that I work on specifically, so.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. All right, thank you. Any other -- I'm sorry, Dean, go ahead.

MR. McKENZIE: If you will, Dean McKenzie with OSHA. When we cancelled the U10 contractor, it finished, we owned the algorithm that they used and we've brought that in-house and we're running the same program. If anything, we've enhanced it because we have it in-house and we can tweak the individual reports that an area office may request a little bit finer. And we work with the area offices a little bit more closely than U10 could. So that program exists basically as it has.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Alex, please.

MR. BELTRAN: Alex Beltran, Painters and Allied Trades. I might have missed it in the slide, I had a question on the construction, commercial versus residential on the breakdown. Is there a breakdown on injuries reported whether it be a commercial construction site versus a residential site?

DR. BILBRO: There will be, but, again, the total number of reports is so small now that disaggregating it, you know, doesn't really give very valuable information at this point. But there will be a breakdown.

MR. BELTRAN: Thank you.

DR. BILBRO: And that will be made public for analysis and we will look forward to hearing your thoughts.

MR. BELTRAN: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Any other questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. Dr. Bilbro, thank you very much for your time.

DR. BILBRO: My pleasure

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Who is going to do the Temporary Worker Workgroup Report? Is that Jeremy or Tom? All right, Tom, please.

MR. MARRERO: Tom Marrero, Employer Rep and Co-Chair for the Temporary Worker Initiative Workgroup.

MR. STAFFORD: Tom, slide that microphone over a little closer.

MR. MARRERO: The meeting began with discussions of the recent NACOSH Temporary Worker Initiative draft that initially began in April of 2015 for the Injury/Illness Prevention Program, I2P2. According to sources on NACOSH, including Co-Chair Marrero, this draft was constructed to assist OSHA in their efforts to address the Temporary Worker Initiative and to create guidelines that may assist host employers, staffing agencies, and other employers who supply workers efforts to continue workers safe.

The Committee also discussed expanding the Temporary Worker Initiative similar to NACOSH to address other forms of temporary labor that was different than the host employer-staffing agency relationship, which is more relevant in the construction industry. These types of employment are considered by most to be day laborers, workers hired through other contractors or sub-tiers who act similar to staffing agencies, but do not provide safety training or oversight, also known by the term "Labor Pimps," and any other labor arrangement that are not --

MR. STAFFORD: Is that an official term?

(Laughter.)

MR. MARRERO: Jeremy, is it?

MR. BETHANCOURT: It is a term that is very familiar in the industry, correct.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay.

MR. MARRERO: And other labor arrangements that are not direct employer- employee relationship as understood by the IRS guidelines.

Within this discussion it was agreed that a separate document for these types of workers would be the foundation of ACCSH's efforts, thereby created by subsequent telephonic workgroup meetings. Those documents would be anticipated as very beneficial to assist smaller employers on their responsibilities of what needs to be done when hiring and supervising these types of labor.

It was anticipated that the NAHB Representative Rob Matuga and others would provide input towards the document as a means of acting as a voice, and thereby assistance to small employers. The NAHB presented the Committee with an insurance company handout that may assist in the effort that could be used as a guideline. The handout was mainly focused on employee compliance and understanding. And the consensus from the workgroup was that there needs to be a guidance document for employers that aligned of complemented -- a similar type of document as the one presented by the NAHB.

It was discussed that ACCSH and NACOSH should align Committee efforts and accomplishments to ensure efforts are not duplicated. Current Co-Chairs are subsequently part of the NACOSH workgroup on the Temporary Worker Initiative that can provide consistent collaboration on ACCSH efforts. It is a recommendation that NACOSH have at least one of their members participate in a similar manner to ACCSH, thereby streamlining the efforts of both congressionally mandated committees.

And then our motions of recommendations to ACCSH from the workgroup, one would be to recommend to ACCSH that the NACOSH drafted document in its current revised form be reviewed by ACCSH workgroup for inclusion, modification, et cetera, as a document for consideration by OSHA into the current I2P2 program management guideline for industry, including construction; requests that OSHA provide us feedback on their intentions and rationale one way or another.

Two, verify from OSHA or Dr. Michaels that ACCSH Temporary Worker Initiative should have a similar mandate as that of NACOSH to include multi-employers and their diverse relationships of employers to workers on any given work site and how those workers are supplied to the job.

Three, to verify with the DOC that ACCSH Workgroup Temporary Worker Initiative can hold monthly meetings to continue progress to assist OSHA and Dr. Michaels on the Temporary Worker Initiative.

And four, to again request that Wage and Hour participate and work with OSHA, and thereby the workgroup in determining where they can provide support for workers in the demographics to be treated fairly.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Thomas. Jeremy, you have anything to add?

MR. BETHANCOURT: No, according to Sarah -- oh, well, the only thing I would add is that it appears that we had a typo in the second paragraph at the end, and I just want to make sure that when that gets put into the record that we fix our typo.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, sounds good. Is there any questions or discussion from the other Committee members?

MR. RANK: I just have one.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, Steve, please.

MR. RANK: Steve Rank with the Ironworkers. I agree with your concern here on addressing small employers and temporary workers and that whole problem with that industry where a significant amount of workers are getting hurt and yet we don't get the data. We know we don't have the control, we don't have the outreach to that large segment of the workforce, and so it's a huge, serious issue.

It also contemplates the underground economy. Many of these small employers you're talking about pay cash out the end of a pickup on a Friday afternoon. Also a lot of these workers are dodging child support and alimony and everything else. And this feeds into these smaller type of things.

One of the issues I brought to the Chairman's attention here recently was a provision in the 1999 Appropriations Bill that excluded employers in the construction industry and other industries that have 10 or fewer employees from programmed inspections. Okay? And this became an issue with several contractors that had been working in imminent danger situations, were reported to the Agency, and the Agency appropriately came out and did their inspection, only to find out that they had 10 or fewer employees.

And they wrote them a letter, and I have a copy of that I'll share with the Chairman. It says, "Well, upon investigation, this small employer has 10 or fewer, so all we can do is recommend that they provide a safe and healthful workplace. Thank you very much."

And so that kind of feeds into your problem here, is I don't know what the Agency can do to tighten that up. Dean, that's a question for you on how the Agency can respond to that Appropriations Bill on programmed inspections and also what the Agency can do to target those inspections on an imminent danger situation.

And in the future, I'd like to recommend that we can maybe get an update on that bill and what the Agency can do. That'd be very helpful, Dean.

MR. McKENZIE: Okay.

MR. RANK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. STAFFORD: Sure, Steve. Any other questions or comments? Jerry?

MR. RIVERA: Well, I want to thank -- this is Jerry Rivera, Employee Rep -- I want to thank the Temporary Worker Group for the thorough report. I just have a question on if you guys could recall some of the discussions that was going on as far as expanding the definition of "temporary worker." I mean, you see a reference of day laborers, "Labor Pimps," and other things here, but how broad is it going to be or how 7 narrow is it going to be? Do you have guys have any direction? Does ACCSH have any direction? Or how do you see that evolving?

MR. STAFFORD: Jeremy?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Jeremy Bethancourt, Employee Rep. That was actually one of the discussions that we had yesterday in the small group that we had was that we need a definition in asking the Agency to ensure that we have an alignment with the NACOSH, that we would be able to find out what is the definition that they're using and then make sure that we're at least utilizing a similar definition. But, at the same time, what is the definition as its broadened? What's it going to include?

So we have the same questions and that's one of the things we're posing to the Agency beyond the current scope of the initiative.

MR. STAFFORD: I don't know.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Is that what you remember, Pete?

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, I mean, I don't know what NACOSH is doing in terms of defining this, but I think that this is something that we do need to take a look at and have a better understanding of the population that we're talking about.

And, Dean, I don't know if that's something separate or something that OSHA needs to give us some guidance on or we just kind of figure it out jointly with the NACOSH Committee. So I thought I'd make you think about that.

MR. McKENZIE: Dean McKenzie with OSHA. It is a challenge. Temporary workers can be a very, very broad spectrum, from organized labor to anybody else in a lot of ways. What the Temporary Worker Initiative thus far has included is one slice as an identifiable, finite piece with a staffing agency and a host employer that we try to address. Then the hope has always been to someday be able to, okay, take off the next slice. But it's very easy. We've had conversations in this Committee about expanding that and it came down to pretty much including everyone.

You know, in the construction world we're all temporary in a sense. You go build a building or you do a trade-specific -- you know, you get the electrical in, you get the air-conditioning in, you go away. So we're all kind of temporary in this world. So we've just got to keep pecking away at pieces.

I do not know what NACOSH is looking at in their definition, but I believe it's probably going to be the same that we are.

MR. STAFFORD: Right. Okay, that's fair. I'm sorry, Tom, go ahead.

MR. MARRERO: Tom Marrero, Employer Rep. From our understanding, NACOSH was tasked to look at from a multi-employer standpoint, which makes it even broader.

MR. BETHANCOURT: And that's what was actually said yesterday. That word was actually what was said yesterday. Jeremy Bethancourt.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, so let me understand so that we can move on, and we'll have to, at some point, take a motion to adopt your report.

So we have, and it was distributed and it's in the docket, the draft NACOSH documents that are specifically dealing with the issue of temporary workers with respect to the relationship from the host employer to the formal staffing agencies. And so what you've recommended is that ACCSH, our workgroup, take the NACOSH document and, as a workgroup, go through and figure out how to modify it, if need be, to be specific to construction. And as a part of that process, we'll also address the multi-employer situation that we have. Correct?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Separately. I believe, Mr. Chairman it was separately. Jeremy Bethancourt.

MR. STAFFORD: You were going to address by employer?

MR. BETHANCOURT: The broadening of the scope I thought we were going to address separately, if I recall, the workgroup meeting yesterday. So that it wouldn't muddy --

MR. STAFFORD: From this.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Separate from that document.

MR. STAFFORD: Right, yes, that's right. Okay.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Because that document needs to just -- we'll look at it by itself.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, we don't want to muddy this up. We're dealing now with the part of the process and that is the host employer that gets workers from a staffing agency. That's this document that we're going to work on and make it construction-specific. I don't know in the end if this is a best practice document, an OSHA guidance document, what it is.

MR. MARRERO: It's a best practice document.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, so that's what we'll be working on.

And the second question, and this is I think more for OSHA staff, is we've had this issue before of running up against -- and I'm going to lean on Lisa here a little bit -- the FACA issues of having workgroup meetings in between formal face-to-face meetings. And it's clear that the NACOSH has been able to -- their Temporary Worker Workgroup has been meeting monthly in between meetings. So I am assuming that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and that our workgroup can have monthly conference calls, meetings, whatever they would like to do to flesh this document out.

So is that a yea or a nay?

MR. McKENZIE: Yea.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, good.

MR. McKENZIE: The caveat here is the workgroup can meet. The Committee as a whole cannot meet on the phone because the Committee has to be a public meeting. The workgroup can meet all you want.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, so I guess that means then essentially that the workgroup, the folks that are assigned to the workgroup, are the ones that will meet and the full ACCSH, even though all 15 of us may be interested in this issue, we cannot participate in these monthly calls because hence it would become a full ACCSH meeting. Correct?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Right.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. So your workgroup, Jeremy and Tom, has the ability it sounds like to have your calls or do whatever you would like to do monthly in between the meetings.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Yes. Mr. Chairman, at least have that tentatively set up where Tom and I will discuss do we have something this month that we can move forward on? All right, let's do that. Let's schedule the meeting.

Is there a number of ACCSH members who can or cannot be included in those --

MR. McKENZIE: Quorum.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Quorum.

DR. BRANCHE: A quorum is how much?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Less than a quorum.

MR. McKENZIE: Eight.

MR. BETHANCOURT: So less than eight.

MR. STAFFORD: Less than eight.

MR. BETHANCOURT: There we go. So the first seven and that's it.

MR. STAFFORD: all right. So then in terms of -- and I know this is getting in the weeds a little bit, is the OSHA staff helping this process?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Yes.

MR. STAFFORD: They'll set-up the call-in numbers coordinate, do the announcements of the meetings, all of that?

MR. McKENZIE: Typically in the past what we have done is members -- public participants that have come to the workgroup meetings and signed in on the meeting will get an email when we're going to have the meeting. And if people are interested, they are going to that workgroup meeting and they sign up and we send them. We've done them for a number of workgroups. We've held a number of inter- ACCSH meeting workgroup meetings. It's not a new thing.

MR. CANNON: Kevin Cannon. And for the ACCSH Temporary Worker, you guys issued a trade release identifying the dates and times that they were meeting to allow others that want to participate in that meeting.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, I don't think it was in the Federal Register.

MR. CANNON: It was a trade release.

MR. STAFFORD: It was actually posted on the OSHA website, that the meetings were going to happen, and I assume that would apply here. So that answers that question, Tom and Jerry or Jerry and Tom, that --

MR. BETHANCOURT: Jeremy, not Jerry.

(Laughter.)

MR. STAFFORD: That we could have these meetings and then work through Damon initially to set up the first call. Damon, help out on the first call of this group. And so the order of business then is two things it sounds like for your workgroup is to continue to work on this document to make it applicable to construction.

And then the second issue is the bigger slice and this is the issue of how we expand beyond the staffing agencies that deal with day laborers and independent contractors, et cetera, whatever we're calling these people.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Yes, I would say that it's it. And to Dean's point, whatever the slice is and in incremental steps in line with what NACOSH is able to do, as well, just to be clear.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, sounds good. Kevin and then Jerry.

MR. CANNON: Yeah, I just have a question for Tom and Jeremy. I mean, you know, you're working on -- well, NACOSH now, it sounds like you guys want to start working on a separate document. And I guess I'm kind of confused as to what you intend to accomplish that the recently revised Safety and Health Management Program guidelines do not as it relates to multi-employer worksites because, as we heard today, there is a section specifically for that type of work environment.

MR. BETHANCOURT: I think one of the things that -- I'll let you go, Tom. Jeremy Bethancourt. One of the things that we did discuss yesterday was actually to review this document to ensure that that's part of the comment that would be made. And so I guess one of the things that we're asking of the ACCSH members separately from the workgroup meeting is to look at that document, as well, and see what things you find in there. Because understand, the initial -- and Tom's going to speak to this far better than I can, so I'm going to shut up in a second. But this draft document that NACOSH put together, they put together before OSHA had finished their Request for Information.

And, Tom, I'll shut up now.

MR. MARRERO: You're correct.

MR. STAFFORD: So I guess that means you're going to speak now, Tom.

MR. MARRERO: Tom Marrero, Employer Rep. The document that we were looking at providing or drafting was something similar to what the NAHB had provided to the workgroup yesterday. It was an insurance company type of handout and so forth.

MR. CANNON: It doesn't involve -- it's multi-employers. Theirs is more of an orientation-type document.

MR. MARRERO: Correct, but it would target those types of relationships and how to handle those types of relationships. It would just be specifically, you know, safety based. They would be the relationships and safety- related.

MR. BETHANCOURT: From an employer's perspective.

MR. CANNON: And, again, I guess if you look at page 23, Coordination and Communication on Multi-Employer Worksites, in the Safety and Health Management Program Guidelines, and it specifically calls out, "Before the start of any work onsite the host employer and contractor, subcontractor, or temporary staffing agency established their respective safety and health responsibilities and obligations." So it seems like this is moving in the direction to address that problem.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, that's the hook. I mean, that's what we talked about yesterday, that simultaneously OSHA's asked for public comment on their revised guidelines to the program standard, which are due on February 15th and in that guideline to address this issue. And so a part of what this workgroup is doing here potentially would be fed into the guidelines. Does that make sense?

MR. CANNON: So I guess, in essence, the workgroup would be submitting comments to OSHA on their requests or per their request. Okay.

MR. STAFFORD: I don't get wink and nods now, so you're going to have to tell me.

MR. CANNON: Dean told me no, that was wrong.

MR. McKENZIE: Workgroups talk to the Committee. The Committee talks to OSHA.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Anybody can do independently whatever it is that they're going to do, but they can't speak for the Committee.

MR. STAFFORD: Correct. Okay, any other questions or comments?

MR. RIVERA: That answered my questions. I had a question relating to safety, how that was going to integrate into the Safety and Health Management Guidelines. This is Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. I think it's an important area where this is addressed because I think that's going to have a lot of traction as we discussed yesterday. And what we come up with in terms of recommendations on how to deal with this issues, it's appropriate that we look at that as a mechanism to carry that.

MR. BETHANCOURT: And, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we -- Tom and I attended the NACOSH meetings yesterday, the workgroup meetings, and we watched the changes and the modifications that they were making towards this original draft that they had. And it very much expanded some of the explanations, I believe, that are going to be addressed in OSHA's document. So I think that's what it's going to simply do, is complement and suggest where some improvements could be made.

MR. STAFFORD: Thanks. Cindy?

MS. DePRATER: Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. I almost feel like that we're going to end up with three documents that overlap and it doesn't make sense that people are going to have to go to three different documents, even though they're guidelines, recommendations, to figure out what they need to do. Why can't we streamline this?

MR. STAFFORD: Go ahead, Jerry.

MR. RIVERA: Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep. I guess following on Cindy's remarks, I mean, even one of the layer -- I know we're planning on expanding this to other groups, so even that's going to change even further down the road, so these suggestions will alter the guidelines, although they're treated differently, but we don't have a definition of who this is going to apply to, whether it's just temp workers or others. So I guess I'm kind of confused on that and how that's going to intertwine.

I agree, we should address some of these things as guidance documents, but it seems like we're working from multiple angles. And you guys are doing the right thing, meeting with NACOSH, but there's apparently other efforts, as well, that are going on that's going to muddy up the water or muddy up the effort. So that's just what I'm trying to comprehend on that end.

MR. STAFFORD: Well, it's hard to unmuddy waters that are muddy, right? So this is a pretty muddied issue and so we have the options here. We have a document that looks like is an excellent document that the NACOSH Committee's already started putting together. And so the task was, since no one's really had a time to look at this since this was just handed to us yesterday, that the workgroup look at this document and see if it fits construction or, if not, how we modify it.

Now, we could muddy this document and in the same document start talking about how you manage day laborers, how you manage "Labor Pimps" as you call it, how you deal with misclassification and employees get classified as independent contractors, but that seems like that's really going to start getting muddy. Correct?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Correct, and we did not want to do that.

MR. STAFFORD: Right.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Which is why we decided yesterday we're going to do this as a separate part to make sure that we don't muddy that up even more than it is right now apparently.

MR. STAFFORD: So I guess, Cindy, that's the answer to your question. I mean, I don't know how we can have one document that addresses all of these different things.

MS. DePRATER: I guess my -- Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. My fear is that we're going to maintaining overlapping language in three different documents and there's not going to be one of them that pyramids to control another. So, again, I think we're creating confusing information for these small contractors. Maybe I'm wrong, Jeremy, you're shaking your head, but that's the way I see it right now. And they're all excellent documents, I need to add that. They're all excellent documents, but we need to figure out how they're going to be presented to the general public.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, all right. Well, we appreciate that, Cindy. Dean?

MR. McKENZIE: Dean McKenzie, OSHA. I think there's a high likelihood that these documents will inform OSHA and our folks on the guidance documents that we've already published and tweaking them. So, in large part, these documents are guidance for us and information for us. So, you know, I don't see these documents, while they will be in the record, you know, we're not going to put an OSHA stamp on the NACOSH document and publish it. These are taking the industry experts, that we all consider you folks to be, giving us guidance to address our existing documents and future document that we are creating for the Temporary Worker Initiative.

MR. BETHANCOURT: Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dean. I was clearly not saying it as well as you just did.

MR. McKENZIE: Shucks.

MR. BETHANCOURT: That's exactly what our intent is, is to give you guidance on the things that we're concerned about and then you'll include that in whatever it is that you end up with. Does that make sense now?

MS. DePRATER: It does.

MR. CANNON: Yes.

MR. STAFFORD: Tom, you got it? Okay. Any other questions or comments?

Okay, so just to recap real quick. So you are going to follow up with Damon and you're going to start the process of having monthly calls. And it's going to start with the folks that were in the workgroup meeting yesterday, Rob and Tom and the other homebuilder representatives that were there. We can have up to seven ACCSH members participate if they wish and the first line of business is to take the NACOSH document, review it, and see how it applies to construction and how it needs to be modified.

At some point, when you get that done, the next step is to take the next layer down and start trying to define these other temporary workers that are coming out to our job sites that are not coming through formal staffing agencies. Correct?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Correct. And the thought is that we'll be able to come to ACCSH, and so we'll do that work in between meetings and then come to ACCSH with things to discuss.

MR. STAFFORD: Right. Okay, what happens, how this document -- because this is a document, clearly, that NACOSH has taken the position before OSHA even came out and asked for comments on their program standard guidelines, that they're building this -- their intent was to build this in as a part of an I2P2 program. So what comes out of that or when OSHA has their public meeting on December 9th and what people think about that and how that feeds in, but I would imagine this would be a document that's in the document that the Agency's going to look at before we get a chance to modify it.

So can I have a motion to accept the workgroup's report?

MR. CANNON: So moved.

MR. STAFFORD: Second?

DR. BRANCHE: Second.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, thank you. Christine second. Any other discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

MR. STAFFORD: Any opposed?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you. Next workgroup report is -- sorry, please.

MS. WILSON: Who seconded that motion?

MR. STAFFORD: Christine Branche.

MS. WILSON: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Training and Outreach Workgroup, is that you, Kevin? Oh, no, Roger. Okay, thanks, Roger.

MR. ERICKSON: Roger Erickson, Boilermakers, Employee Rep. The Training and Outreach Group consists of Co-Chairs Kevin Cannon, Jerry Rivera, Palmer Hickman, and myself.

The Training and Outreach Workgroup meeting began with the introduction of Ken Koroll, Director of the Office of Construction Safety Training at the Office of Training and Education. After Mr. Koroll's introduction, the workgroup revisited two longstanding agenda items: one, the Intro to OSHA module in both the 10 and 30 hour, and also the OSHA 502 update.

It was reported by Mr. Koroll that a revised module was issued to pilot with a handful of Ed centers regarding the Intro to OSHA. The module remains at two hours. As you recall, the recommendation had been to reduce that to one hour. Like I said, the module remains at two hours. However, the module now contains 8 handouts versus 12 handouts in the previous version. The revised module also resulted in a reduction of slides from 48 to 36. The module now takes an average of 1 hour and 45 minutes. The workgroup co-chairs and public participants again voiced that the two-hour mandate takes away from time that could be spent on construction hazards and not so much on the history and background of OSHA.

The next topic of discussion was on the 502 update. Meeting participants provided suggestions as to how the 502 course could be modified to meet the stated goals of the course while also provided value to the program and students. Mr. Koroll stated that he would meet with the DTE leadership to discuss the workgroup concerns and comments.

The last topic of discussion was the foundations of safety leadership. Dr. Linda Goldenhar with the Center to Protect Workers Rights, CPWR, conducted a presentation on the status of the module, which is intended to be incorporated as an elective in the OSHA 30-hour training. The module is 2-1/2 hours in length and covers key leadership characteristics. The module is currently being piloted and should be finalized by January of 2016.

The remaining work involves finalizing the videos included in the program. After Dr. Goldenhar's presentation, Mr. Koroll provided insights into where the DTE stands with adopting or incorporating the module into the OSHA 30-hour. Before DTE will consider incorporation, the final product will need to undergo evaluation. The evaluation will consist of a review of the stated objectives, program content, and the constructor's guide, among others.

As a result of the above discussions, the following recommendations were made. First, we recommend that OSHA DTE report back on the previous recommendations put forward regarding the Intro to OSHA module and the 502 course.

There's also a recommendation that the Training and Outreach Workgroup hold conference calls with the DTE staff between meetings.

Other recommendations was the DTE begin their review and evaluation process immediately upon program finalization. And we recommend to OSHA that the foundations of the Safety Leadership module be incorporated as an elective into the OSHA 30-hour course.

That concludes my report.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Roger. Any questions or comments?

MR. RANK: I have one, Pete.

MR. STAFFORD: Steve.

MR. RANK: Steve Rank, Employee Representative. I was also in that meeting with Roger and the others, and one of the items that we also agreed to is we need a timeline that when this is sent back to the Agency, they expressed that they had some personnel changes in the training offices, and we understand, but I know that a formal motion's going to be made and we want to make sure that there's a timeline of response time so that we're not here a year later looking for the very same outcome and response. So I'd like to also add that we have put in that a reasonable time factor of this work to be completed and sent back to the Committee.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you, Steve. Any other questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. Well, I think we're on the record in terms of -- and we've beat the drum loud and clear in terms of getting the Director of Training to participate with us and, hopefully, that will happen.

We've also been on the record through this Committee and a formal motion about -- or the Committee's recommendation that this 2- 1/2-hour new module be made an elective of the OSHA 30. And so that's not new. I'm trying to figure out if we need a motion or not here in terms of the timing of the evaluation because, to be quite frank with you, I'm not quite sure what that's going to do for us. Because I'm hoping, in the end, that the evaluation is a part of the research project, which the Office of Training or DTE, I always get all the acronyms mixed up, DTE is already a part of. So I'm trying to think about while I'm talking here whether we want to make a motion that there be a certain time constraint on how long it takes the DTE to evaluate something that they're already a part of and the evaluation is a part of the research.

And I'm starting now that I'm thinking about it not so sure that we want to do that. And I'm open for discussion about that, but I think in the end, again, we've gone a long way down the road of being sure that both the Directorate of Construction and the DTE folks are involved in this project from the beginning, and that's why both of these offices are on the Curriculum Development team.

And so it's very, I think, I don't know if frustrating is the right word. So it's confusing to me that an organization that's a part of the development is involved in the research as we evaluate the pilots and modify and is involved in looking at the intervention research when it's actually out there, that we have to again have an evaluation process at the end of that because they're really a part of the evaluation process throughout the research project.

And so I think I'm going to stick with that. Maybe we need a motion that there is no separate evaluation at the end because DTE is involved in the research project from the beginning. And so I would like your opinions on that. I'm going to go to Palmer first and then to Jerry.

MR. HICKMAN: Thank you, Pete. I think an outcome of yesterday's meeting with the workgroup was lack of communication, at least I think we boiled it down to that. I think maybe a motion that includes that we expect a response back in a reasonable amount of time. I don't think there's been a response.

We made a recommendation that the Introduction to OSHA be reduced to one hour and we made a recommendation about the 502 and now we're making a recommendation about this leadership course. As I understand it, we never got a response back. I think that's really what we're looking for, is a conversation. Maybe they didn't know that we expected a response back. Maybe they just said, okay, thank you for sending this. Maybe out loud, but not to us, so there was never any real acknowledgement.

And I think there was some confusion if they even had received some of it. I know there's been some change in leadership over there in different departments and organizations, so I think the motion should include that we would like a response within a reasonable amount of time because that's what I think we haven't been getting through ACCSH was a response back from DTE.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, who else? I'm sorry, before I go on. Jerry?

MR. RIVERA: Yes, Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep. I guess what I remember from yesterday's discussion, as well, that we kind of agreed that maybe it would be in the best interest of the Committee to have a conference call with staff from the DTE to kind of gather that feedback on their initial response from our recommendations as it relates to Intro to OSHA, the 502, and the Safety Leadership. So maybe that could be a motion, not a timeline, but to establish a conference call with a subgroup and DTE staff to gather that feedback and bring it back to the Committee. That way we don't wait till our next face-to-face.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. Steve Hawkins, do you have --

MR. HAWKINS: No.

MR. STAFFORD: Someone over here. Was it you, Kevin?

MR. CANNON: I was just going to say that you brought that up to Ken yesterday that DOC, DTE have been part of the development and evaluation of the program, but I thought I heard from Ken that even with their participation there would still need to be a separate evaluation conducted by DTE and that was the reason for that particular recommendation. And I don't know if we can call Ken up here.

MR. STAFFORD: I can call Ken up here, but I'm not sure what the purpose is because I'm really struggling with what we're doing. I mean, we make a motion that we -- the motion is that we have a representative of DTE in every one of our Training and Outreach workgroups and, as a part of that, we have a response from DTE about the work that the workgroup is doing and just leave it at that. I'm not sure we need a motion that we are going to have a call with Ken or whoever else at DTE.

And I'm sorry I'm struggling here because the whole thing is kind of confounding to me really that we have an Agency involved as a partner and then they're going to do their own separate evaluation five years from now when the smoke clears. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Christine and then Steve.

DR. BRANCHE: I was simply going to actually herald what you said about having someone from DTE or whatever is the alphabet - - I'm sorry, Christine Branche, NIOSH -- involved because I think that communication issue that Palmer referred to and being very clear about expectations and some accountability would be, in part, satisfied by having someone from, what is it, DTE involved in the workgroup's deliberations. I think that makes a lot of sense, whatever it is.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Steve, did you have something?

MR. RANK: Yes. Steve Rank, Employee Representative. Pete, just to try to prevent any kind of lack of institutional memory because of some changes in staff that was presented yesterday during the meeting, maybe just a short couple points that, in fact, this whole project was gone into as a partnership, as you said. Okay? And just to reiterate that there wasn't any expectation that they would be looked at, like you said a minute ago, from a five-year perspective, that you went into that with the assumption that this project would be a joint effort and it'd be out.

And I think, you know, that maybe could be stipulated very, very short and concise so that any new staff that's come in could understand that this is something that's not new, it's something that was done previously when you laid the groundwork for this project. So in case there's any kind of misunderstandings from the shifting of the guard, I just want to make sure that whoever communicates with them in whatever form the Committee says that should be taken, that there be an understanding on what the expectations were, that's all.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay. No, I appreciate that. Don?

MR. PRATT: Yes, real quick, Don Pratt, Employer. Pete, you said it very well. I mean, I think we've got it on the record. I don't think we need to dwell on it anymore. I think it's on the record and we don't need a motion, I agree. So I think we're done.

MR. STAFFORD: You good? Everyone fine with that? I mean, we don't need to take a separate motion then. I think there's no reason why, just like we did with the previous workgroup, that Kevin and Roger and everyone else on this workgroup cannot have a call in between meetings to have a chat with Ken or anyone else that's identified that's going to be the contact. So let's just leave it at that.

I'm tempted to make a motion. Sorry, Don. The motion is that this Committee recommends that DTE or one of its subsidiary organizations has a representative at every one of this Committee's Training and Outreach Workgroups and as a part of that this Committee deserves a response about what it is the DTE is going to do with the recommendations that this Committee makes.

DR. BRANCHE: Second.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, a motion was made and seconded. Is there any further discussion?

MS. DePRATER: Yes. Cindy DePrater, Employer Rep. I think you also have to add to the motion that they have the authority to make decisions within the group. Because if they have to take it back, we're going to end up in this circle again.

MR. STAFFORD: All right.

MS. WILSON: No, I'm sorry, the rule of workgroups is to recommend things to the Committee. I mean, the workgroup can come to decisions about what things would be best and then bring those recommendations back to the Committee, but the workgroup can't make decisions with OSHA or make any recommendations to OSHA.

MS. DePRATER: And I think I'm referring more to the DTE person that attends the meeting. Does that make a difference?

MS. WILSON: You're asking for a certain level of authority and the DTE person that attends?

MS. DePRATER: Yes, yes.

MS. WILSON: You can include that in a motion, if you would like.

DR. BRANCHE: But the DTE person has authority.

MR. STAFFORD: Pardon me?

MS. WILSON: Okay.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH. The DTE person has authority. So if they --

MS. DePRATER: Then why are we struggling with --

DR. BRANCHE: I think it's a communication thing, as Palmer said from the very beginning.

MS. DePRATER: Okay.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, Jerry.

MR. RIVERA: Yes, this is Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep. I think the confusion with what Cindy mentions has merit and that is that we heard yesterday from Ken, but we quickly found out that it was just more of sending a body to report or gather input to take back. So there's a filter and that's just adding more layers to the confusion. So I guess to Cindy's remarks, somebody who does have the authority to kind of come back and say, okay, this is department, OTPA, the DTE, whichever has the jurisdiction over the components that we're trying to alter to be there. Because, at the end of the day, I think where the subgroup is at is at this stage tell us yea, nay, and we'll move on. But we just need a solid response that we're in support, we took the recommendations and they're welcomed, and we're going to make these adjustments or, no, we're going to go another direction.

MR. STAFFORD: No, I get that and I appreciate that. And I would like that, too, but in a lot of our organizations the person that really ultimately has the authority would be David Michaels in some way if we're recommending significant policy change. Right? So we could say that we want someone from DTE with authority and that potentially could mean the person that the decision-makers were saying we need David Michaels at our workgroup meeting, correct?

MR. RIVERA: That might be the case.

MR. STAFFORD: Then frame up the motion. The motion was that we, the full ACCSH, recommends that a representative with responsibility, with authority -- we could say with authority, I guess -- participate in all of the Training and Outreach Workgroup meetings and that will respond to the deliberations and the recommendation -- or deliberations and activities the workgroup discusses. How's that? I mean, someone else could say -- you know, come up with a motion.

DR. BRANCHE: It sounds good.

MS. WILSON: I'm sorry --

MS. DePRATER: I will second the motion. Cindy DePrater.

MR. STAFFORD: I don't even know what the hell it is anymore.

MS. WILSON: Yes, I could use a little help with the motion. The ACCSH recommends that a DTE representative with authority be at every one of the workgroup's meetings and will respond?

MS. DePRATER: In a timely manner.

MS. WILSON: To the working group's --

MR. STAFFORD: Discussions.

MS. DePRATER: Discussions and recommendations.

MR. McKENZIE: Pete?

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, Dean?

MR. McKENZIE: If I may, Dean McKenzie with OSHA. That was what Ken is here for. We have not had a consistent DTE representative in the workgroup meetings. This was his first meeting. He intends to attend these meetings and that is his goal to do that and provide this. The limits of his authority are not much different than the limits of my authority. We all answer to Dr. Michaels. And unless we have Dr. Michaels sitting in the room -- and, frankly, you're not going to have final authority often with him in the room because he's going to bounce it off of his and executives that he has.

So, you know, we're making a major step toward improving this communication and the continuity of it with having Ken attend the meetings now.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, fair enough. I still want the motion. It may not carry, but I want this on the record that we, after all this time, want someone here.

MR. PRATT: Point of order. Don Pratt representing employers. Lisa, don't we have a motion on the table right now?

MS. WILSON: Amended.

MR. PRATT: Well, the second didn't -- the same second didn't amend it, so.

DR. BRANCHE: Okay, this first second amends the second -- I mean, the second the second's amendment. I mean, whatever.

MR. PRATT: Okay, Christine is agreeing to the revised motion.

DR. BRANCHE: Yes.

MR. PRATT: Okay, just so it's clear on the record.

DR. BRANCHE: Thank you, Don.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, so let's move on here. So please, Lisa, read the motion one more time and then we're going to move on to the next report.

MS. WILSON: A motion that ACCSH recommend that a DTE representative with authority be a part of every meeting of the working group and will respond to the working group in a timely manner on the working group's discussions and recommendations.

MR. STAFFORD: So we have a motion, we have a second. Is there any more discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

MR. STAFFORD: Any opposed?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you. Health Hazards, Emerging Issues and Prevention Through Design Workgroup. Is that Steve or Christine? Christine.

DR. BRANCHE: Dr. Christine Branche, NIOSH, Federal Rep. Mr. Chair and colleagues, I will try to keep this concise, but we did talk about a number of things. The workgroup discussed four major topics, but only two of them seem to emerge for recommendations, so please bear with me as I go through this.

As it concerns the potential for Construction for Health -- sorry, Construction Focus for Health that will be modeled in part on Construction Focus for Safety, we benefited from information from Mr. Scott Schneider of the Laborers, who told us about a proposal that's going through AIHA at the moment, where the four topics -- temperature extremes, respiratory hazards, musculoskeletal issues, and noise -- are being considered for a large- scale endorsement, if you will. We recommend that this effort -- let me back up again.

So these topics are broadly defined and can be expanded and collapsed as occasion serves. They're driven in part by data and -- for the most part and can draw a wide network of support. They can also include hierarchy of controls, training, and personal protective equipment. They can also be affected by prevention through or depending upon which prepositional phrase you prefer prevention by design.

Such an effort can also mention and address safety, health, and management systems guidelines, and we can also benefit, as well, from any social marketing information that could help us in shaping what we suggest be an emphasis on aware at this time.

So our recommendation is that OSHA consider supporting this AIHA effort as AIHA considers the proposal that's now before their board as a Construction Focus for Health. The topics under consideration, as I said, are temperature extremes, respiratory hazards, musculoskeletal illnesses, and noise. Furthermore, we recommend that the effort begin with an emphasis on awareness across the country, and that is the recommendation for that one.

Shall I continue? Okay. In the documents that were distributed, you see that there is a layout, a one-page layout, of a noise app proposal and then a scientific journal article, "Preventing Hearing Loss in Construction in the USA: Challenges and Opportunities." The article was written by Mr. Schneider, Scott Schneider, from the Laborers, and the proposal that's laid out is also from him.

Now, OSHA is in a position to encourage external entities to develop such an app using information compiled by OSHA, NIOSH, and others. And so our recommendation for this one is that OSHA consider packaging elements as suggested by Mr. Schneider into one app. Again, we're not suggesting necessarily that the Agency take on the development of the app, but certainly of compiling the information.

Two other issues that the Committee discussed, but we're not suggesting recommendations at this time, have to do with -- and it's another item that was submitted in the package that I've distributed to the Committee, rather to ACCSH, also from Mr. Schneider again. Thank you, Mr. Schneider.

The OSHA Construction Prevention Through Design web page outline is something that we still have to discuss in light of some other information that's become available and some other opportunities that have become available. But because it was submitted to us and we did discuss it, I wanted you to have it. We're not suggesting a recommendation on that particular item at this time.

And then lastly, what we will discuss at a future meeting is rescue on construction sites. This is not generated only by the Confined Space Rule. There are other needs and circumstances through which rescue needs to be considered and we want to take this up for more deliberate consideration at a later meeting.

So the two recommendations stand before you, Mr. Chair.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thanks. Steve, do you have anything to add or any comments or questions?

MR. HAWKINS: No, I think Dr. Branche did a great job summing up our meeting. And I don't know, are these formal recommendations at this time? We're not going to make a motion, right?

DR. BRANCHE: They're recommendations. I don't think we're making formal motions.

MR. STAFFORD: No.

MR. HAWKINS: Yes, just recommendations.

DR. BRANCHE: Unless there's some in the discussion people want it to be.

MR. STAFFORD: No, I think if there's no more discussion on the report itself, the motion would be to accept the workgroup's report and those recommendations would be on the record that we accept those recommendations.

MR. HAWKINS: Okay.

DR. BRANCHE: If I can, Mr. Chair. I expect that especially as it concerns the Construction Focus for Health, by the time we get to our next ACCSH meeting there will be some developments underway from NIOSH as well as from AIHA that will allow us to have a more formulated recommendation which may manifest in a motion at that time.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, any other questions or comments about the workgroup report?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Well, thank you, Steve and Christine, and Cindy I know was a part of that workgroup, as well.

Okay, can I have a motion to accept the report?

MR. BETHANCOURT: Motion to accept the report.

MR. BELTRAN: Second.

MR. STAFFORD: The motion's second. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

MR. STAFFORD: Any opposed?

(No response.)

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, Lisa.

MS. WILSON: Mr. Chairman, I'd like enter some exhibits. I'd like to designate the serious injury reporting slides as Exhibit 5, the Temporary Worker Workgroup report as Exhibit 6, the Training and Outreach Workgroup report as Exhibit 7, the materials about the foundations for a Safety Leadership Program that came in through that Committee as Exhibit 8, and the Health Hazards Workgroup report as Exhibit 9. Thank you.

(Exhibits 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 were marked and admitted into the record.)

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Lisa. Okay, we have about 20 minutes or so left for public comment. I've got three folks that signed up to do so. Mike McCullion with SMACNA, Mike, I know you're here, please step up.

MR. McCULLION: Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mike McCullion. I'm the Director of Market Sectors and Safety for SMACNA, a sheet metal contractors association. I've been with SMACNA for about 13 years. I have over 30 years' experience in safety and health; past president of the National Capital Chapter of ASSE.

And I apologize, I probably would have made this presentation yesterday at your workgroup for Prevention Through Design, but I wasn't able to attend. I just wanted to get this information before the Committee.

There are really four exciting emerging issues that I know you've talked about and they're out there. Lean construction is a great issue. Prefabrication and modularization is something that maybe you could consider, as well as building information modeling. I know NIOSH has done a lot of work on that stuff.

I'd like to focus on Prevention Through Design specifically. I'm chairman of a workgroup for ASSE, ANSI, the A10 Committee, on a Technical Report on Prevention Through Design. It's entitled -- by the way, you have this in the back of your book, your handouts, I believe, on the very back page. The Technical Report is entitled, "Prevention Through Design for Construction and Demolition Safety and Health."

You see the scope and purpose there. And I just wanted to reiterate the scope being the fact it's going through the application of these concepts, occupational hazards and risks can be identified, avoided, reduced, and/or eliminated before, during, and after a building or structure is constructed, renovated, or demolished.

So this is the scope in the application that we're proceeding with under this Technical Report. A number of you are familiar with it. Jerry has actually be involved with the Committee, as well, with the workgroup. And I just wanted to, again, get this in front of you as a notice to let you know that we are working on this and we may come to your workgroups in the future to get some feedback.

I also support, as being involved with this particular workgroup, support the Prevention Through Design that you've been considering. I think that'll be great. OSHA's website has gotten so much better over the years and I think to have a Prevention Through Design part of that, a web page, I think will be very helpful. I know NIOSH has theirs and certainly maybe the OSHA one could also build on that.

But two things in particular with Prevention Through Design in our workgroup I wanted you to be aware of and, hopefully, you'll address in the future is the concept of the life cycle approach of PTDD. We think it's very important, NIOSH, I know, does and a number of other organizations. And again, just to get it out there, the life cycle is very important because a lot of -- when we talk about construction, we have new construction, which you're very familiar with, but a lot of construction companies deal with the retrofit. I know in the HVAC industry we do a lot of retrofit work on existing buildings. It's still construction in a lot of ways because it's major construction often, but the -- and also the maintenance of the building, that's very important. So we don't forget about the fact that once a building's up and going, there's still construction aspects to it, and Prevention Through Design can help avoid a lot of the hazards that retrofit workers get into, maintenance workers get into. So that's one of the main concepts that we're trying to get through this paper.

And the second main concept to our audience is really the owners, developers, designers, architects, and engineers, the constructors out there who are doing Prevention Through Design and benefit from it, we get it, you know. Large companies are doing it a lot, smaller companies are starting to recognize the importance of it. But I think the audience that we need to try and reach for Prevention Through Design is the design community.

Architects and engineers, they sort of buy into it, some of them don't. There's some liability issues that they're sort of afraid to address, and that may be something that your workgroup can work on in the future to get to those architects and engineers, to get them to believe in Prevention Through Design and the benefits that come from it because that's the group that it needs to start with. It needs to start with the architects and engineers to put those design concepts in, like parapet walls, for example, the tile points for window washers. We don't want window washers tying off to our HVAC components on the roof. We want them tying off to an actual tile point that's part of the construction of the building. So the architects and engineers, we think, are a very important audience that we were hoping to address with our paper and, hopefully, your workgroup can also address, as well.

So we're hoping for a first draft of our paper, hopefully, in 2016. We may not make the June meeting of the A10 Group, but we're working on it. Hopefully, come to your workgroups in the future to advise and get some information from you, as well. And so I welcome any ACCSH input you have into the Technical Report in moving forward.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you very much, Mike. Questions, comments? Christine and then Jerry.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH. I would very much enjoy being able to review and provide some technical comments on your report. And I'm even willing to come and make a presentation to your Committee. I say that because we've made quite a few inroads with the U.S. Green Building Council and the lead pilot credit. And the notion of introducing the concepts of hierarchy of controls, life cycle safety, we've made quite a few inroads with that audience and hence to the design community.

MR. McCULLION: Great. Congratulations on that. I knew you got that done, that was great.

MR. STAFFORD: Jerry, last question.

MR. RIVERA: Yes, it's more of a comment. I definitely wanted to recommend that maybe the sub-workgroup establish -- and Christine mentioned it -- kind of a liaison or direct line of communication with this A10 Group that's working on the Technical Report because I see the value of feeding off of each other. It's kind of like the Safety and Health Management systems and the NIOSH suggestions. We need to have that intertwined communication now so we can get it right moving forward.

So thanks, Mike, for the presentation. And Christine, I think it's a great approach to move forward and establish a liaison with that group.

MR. STAFFORD: Yes, I know, I appreciate it, too, Mike. I mean, I think we all see the promise in this and we had talked a little bit yesterday about what this group could advise OSHA to do to kind of get involved and help push -- you know, kick that can down the field, so a website and those kinds of things are something that I think are important, and we appreciate it.

MR. McCULLION: Great. Thank you very much.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, Kathy Stieler with Electronic Research.

MS. STIELER: Good morning. My name is Kathy Stieler. I'm with Electronics Research in Chandler, Indiana, but I'm here today as a representative of the National Association of Tower Erectors, NATE. We've just passed out something for you. I'm actually on the OSHA Relations Committee and I'm here to state to you, as you see on the first slide, that there is a need for a national minimum standard for the telecommunications industry.

NATE was established in 1995 by concerned tower erection companies. NATE's been working very hard to accomplish their mission statements. And their mission statement epitomizes their role in the industry to pursue, formulate, adhere to uniform standards of safety to ensure the continued wellbeing of tower personnel. We also work very hard to educate the general public, applicable government agencies, and clients on continued progress towards safety standards within our industry.

NATE after formation in 1995 immediately began discussions with OSHA. In February of 2001, we published a hoist standard. This standard was revised in October of 2003. In 2004, we published not only a recommended site safety practices, references, and developmental material, but we also published an industry best practices guide. Both of these publications were developed because of a 1999 ACCSH recommendation.

In addition, we have been working with the Telecommunication Industries Association to develop a gin pole use standard. This standard was called originally the Structural Standards for Steel Gin Poles Used for Installation of Antenna and Antenna-Supporting Structures. This standard was later combined with a construction standard to make a new and revised standard in August of 2011. The new standard was for installation, alteration, and maintenance of antenna-supporting structures and antennas.

We've worked diligently with OSHA to develop compliance directives for inspection procedures for work activities on communication towers that involve the use of a personnel hoist. This compliance directive was developed and published in 1999. It was revised in 2002 and it was revised as recently as 2014. We have shown that access to towers by the hoist line is the least hazardous access.

And currently, pending the resolution of comments, the American National Standards Institute, and ASSE, A10 Committee has an A10.48, which is called the Criteria for Safety Practices with the Construction, Demolition, Modification, and Maintenance of Communication Structures. This NATE- recommended standard is under review and we expect it to be out in 2016. A10.48 is a solid standard that will be efficient and effective with moving tower safety forward. It currently is the largest standards committee that's accredited by ANSI.

On a side note, within this standard we address worker training for rescue.

In closing, we need a tower standard for the telecommunication industry. A10.48 is truly the only guidance document for access on tall towers and cluttered towers. We need something because no other standard really addresses our issues.

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Thank you, Kathy. Any questions or comments? Steve?

MR. RANK: Yes, Steve Rank, Employer Representative. I heard a very detailed presentation by Ms. Stieler and her associates from NATE last July here in Washington, D.C., during the ANSI Construction Standards meeting, and we were quite impressed with the level of detail of engineering, detail in every erection of this, and what all the exposures are. And the comprehensive standard that they put forth summarizes and addresses all those and that's why the Committee passed a vote to pursue this much-needed standard to set the benchmark in tower erection safety, both guide towers as well as freestanding flare towers.

The international association that I work with has looked at this and concurs with their procedures and feel this the best way to protect workers that do this type of work. So I just wanted to commend her for her work on this issue and making this forward.

I know that you mentioned earlier that the Agency has already stated to you that they had already some guidelines on this or best practices. And I would recommend that the Agency work very closely, Dean, with her association to incorporate these type of safety procedures that are done by the experts that perform this work. Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you, Steve. Jerry?

MR. RIVERA: Thank you for the presentation. I guess I'm trying to think out loud here and I've been thinking for quite some time, since after A10, as well, and see on the workgroup, under Emerging Issues, I know it's not an emerging issue for you, but I think for the Committee it's something that we might want to look at since we have rescue requirements in construction for the subgroup. So it might be a good opportunity to learn from that.

DR. BRANCHE: Christine Branche, NIOSH, Federal Rep. You have anticipated us. We've already invited Ms. Stieler to participate in our deliberations on this issue.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, great. Thank you.

MR. HAWKINS: One question.

MR. STAFFORD: Steve?

MR. HAWKINS: I'm just curious. Many times associations come to this group or come to OSHA and say, oh, we don't want a standard, we have voluntary guidelines we've already agreed to. I'm just curious if you can explain why you have voluntary guidelines with this ANSI standard, but you still want OSHA to develop a standard. That's a little unusual maybe.

MS. STIELER: It's a little unusual, but it is paramount in the eyes of OSHA that the telecommunications industry has had some issues in the past. And as we all know, a voluntary consensus document is an expensive document for people to purchase. And with the backing of OSHA and a standard with OSHA, it would be much easier for some of the smaller companies to be able to get their hands on the document to do what needs to be done. We're very proud of our work, but it needs to be shared with a whole lot of people.

MR. HAWKINS: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: All right, thank you. Kathy, thank you again.

MS. STIELER: Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: We appreciate your time. Okay, I got last on the list is Matt Compher. Matt? In five minutes or less, Matt.

MR. COMPHER: Sure, I'll keep it short. Thanks. Matt Compher, Senior Vice President of PLH Group. We're a holding company that owns 13 contractors across North America. Pipeline/power line construction is our business.

I wanted to come up and talk in support of the reduction of the Intro to OSHA for the 10-hour program. I sat in the workgroup yesterday and I don't intend to get back into the passion that the workgroup had. There was plenty of that going around. But as an employer who trains on this multiple times a week across the country it's important to get out there with the hazards that are faced and that our employees face. And we need to keep that 10-hour on hazards, not necessarily the Intro to OSHA.

On the 30-hour program, I think, Pete, you offered up 86 percent or 76 percent, whatever that number is, use this as supervisors training. While maybe that wasn't the intent, that's where we've evolved. Having leadership in that is so important.

And somebody made an important point yesterday in the workgroup that this will be an elective. It's not a mandate. I would encourage the Agency, the Committee, whatever it takes to get this ball rolling. We don't need to wait five years to then make a decision. Let's see if we can make a decision soon.

MR. STAFFORD: You can take as much time as you need, Matt.

(Laughter.)

MR. COMPHER: Yes, I mean, this is something that has immediate impact on the health and safety of American workers and I just don't see holding it up. It's not an employee-employer issue. Everybody's behind this. Let's make it happen. I just encourage us to move forward with that.

And then the last comment and I'll get down is temporary worker is an interesting topic for me. I think we really need to put some time into that definition. And I agree, where we are now, host employer and employee agencies, that's kind of defined and I get that. But when we start talking about that next slice, being a pipeline contractor and you think about welders that come out, whether they're union -- and we're double-breasted, we have union and nonunion -- whether they're union welders who come out or they're nonunion welders who come out and they're only there for a short amount of time and what that means. And I'm sure there's other trades that are very similar, but I really encourage the Committee to take a look at what that temporary definition means and what the repercussions of that temporary worker definition is, you know, six months from the time it's final or whatever. So thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, thank you for your comments. Any questions or comments for Matt? Thank you, Matt. I'm sorry, go ahead, Jerry.

MR. RIVERA: Jerry Rivera, Employer Rep. It's not necessarily a comment for Matt, but going back on the leadership, one of the key things that we learned that we saw in Lightning was that leadership is not about a supervisor necessarily, but employees' peer- to-peer learning. So, again, to echo Matt's remarks, it's something that we definitely need. And that expansion, you know, it's a fresh perspective that I think that we need to put out there sooner than later.

MR. STAFFORD: Okay, appreciate that. Palmer?

MR. HICKMAN: Real quick, thank you, Mr. Chairman. One thing that wasn't mentioned and I was just prompted by this last discussion, when we think about the two-hour Introduction to OSHA, the fact that so many folks -- I know federal OSHA doesn't require - - doesn't have an expiration date on the card, but many general contractors, host facilities, states, you know, maybe based on size of the project have three-year, five-year expiration dates. So a two-hour Introduction to OSHA, while it's problematic by many the first time you see it, certainly, seeing the same information three years later when your card expires in three years, I think it really speaks to the need to certainly bring it down at least for refresher training.

And there is a need for refresher training, so if OSHA -- so, Ken, if you can take that message back, too. There's even more of a reason where people have expiration date of cards where they're seeing the same information fairly frequently. That makes it more problematic, as well, and drives a need to reduce it to one hour. Thank you.

MR. STAFFORD: Right, okay. Thank you, Palmer.

MR. COMPHER: Could I have one follow-up comment to Palmer? Many of our workers in construction obviously are transient and they'll leave me and go to another employer and get the 10 hour over again. So that employee is seeing that 10 hour multiple times.

MR. STAFFORD: Right. Yes, we get that. Okay, thank you again.

Okay, folks, I think we're about ready to wrap it up. Before we close I'd like to thank and welcome Steve and Alex, our two Labor Representatives. I don't know when we're going to meet next. I know we have a few folks that may be changing. I know, though, and this is the one person I want to acknowledge, that Roger Erickson, one our Labor Reps at the Boilermakers will be retiring in February, so he will not be back with us. So I'd like to acknowledge Roger.

(Applause.)

MR. STAFFORD: Jim Maddux is not here and it's unfortunate. We have all of us, and me personally, have really enjoyed working with Jim Maddux, both in my other roles, in my role as Chair of this Committee. And Jim's going to definitely be missed.

And I did not want to miss Paul Bolon, who is in the back of the room, who will also I understand be retiring at the end of the year. And it's been great and we appreciate your great work over the years, Paul. So thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. STAFFORD: So, Lisa or Dean -- oh, we have one of our members, Chuck Stribling, who is out with an illness and I guess we're all supposed to get together and take a picture here, a get well, Chuck.

(Photo opportunity.)

MR. STAFFORD: All right. Okay, Lisa, please.

MR. HICKMAN: Is this Exhibit 9?

(Laughter.)

MS. WILSON: And if I may, I'd like to enter the ANSI Working Group document as Exhibit 10 and the National Association of Tower Erectors document as Exhibit 11.

(Exhibits 10 and 11 were marked and admitted into the record.)

MR. STAFFORD: Thank you very much. Thank all of you. All of you have a safe, happy holiday season. We'll talk to you soon. The meeting's adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the Advisory Committee meeting was concluded.]