TED Magazine - May 2017

CLOSE TO 5,000 WORKERS ( 4,836) were killed on the job in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s 93 workplace deaths every week. Contractors accounted for 17% of these fatal work injuries. And more than one in five ( 21.4%) of the deaths occurring in the private sector occurred in the construction industry. Almost two-thirds ( 64.2%) of the private-sector, construction industry deaths were due to what the BLS calls “The Fatal Four”: falls, struck by object, electrocution, and caught in/between (i.e., caught in or compressed by equipment or objects and struck, caught, or crushed in col- lapsing structure, equipment, or material). OSHA was established to prevent workplace injuries. During its work- site inspections in fiscal 2016, rep- resentatives found the most stan- dards violations in these categories: fall protection, ladders and scaffold- ing, respiratory protection, powered industrial trucks, machinery and machine guarding, hazard communi- cation standards, and all manner of electrical concerns: wiring methods, components and equipment, lockout/ tagout to control hazardous energy, and systems design. “The greatest dangers, by far, for electrical contractors are arc-flash and shock hazards,” said Jim Dunn, executive vice president for War- shauer Electric Supply, headquar- tered in Tinton Falls, N.J. “The fatal- ity rate is high for those who get shocked. And those who are shocked and burned or maimed are looking at lengthy hospital stays, lengthy rehab, and a lot of physical therapy.” Warshauer Tech, a continuing edu- cation program established in 2001 for electricians, offers a four-hour
SAVE LIVES—
AND PROPERTY
OSHA training can help companies avoid “The Fatal Four.” by Jan Niehaus
course—Arc Flash and Shock Haz- ard for Contractors and Mainte- nance Personnel—twice a year. “It is our most popular course and it usually sells out,” explained Dunn. The $200 course covers fault cur- rent calculations, arc-flash calcula- tions, regulations (i.e., OSHA, NFPA70, NFPA70E, IEEE 1584), arc-flash analysis and labeling, shock hazard and boundary rules, personal protective equipment, qualified person definition, training requirements, and risk assessment studies. Warshauer Tech’ s course meets the standards set by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) for arc-flash training. The four con-