Publication: Occupational Health & Safety Magazine
Issue: August 2012
At the start of the safety regulations for construction, OSHA calls for “frequent and regular inspections of the job sites, materials, and equipment to be made by competent persons designated by the employers.” Unfortunately, OSHA does not go on to state how this should be done or what to do with the observations collected during this process.
As a result, many see the act of doing the inspection as a finite process with no post-action required. For example, I once asked a forklift operator to see his inspection records. The operator beamed and gladly handed me a stack of forklift inspections. During my review, I noticed that each inspection for the last few weeks had the same hazard noted: the brakes were requiring more effort to stop the vehicle. I asked the operator about this and he said that it had been reported, yet nobody had gotten back to him about it. But the job went on, day after day, with a clear hazard noted but not corrected. Read the full article here.
