OSHA Slaps Construction Company Again – This Time for $1.5M

With about 150 workers, it will be challenging for Great White to get the company at least to OSHA-compliant safety efforts as soon as possible.

by, Robert Box

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) visited Great White Construction in Florida for the twelfth time in five years, this time in St. Augustine, Florida. 

OSHA cited the company with 14 safety violations and proposed penalties totaling $1,523,710, which included 11 separate willful citations related to fall hazards and three repeat citations for workers not wearing eye protection and improper use of ladders.

According to OSHA, Great White Construction workers were wearing personal fall arrest system harnesses, but they were not tied off at all while removing roof shingles and plywood sheeting from two multi-story residential homes.

OSHA has placed Great White Construction into its Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP), in which OSHA concentrates resources on inspecting employers who OSHA claims to have demonstrated indifference to safety compliance obligations by committing willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations.   In order for Great White Construction to emerge from SVEP, it will be required to:

• Abate all qualifying violations
• Pay all penalties
• Complete any actions as agreed upon in any settlement agreement with OSHA, and
• Avoid additional “Serious” violations at that or other job sites.

The last requirement is controversial because it requires repeat and/or willful violations (which can be up to $126,749 each) to be put into SVEP, but just one “Serious” violation (which can be up to $12,675) can keep the company in SVEP for three more years. 

If an OSHA compliance officer goes to any Great White Construction site and sees one safety violation (for example, a fire extinguisher that has not had its monthly inspection documented), then the three-year SVEP clock starts all over again. 

With about 150 workers, it will be challenging for Great White to get the company at least to OSHA-compliant safety efforts as soon as possible.

Even if Great White Construction meets all of these conditions, removal from the program is at the discretion of the OSHA Regional Administrator, which means Great White Construction may never get out of SVEP.

The company has 15 business days to contest the citations before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Safety First Consulting is a contributor of SM Corridor News and helps businesses identify OSHA compliance issues in their workplaces, manage their safety programs, and we become accountable for the results. In addition to offering custom written safety programs for companies, Safety First Consulting provides required safety training, industrial hygiene sampling, noise sampling, and workplace inspections. You can read more from Robert Box under Business.