The Importance of Performing Regular Safety Inspections on a Multi-Employer Construction Site

Most savvy employers understand the importance of maintaining a comprehensive safety and health program, training their employees on this safety and health plan, and implementing a disciplinary action program to ensure compliance with the company’s written safety policies and procedures. 

Of equal importance, and what most often falls through the cracks, is the act of performing frequent and regular inspections at the worksite. Whether your company is a specialty subcontractor performing specific tasks such as steel erection, demolition, or crane operation, or if you are a general contractor or construction management firm with multiple subcontractors on a large-scale construction site, it is of paramount importance that safety inspections are an integral part of your worksite activity.

It is no secret that the United States is a litigious country. Frequently, SCR Safety is contacted by Plaintiff or Defense attorneys due to a lawsuit where an employee of one contractor on a jobsite files a suit against other contractors on the job and alleges these parties failed to warn of unsafe conditions or failed to correct a jobsite hazard.  

In addition to negligence lawsuits, contractors are subject to OSHA Inspections on multi-employer worksites even if it is not your employee who was involved in an incident, nor your company that was the subject of a Complaint to The Agency. OSHA utilizes the Multi-Employer Citation Policy as a guide for inspecting and issuing citations on multi-employer worksites. 

On Multi-Employer worksites (in all industry sectors), more than one employer may be citable for a hazardous condition that violates an OSHA Standard. If an employer is a creating, exposing, correcting, or controlling employer, it has obligations with respect to OSHA requirements. If the employer’s actions were not sufficient to meet those obligations, they can be subject to OSHA citations. 

A creating employer is one that causes a hazardous condition. A creating employer may be cited even if the only employees exposed are those of other contractors’ employees. 

An exposing employer is one whose own employees are exposed to the hazard. According to OSHA’s Multi-Employer Policy, the exposing employer must take steps to protect their employees even if the hazard was created by another contractor’s employee.

The correcting employer is one that is responsible for correcting hazards on the jobsite, and they must also exercise reasonable care in preventing and discovering violations to satisfy its obligations in correcting the hazard. 

The controlling employer is an employer who has general supervisory authority over the worksite, including the power to correct safety and health violations or require others to correct them. 

The extent of measures that must be taken by a controlling employer to satisfy their duty of reasonable care is less than what is required of an employer with respect to protecting its own employees (i.e., an exposing employer). This means that the controlling contractor is not normally required to inspect the exposing employer as frequently as their own employees, nor are they expected to have the same level of knowledge of the applicable standards as say, a specialty contractor (such as a crane operator or steel erector) that the general contractor has hired to perform that specialty task.

Now the big question is, how does OSHA evaluate whether I exercised reasonable care to prevent and discover violations on a multi-employer jobsite? Typically, the answer is threefold:

• Do you conduct workplace safety inspections of appropriate frequency taking into consideration the scale of the project, the nature of the work, (i.e., a fast-paced job or task may see the number or types of hazards increase as the work progresses) and how much you know about the safe work history of contractor’s on the job that you control? 
• Do you have an effective system for promptly correcting hazards? What is in place for personnel to report safety issues on the worksite? Are corrective actions documented? 
• Do you ensure the compliance of other employers that you control with an effective, graduated system of enforcement, or require the subcontractor to do so by contract? Are follow-up inspections conducted to ensure compliance is maintained?

The bottom line is, there is no boiler-plate answer to how to evaluate reasonable care, as every project, lawsuit, and worksite vary in scope, size, and experience. However, the more a contractor documents inspections, documents disciplinary action, training, safety orientation, the more likely you are to prevent workplace incidents and to avoid costly fines and litigation.

Tags: Construction, Mulit Employer, Safety Inspections