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Year:
Check out our latest news: NOTICE OF SUSPENDED TRAINING OPERATIONS, Jim Crook - Gone but Never Forgotten, MEWP Trainers and Supervisors - Take Note!, NDSC Safety Conference - They Should All Be This Good, IVES reaches 25-K Milestone!, OSHA's General Duty Clause, A question on forklift truck certifications, Interesting articles, and much more!
In this issue we will be covering:
IN CONSIDERATION OF THE HEALTH RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THE COVID-19 VIRUS
AND THE TYPES OF ACTIVITIES THAT AID IN ITS SPREADING, WE AT IVES HAVE
DECIDED TO TAKE DRASTIC BUT NECESSARY STEPS TO LIMIT THE POSSIBILITY OF
CONTACT BETWEEN OUR TRAINERS AND CLIENTS, AND THIS POTENTIALLY DEADLY
VIRUS.
AS SUCH, WE REGRETFULLY
ANNOUNCE THE DELIVERY OF ALL IN-PERSON IVES TRAINING PROGRAMS OTHER THAN
THOSE CURRENTLY IN PROGRESS ARE HEREBY SUSPENDED UNTIL AT LEAST MAY 3,
2020.
WE WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE SITUATION AND MAY SHORTEN OR EXTEND THE
SUSPENSION PERIOD IN MEASURED RESPONSE TO THE SITUATION AS IT UNFOLDS.
OUR OFFICES WILL REMAIN OPEN AS ALL OTHER SUPPORT, SALES AND
ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS WILL CONTINUE UNAFFECTED BY THIS SUSPENSION.
WE SINCERELY APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE THIS DECISION MAY CAUSE YOU
OR YOUR COMPANY AND TRUST YOU UNDERSTAND OUR RATIONALE IN MAKING THIS
INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT DECISION.
It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Jim Crook (68), one of IVES’ most beloved and longest serving trainers.
Jim started with IVES as Master Trainer in the fall of 2004. His
teaching style complimented his personality which was warm, friendly and
accommodating. Easy to talk to and always ready for a laugh, yet
intensely serious when he needed to be, the combination of Jim’s
outstanding communication skills and extremely deep operational
experience made him a favorite among his trainees and coworkers alike.
“He really was a rare breed” says IVES Director of Training, Rob Vetter.
“It’s hard to find people that can communicate in the classroom as well
as Jim could and even harder to find someone that can do that plus,
bring the wealth of knowledge and experience with the machinery he had
to bring to the table. Jim brought it all, he was the total package and
on top of all that, you just couldn’t help but love the guy. He was one
of the nicest people you could ever meet and I feel so lucky I had the
chance to know and work with him, we will all miss him dearly.”
Jim left us on February 15, 2020, after an 18-month battle with cancer.
He is survived by his loving wife Cathy and their two proud sons, Brodie
and Kevin.
Jim Crook 1952 - 2020
As announced in the February 2020 IVES Update, we plan to release several new products to help MEWP trainers and supervisors update and adapt to the new ANSI A92 and CSA B354 MEWP safety standards. The release target date is still March 31, 2020 so be sure to look for a special email from us announcing the arrival of:
Remember to keep an eye out for the special announcement email later this month that will provide you with more information about new offerings for MEWP trainers and supervisors.
The North Dakota Safety Council’s 47th Annual Safety & Health Conference
was held February 25-27 in Bismarck, ND and from IVES’ perspective as
an exhibitor and speaker at the event, it was an overwhelming success.
Over a thousand attendees representing companies from far and wide
flowed through the aisles past the hundreds of exhibitors in the exhibit
hall and throughout the conference rooms to take in the many
educational breakout sessions and keynote speakers.
The IVES exhibit booth was visited by hundreds of attendees ranging in
professional standings from CEO’s to Safety Managers and Supervisors to
front line trainers and clients just dropping by to say hello. The three
breakout sessions hosted by IVES addressed MEWPs, forklifts and
instructional techniques respectively and were well attended with over
50 conference goers each.
It was wonderful to feed the curiosity of so many safety professionals
seeking information on powered industrial equipment training and to hear
all the glowing compliments and wonderful praise from our clients who
came past our booth and/or attended our breakout sessions. There was
even a client (Wade Works LLC.) beside us in the exhibit hall that had
our logo proudly displayed on their company banner. How great is that?
Some of you may recall a time when IVES attended over a dozen
conferences and safety exhibits per year, a trend that has fallen off
over the years. The decision to attend this year’s NDSC event was made
as a gesture of support for them and their fine organization which has
been such a great partner and supporter of IVES over the past five years
by offering their Bismarck location to host IVES programs and pointing
many others toward us. Although we don’t regularly attend these sorts of
events anymore, if more of them did the kind of spectacular job NDSC’s
Marketing Manager Serena Schmit and her team did in organizing and
delivering this one, that trend could change!
We are thrilled to announce IVES Certified Trainer No. 25,000 was issued to Ruben Pallan
of All Purpose Safety Solutions on February 14, 2020. IVES Master
Trainer Joe Deas had the honor of presenting Ruben with a Trainer Power
Pack in commemoration of his designation as “Mr. 25-K” following a MEWP
Trainer Certification Program delivered at the Safety Center Inc. in
Sacramento CA.
Acknowledging the importance of reaching this milestone goes well beyond
simple recognition of the number and speaks far more substantially to
IVES’ longevity as a capable and consistently high-level training
provider over the past 4 decades.
To Ruben Pallan, our Mr. 25-K we say, congratulations! To him and the
24,999 Certified Trainers and companies that put your faith in us and
made reaching this and every milestone leading up to it possible we say,
THANK YOU! We could not have done it without you.
Commonly known as the General Duty Clause, Section 5(a)(1) of the
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is intended to give OSHA a
means to address hazards for which no standard is on the books. Current
examples include heat-related illnesses and workplace violence in health
care and social services.
One reason why General Duty Clause violations make up so little of the
overall citations issued by OSHA each year is because of hurdles that
stand in the way of its enforcement – namely a four-part test that stems
from Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission decisions and
other court precedents, according to the agency’s Field Operations
Manual and a November 2018 memo from Kim Stille, former acting director
of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs and current Region VII
director. To issue a General Duty Clause citation, OSHA must prove:
1) The employer failed to keep the workplace free of a hazard to which its employees were
exposed.
2) The hazard was recognized.
3) The hazard was causing or was likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
4) A feasible and useful method to correct the hazard was available.
1) The employer failed to keep the workplace free of a hazard to which its employees were exposed.
OSHA has to prove employees of the particular organization in question
were affected. That, obviously, can prove more difficult on
multi-employer worksites.
Richard Fairfax, former director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement
Programs and former deputy assistant secretary of labor, said the agency
looks at aspects such as who supervises employees, who assigns work,
who the employees regard as their supervisor and from whom they get
their paychecks.
“There’s a whole series of questions that a compliance officer will go
through trying to establish exposure: Who controls it? Who has
responsibility for fixing it?” Fairfax said.
2) The hazard was recognized.
Evidence an employer knew about a hazard can include injury and illness
logs as well as employee complaints to management, Stille writes in the
memo. All complaints must be formal and not offhand comments, the Field
Operations Manual states.
According to the manual, the agency also can prove an employer’s
knowledge of a hazard via a number of other methods, including company
memos, safety work rules that identify the hazard, near miss reports,
federal or state OSHA inspection reports, and the employer’s own
corrective actions “if the employer did not adequately continue or
maintain the corrective action or if the corrective action did not
afford effective protection to the employees.”
OSHA can include in a General Duty Clause citation that a hazard was
recognized by an employer’s industry, but it can’t enforce an industry
or a consensus standard, an agency spokesperson wrote in an email to S+H.
It can, however, use those standards to show industry recognition of “a
hazard and a feasible means of abatement,” but the other two parts of
the test must be met as well.
Stille’s memo also states that industry recognition can come from a
trade association guidance document, but Fairfax cautioned that OSHA
would likely have to show the employer was part of that particular
association.
Additionally, the Field Operations Manual accepts “common-sense
recognition,” meaning a hazard was “so obvious any reasonable person
would have recognized it.”
3) The hazard was causing or was likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
The Field Operations Manual uses the example of an employee standing at
the edge of an unguarded floor 25 feet off the ground. It’s not always
so clear cut, however, as a February decision from the Occupational
Safety and Health Review Commission demonstrates.
The commission, an independent federal agency that rules on disputes
over OSHA citations and penalties, overturned a General Duty Clause
citation that stemmed from a 60-year-old roofing worker’s death
resulting from complications from heat stroke in August 2012.
OSHRC ruled the heat index on that day did not reach the “caution” level
on the National Weather Service’s heat advisory chart. It concluded
that OSHA “failed to demonstrate the work was strenuous or the workers
were exposed to heat index values within any of the NWS warning levels
for a ‘prolonged’ period of time.”
4) A feasible and useful method to correct the hazard was available.
OSHA must identify the existence of a measure(s) that is feasible,
available and likely to correct the hazard. This includes technical and
economic concerns.
An example of the latter, Fairfax said, is an establishment with a
$50,000 annual profit having to use an abatement method that costs
$500,000.
“OSHA’s not going to be able to say, ‘You’ve got an overexposure to a
hazardous chemical, and we’re going to make you put in this huge
ventilation system because that’s the only way to fix it,’” Fairfax
said.
Because of the complex nature of General Duty Clause citations, OSHA
occasionally has to issue reminders or clarifications to its personnel.
“One of the jobs of the enforcement programs is making sure there’s
overall consistency,” Fairfax said. “Periodically, the office would send
a memo out just basically reminding everyone there're certain things
you have to do.
“I put memos out a number of times reminding people they can’t cite a
[threshold limit value] or they can’t cite an industry guideline.”
If OSHA can’t satisfy all four parts of the test but still believes
onsite hazards exist, Fairfax said the agency can send a letter
outlining different potential remedies, suggest bringing in a
third-party expert or recommend using OSHA’s free consultation service.
Challenges
Perhaps not surprisingly, because of their complex and somewhat murky
nature, General Duty Clause citations are often among the most
challenged, attorneys Eric Conn and Brad Hammock said.
Hammock, co-chair of Littler Mendelson’s Workplace Safety and Health
Practice Group and former lead counsel for safety standards at OSHA,
said the agency has difficulty using the General Duty Clause when a
hazard isn’t easily defined. He used an example of the hazard threshold
for lifting activities, which could bring a General Duty Clause citation
for ergonomics.
“Is it one lift at 40 pounds? Is it another lift at 70 pounds? Ten lifts
at 20 pounds? At what level is the activity a hazard?” Hammock asked.
“And then second, how will the abatement methods materially reduce the
hazard? If you are lifting 50-pound boxes, can you start lifting boxes
that are 45 pounds?
“When OSHA has difficulty articulating those two things, that’s when
they have difficulty winning General Duty Clause violation cases.”
From his experience, Conn – founding partner of the Conn Maciel Carey
law firm in Washington, and chair of its national OSHA Workplace Safety
Practice Group – said General Duty Clause challenges are successfully
defended more often than challenges regarding specification standards.
Conn takes issue with OSHA’s use of the General Duty Clause because, he
said, it’s intended to be a stopgap until the agency can finish the
rulemaking process. He contends the clause is sometimes used in place of
rulemaking, and points to heat-related illness citations as an example.
The Department of Labor’s latest semi-annual regulatory agenda, issued
Nov. 20, lists no potential regulations aimed at addressing that hazard.
Fairfax countered OSHA regulations sometimes take decades to complete.
For example, rulemaking on the agency’s updated standard on
walking/working surfaces began in 1990 and was completed in 2016. A
regulatory flowchart on OSHA’s website gives a timeline of between five
and 12½ years for rulemaking.
That’s why the General Duty Clause remains a very important tool for OSHA, Fairfax said.
“I don’t think it is possible to have a standard or regulation that will
cover any and all hazards existing now or in the future, hence the
General Duty Clause,” he said. “The burden of proof is high and there is
a lot of supporting documentation required for OSHA to cite under it.
That is a good thing, as it requires a lot of thought, review and
supporting information for OSHA to cite under it, which means the agency
has done its homework and the General Duty Clause is being used as it
was intended to be used.”
Article excerpted from Safety + Health magazine, December 20,2019.
Author: Alan Ferguson.
Source: safetyandhealthmagazine.com
Q. Does our forklift need to have an outside service to
certify it even if we do the maintenance on it? If we can certify it,
what would that entail?
A. There are no annual inspections or other specialty
inspections required on forklifts (unlike MEWPs) beyond the preventive
maintenance schedule required by the manufacturer and of course, ongoing
pre-use inspections as required. The only exception I know of is in
Ontario, Canada where an annual load test must be conducted with
forklifts.
I hope this helps,
Ask Bob
Here's what our Director of Training, Rob Vetter had to say about it:
Well it’s spring time once again and you know what that means, the
Darwin mob is out in force doing their spring cleaning and it looks like
this month’s WWWT has caught a glimpse of one in action.
At first glance, it looks like our elevated star couldn’t quite figure
out what he wanted to use to get himself up in the air. Things appear to
have started out pretty good as scaffolding was the first choice,
equipment actually made for elevating personnel — what a concept.
However, things appear to have deteriorated from there as our subject’s
thought process (or lack thereof) led to placing the scaffold on top of
15 pallets and just in case things hadn’t deteriorated enough,
continuing on to lift the whole death trap with a forklift.
It’s really hard to tell but no operator seems to be on or around the
forklift, which could turn into a bad situation very quickly if buddy
gets in trouble up there. In addition, whomever was the operator should
have tilted the mast to vertical in order to keep the elevating
“apparatus” level or better still, refused to partake in this fiasco at
all.
The pallets are strapped together, not a bad idea under the
circumstances but I have to say, it always fascinates and confounds me
when I see a situation as deliberately orchestrated as this
calamity-in-waiting that shows at least some thought drifted in the
general direction of safety.
I’m no scaffold guru but it looks like this only has one set of
cross-braces and no solid top rail on the side where the greatest fall
hazard exists, although there does seem to be a strap attached.
Finally, I won’t go deep into the relative ANSI standards in play when
using a forklift to elevate personnel but let’s just say the concoction
in use here would not be considered “approved” as required under any
circumstances
Have a photo you'd like to share? Send it to us!
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