Environmental Law, Health and Safety (EAT208/3)

A practical guide for eliminating safety and health hazards from construction worksites, the Handbook of OSHA Construction Safety and Health addresses the occupational safety and health issues faced by those working in the construction industry. The book covers a vast range of issues including program development, safety and health program implementation, intervention and prevention of construction incidents, regulatory interpretations, understanding, and compliance, OSHA's expectations, health and safety hazards faced by those working in the construction industry, and sources of information. Highlighting contract liability and multi-employer sites, this second edition features updates for construction regulations, construction job audit, training requirements, and OSHA regulations. It includes new record-keeping guidelines and forms with additional material on focused inspections. Containing updated contact information for the newest agencies, the text also presents a model safety and health program, examples of accident analysis and prevention approaches, sample safety and health checklists, and more than 200 illustrations. Taking a comprehensive approach to construction safety and health, the authors address issues seldom discussed in the construction arena such as perceptions and motivation while also discussing issues gleaned from the safety and health disciplines such as the analyzing of incidents and accident prevention techniques. Including an in-depth discussion of regulations promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the book lays the foundation upon which to build stronger safety and health initiatives, while intervening and preventing jobsite deaths, injuries, and illnesses.

Risk is everywhere, in everything we do. Realizing this fact, we all must try to understand this "risk" and if possible to minimize it. This book expands the conversation beyond failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) techniques. While FMEA is indeed a powerful tool to forecast failures for both design and processes, it is missing methods for considering safety issues, catastrophic events, and their consequences. Focusing on risk, safety, and HAZOP as they relate to major catastrophic events, Introduction to Risk and Failures: Tools and Methodologies addresses the process and implementation as well as understanding the fundamentals of using a risk methodology in a given organization for evaluating major safety and/or catastrophic problems. The book identifies and evaluates five perspectives through which risk and uncertainty can be viewed and analyzed: individual and societal concerns, complexity in government regulations, patterns of employment, and polarization of approaches between large and small organizations. In addition to explaining what risk is and exploring how it should be understood, the author makes a distinction between risk and uncertainty. He elucidates more than 20 specific methodologies and/or tools to evaluate risk in a manner that is practical and proactive but not heavy on theory. He also includes samples of checklists and demonstrates the flow of analysis for any type of hazard. Written by an expert with more than 30 years of experience, the book provides from-the-trenches examples that demonstrate the theory in action. It introduces methodologies such as ETA, FTA, and others which traditionally have been used specifically in reliability endeavors and details how they can be used in risk assessment. Highly practical, it shows you how to minimize or eliminate risks and failures for any given project or in any given work environment.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts construction-relevant research activities. From 1996 through 2005, the program focused on four research goals: reducing traumatic injuries and fatalities; reducing exposure to health hazards; reducing major risks associated with musculoskeletal disorders; increasing the understanding of construction industry attributes and factors for improving health and safety outcomes. In this book, the National Research Council evaluates the relevance and impact of the NIOSH Construction Research Program in terms of its research priorities and its connection to improvements in the protection of workers in the workplace. It also assesses the program' s identification and targeting of new research areas, to identify emerging research issues, and to provide advice on ways that the program might be strengthened. The book finds that the efforts of the Construction Research Program have made meaningful contributions to improving construction worker safety and health, and provides overreaching and specific recommendations for continuing progress. While NIOSH cannot set and enforce research-based standards on its own, the program can be expected to help reduce construction workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses through its research, its research dissemination, and transfer into practice.