Protect Your People: Send them Home Safely!

Fall prevention and protection save countless lives every year. Making sure your company has the proper strategies and equipment used to minimize the risk of falls is crucial. Not just to avoid potential OSHA fines but to make sure you and your employees make it home safe every night. The best way to start is to proactively identify and eliminate potential hazards, as well as utilize safety gear like harnesses and lifelines to mitigate injuries should a fall occur. Also, prioritizing hazard elimination often involves risk assessments, proper training on equipment use and maintaining safe working conditions in environments with elevated heights.

Penalties and Violations

According to Safety and Health magazine, OSHA penalties reached well into the 7-figure range in 2023. Not only did companies suffer monetary damages but some were placed in OSHA’s Severe Violator Program for willfully ignoring the law.

The most expensive OSHA penalty for 2023 resulted in a fatality and cost the manufacturing company a cool $2.8 million. The young woman was decapitated because she hadn’t been trained on a piece of moving equipment. During another inspection, one roofing contractor was cited for $687,536 as OSHA spotted three workers on a roof 18 feet above ground without required fall protection. Ironically, this same company had previously lost two employees because of fatal falls. A separate contractor was cited for nine willful and three serious violations for exposing workers to fall hazards, improper ladder use, and failure to provide head and eye protection. The bill was $584,633.

In 2023, the most cited OSHA violation was general requirements for fall protection which accounted for 7,271 violations, followed by hazard communication with 3,213 violations, ladders with 2,978 violations and scaffolding with 2,859 violations. Fall protection has been the top cited violation for 13 years in a row. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, falls to a lower level have accounted for 13% of the 40,531 workplace deaths since 2014. In 2021 alone, they made up 13% of the 5,190 fatalities, the most recent year for which data is available.

In the construction industry, falls to a lower level have accounted for a staggering 32% of the 7,861 fatalities since 2014. In 2022, there were 1,069 fatal work injuries in the construction industry, the most of all industries reported. These statistics highlight the importance of fall prevention in the workplace and the need for employers to take fall prevention seriously.

Complaints and Compliance

In many industries, employee complaints are the single most common reason OSHA will conduct an unannounced inspection at a workplace. Next are planned inspections aimed at high-hazard industries and occupations. The largest fines are incurred by companies that willfully ignore the law and refuse to correct recurring violations. Referrals of hazards from other federal, state or local agencies, individuals, organizations or the media also receive consideration for inspection. Follow-up inspections include checking for the abatement of violations cited during previous inspections and are also conducted by the agency in certain circumstances.

Compliance with OSHA regulations isn’t about avoiding fines— it’s about fostering a culture of safety. Employers must take steps to protect their workers by providing them with a safe working environment, including the use of fall prevention systems. Every worker should be trained in the proper setup and safe use of equipment they use on the job. Employers must also train workers in recognizing hazards on the job. Identifying fall hazards is considered everyone’s responsibility. Meaning both employers and employees should actively look for and report potential fall risks in the workplace to ensure a safe working environment. Employers are primarily responsible for providing training and maintaining safe conditions, while employees should be aware of their surroundings and report any hazards they see.

Identify Fall Hazards on Roofs

Employers need to take deliberate action to protect their workers and their bottom line. They need to identify the roof hazards. These include leading edges, skylights, hatches and ladder protection. Are there elevation changes or obstacles that require crossing over? OSHA considers hatches or skylights to be holes one can fall through so they must have fall prevention equipment on three sides and accessed via a self-closing gate or be covered to protect workers from falling to a lower level.

Service equipment such as HVAC drains, scuppers, security systems, telecom equipment or lighting that needs regular maintenance and is within six feet of the fall edge, needs fall prevention equipment to protect workers. Step-over hazards for manufacturing facilities often include pipes, conduits and other obstacles that need to be crossed over. These can pose trip hazards if stepped over or other injuries if people try to go underneath them. If a fixed ladder is used to access an upper level and that level is 4 feet above the lower-level fall prevention is needed to protect workers as they step onto the upper level.

An employer also needs to identify the frequency of personnel accessing roofs for maintenance. The more frequently, the more an employer needs mobile anchor points or permanent fall protection for employees. If the application is construction, tie-offs are necessary and required for employees working on surfaces that are more than six feet in the air. While active and passive restraint systems could be categorized as fall prevention, a fall arrest system is fall protection. It is a system that minimizes the chance and severity of injury once a worker does fall. In terms of equipment, fall restraint and fall arrest systems typically have a lot in common. According to OSHA regulations, a fall protection anchor point must be capable of supporting at least 5,000 pounds of force per worker attached, meaning it needs to be able to withstand a significant load in the event of a fall; this applies to both permanent and temporary anchor points, and they must be installed by a qualified person in a secure, load-bearing location.

The most common OSHA violation in construction is failure to provide adequate fall protection. In 2024, OSHA issued over 6,000 violations for fall protection. Examples of fall hazards in construction include hotels, ramps, runways, walkways, dangerous equipment, wall openings and chutes. Areas of high fall risk may be designated as “controlled access zones” where access is restricted, and additional safety measures are enforced. Examples of areas considered fall protection zones: roof edges, open floor holes, excavation edges, stairwells, elevated platforms and leading edges. Important things to consider for construction are:

Site-specific assessment: Each construction site should be evaluated to identify potential fall hazards and determine appropriate fall protection measures.

Worker training: All workers must be trained in fall protection procedures and equipment use.

Regular Inspections: Fall protection equipment should be regularly inspected for damage and proper functionality.

So, there is a lot of information regarding fall prevention and protection. Hopefully, a company will see the benefits to implementing fall protection and prevention equipment and will determine that the cost outweighs the potential fines they could face should someone get hurt, or worse be killed on the job. Employees will also see employers that make safety a priority as being the place they want to stay.

Amy Dinkel is senior marketing specialist at Garlock Safety Systems, Plymouth, Minnesota. To learn more go to www.garlocksafety.com