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OSHA Grant to Fund Fall Protection Training Classes
 NAHB and the NAHB Research Center are developing a new training program to help home builders better understand fall protection requirements and make their job sites even safer.
Money to create the new fall protection classes came from a grant of more than $295,000 awarded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
The training is designed to help these businesses understand the OSHA fall protection requirements and help them develop effective fall protection plans for a variety of potential hazards. Using the grant money, NAHB and the Research Center will offer free classes to 1,500 small business owners, general contractors and trade contractors — including roofers, framing carpenters and masons.
Employees in these trades are often at risk of being injured by fall hazards encountered during day-to-day construction activities.
Forty classes, two each in 20 of the top home building markets, will be conducted in 2007. The four-hour classes will be offered in English or Spanish and open to local builders and supervisors and their employees.
NAHB Construction Safety & Health Chairman Vern Pottenger of Pottenger Builders in Beaufort, S.C., said that the grant — and the classes — are excellent examples of the positive relationship NAHB is building with OSHA.
“We have worked hard to create a partnership for this and for numerous other activities,” such as a seminar on residential home building designed to help OSHA inspectors understand how the industry and its safety issues differ from the needs of commercial construction, he said. “The more we can sit down at the table with OSHA and iron out questions and problems, the better.”
The classes also address an important need for home builders and their employees. “Falls are the No. 1 safety problem that we have, nationally, in our industry. This grant enhances our ability to educate and train our workforce, whether it’s through classes, texts or one-on-one interaction. This is a real benefit to the NAHB member,” Pottenger said.
OSHA also awarded a grant of almost $162,000 to the Home Builders Association of South Carolina for it to hold 30 four-hour Spanish-language “Big-Four” construction safety seminars focusing on the four most common safety hazards at the job site for residential builders and trade subcontractors.
OSHA awarded a total of $10 million to 57 nonprofit organizations for safety and health training and education as part of the Susan Harwood Training Grants program, which supports the development of training materials to educate Hispanic and other limited-English-proficient employees, hard-to-reach employees, employers in small businesses and employees in high-hazard industries and industries with high fatality rates. The awards were named to honor a construction safety standard developer who died in 1996 after a 17-year career at OSHA.
For more information, e-mail Calli Schmidt at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
 Protect Your Workers and Your Profits
The “Jobsite Safety Video,” available through BuilderBooks.com, provides an overview of the key safety issues residential builders and workers need to focus on to reduce accidents and injuries. Based on the “NAHB-OSHA Jobsite Safety Handbook,” this DVD is intended to be used as part of an essential residential construction safety-training program and includes two 20-minute videos.
To view or purchase this DVD online, click here, or call 800-223-2665.
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