Construction Management 333

Construction Safety

Course Introduction

Overview

In the past few decades, safety has become a fundamental part of managing successful construction companies and projects. Besides being more and more a part of law, it is now recognized as an important aspect of good business practice. Some people say that a project in which there is even one serious accident is a failure, regardless of profit.

In this course, we will discuss the management, practice, and philosophy of construction safety; and we'll talk about ways of communicating safe rules and practices to your workers and staff. You'll learn how vital job site safety is to a working environment that benefits both workers and management, and how it can actually enhance the value of your company. Although it is impossible to cover everything you'll need to know, I hope you will come out of this class with an understanding of the common sense of construction safety, according to the law and to the inspectors who enforce it. With that knowledge you will then be able to do the research and find the resources you need to build effective safety programs and accident prevention plans.

As the project manager you are the primary safety person on site—responsible for all site safety and health—and the ultimate decision maker on how to run the safety program. My goal is for you to develop a passionate commitment to safety; this can be one of your most effective tools in creating a safe workplace for your company, yourself, and your workforce. A safe workplace consists of individuals working safely—and your own commitment to safety and health will go a long way in convincing your workers to follow (and contribute to) the rules for safe and healthy work.

Course Objectives

When you have completed this course, you will be able to

• describe management and employee responsibilities for job site safety and health;
• identify safety and health issues in each phase of a construction project;
• implement procedures and policies to promote worker safety and health during a construction project;
• write an accident prevention plan for the course project;
• define and use terms relevant to safety and health in construction;
• prepare your job site for a successful inspection by WISHA (Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act) or OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration);
• see your project from a safety and health inspector's point of view as you develop and enforce your own safety plans;
• conduct your own safety inspections and evaluations and use your findings to correct hazardous conditions and prevent accidents;
• navigate successfully through an OSHA or WISHA inspection and minimize your risk of citation.

Course Organization

• In Lesson One we'll talk about why you should have an accident prevention program (APP) and we'll start talking about what your project-specific APP should include.
• In Lesson Two we'll discuss personal protective equipment (PPE).
• In Lesson Three we'll talk about cranes and motor vehicles safety, and discuss how and when to use flaggers and traffic barriers. We'll also look at some issues of materials handling.
• In Lesson Four we'll look at the hazards associated with trenching and excavation, and learn how to classify soils.
• In Lesson Five we'll talk about safe use of hand and power tools, and examine some hazards associated with electricity.
• In Lesson Six we'll look at different types of scaffolding and other elevate work platforms, and the hazards associated with them.
• Lesson Seven covers fall protection and prevention.
• Lesson Eight looks at fire safety and some of the particular hazards of confined spaces, and also at housekeeping issues.

Completing This Course

To complete this course successfully you must

• post a response to the discussion questions in every lesson, or make at least one comment to the postings of one of your classmates, or both;
• complete the written assignments at the end of each lesson, by their due date;
• take each of the online quizzes (one for each lesson); and
• turn in your final project at the end of the course by the due date.

Refer to the schedule in the online syllabus for due dates.

Suggested Weekly Schedule

You'll have two weeks to complete Lesson One, since it covers a lot of basic material. You'll have a week each for all other lessons, and then two weeks to organize and complete your final project. I suggest you organize your course work for most lessons according to the schedule shown in the following table.

Monday	Assignments are due; Submissions tool will not accept assignments any later than 12pm.
Tuesday	Assigned readings and study comments in the online course materials Wednesday: participate in weekly conference call Thursday: 12pm deadline to post and reply to Forums
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday	Take the online Quiz Start working on your assignment (Points will be deducted for late assignments)

You may post your contribution to the discussion forum before the due date if it is more convenient for your schedule. You may also complete your quizzes and your assignments before the due dates.  If you turn in quizzes or assignments later than the due date, however, your grade will lose a point for each overdue item.

About the Online Course Materials

Your online course materials for CM 333 consist of the lessons, illustrations, and assignments linked from the online syllabus. Everything you need to complete the course (except the required readings) is linked from the syllabus.

The syllabus includes:

• this course introduction
• a schedule for completing the course, including due dates for assignments;
• information about contacting your instructor and submitting assignments;
• weekly lessons, assignments, quizzes, and illustrations; and
• weekly discussion forums.

Each lesson includes:

• assigned readings;
• objectives for the lesson (that is, what you should expect to be able to do by the end of the lesson);
• your instructor's comments about the subject of the lesson;
• links to illustrations; and
• instructions for participating in the weekly discussion forum.

Assignments

The assignments for this course give you the opportunity to put the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) into practice on the course project. The final product of this course will be a project-specific accident prevention plan (which we'll refer to in this course as the PAPP) for that project, based on the model accident prevention plan you'll find in How to Write an Accident Prevention Plan. For the purposes of this course we'll refer to that plan as the company accident prevention plan (CAPP).

You will develop your plan, a step at a time, in the written assignments at the end of each lesson. In all assignments you will be working from the viewpoint of a project manager who is refining and implementing the CAPP. In Lesson One we will develop an outline of our plans based on an assessment of the potential hazards on the course project site. In Lesson Two we'll write a plan for safe use and maintenance of personal protective equipment. Then in the all subsequent lessons we'll fill in the details of our plans for specific aspects of construction work.

Each of these assignments builds toward completing the final product, which you will turn in at the end of the course. This project-specific accident prevention plan will address hazards specific to the course project, and will include the following basic, required elements:

• Management commitment to safety and assignment of responsibility and accountability.
  What persons are responsible for making sure safety rules are followed? What kind of disciplinary action will you take in case of noncompliance? What kind of incentives do you offer for compliance?
• Hazard identification.
  What hazards are on this specific job site?
• Hazard correction/control.
  Can you get rid of the hazards? If so, how? If not, how will you protect your workers against them? This can include plans for guarding of the hazard or the workers, and/or safety rules. It can also include specifications and recommendations from the manufacturers of equipment and tools.
• Safety and health training.
  How will you train your workers (and supervisors) in your safety rules? Will you have weekly safety meetings, special training sessions?

Every accident prevention plan is also required to include a Fall Protection Work Plan (which you will write in Assignment 5), an Emergency Plan (which you will create in Assignment 8), and a Hazard Communication Plan. (You will not create one for this course, but there is an excellent example in How to Write an Accident Prevention Plan).

The project-specific accident prevention plan (PAPP) you create in this course will be practice for the ones you will create for your company for each job site. OSHA or WISHA will evaluate your company's accident prevention plan based on whether these five elements are in place.

What Makes a Good Assignment?

As we've seen, the WAC requires that an accident prevention plan include five elements. These are:

• management commitment to safety and assignment of responsibility and accountability;
• an emergency plan;
• hazard identification;
• hazard correction/control; and
• a plan for safety and health training.

You'll write a letter of commitment to safety as part of Assignment 1; in Assignment 2 you'll establish rules for use and care of personal protective equipment; and in Assignment 8 you'll create a plan for dealing with emergencies. Assignments 3 through 7 (and part of Assignment 8) must include

• your identification of potential hazards on the course project;
• your plan for correcting or controlling each hazard; and
• your plan for training workers to follow your safety rules.

I'll be looking also for how well you communicate these elements. Can the workers on a job site understand from what you've written exactly what is expected of them, for example, in identifying potential hazards and following your safety rules? Write your plan in any form you think will best communicate your safety rules to your workers. For example, you might use a bulleted list, you might write your rules in paragraph form, or you might want to create checklists.

Discussion Forums

Each lesson includes an online discussion assignment. You'll find links to the discussion forums on the syllabus. The questions for each discussion forum are in the relevant lessons. You are required to post a response to the questions and/or to the postings of other students for each discussion forum. Also check for the instructor's comments and guidance on the subject of the discussion.

Conference Calls

Every week in this course, your instructor will host a conference call for you and your classmates. You will be provided with an 800 telephone number and a passcode that will enable you to join the discussion. Although you are welcome to use the conference calls to further clarify discussion forum topics, the agenda for the conference call will not be a rehash of the questions and issues already covered via the weekly discussion forums. Rather, the conference call agenda, which will vary from week to week, will give you the opportunity to examine and contribute to a variety of experience-based scenarios and cases that go beyond the topics presented in the discussion forums. Your participation in the conference calls is not graded, but you are strongly encouraged to participate each week. We know (because graduates of the certificate program have told us) that the more you put into the program, the more you will get out of it. You owe it to yourself to take advantage of opportunities to learn from your instructor and from your classmates; we strongly encourage you to participate in the conference calls.

The Textbooks

Required Texts

There are three required texts for our class. All are found on the World Wide Web

• How to Write an Accident Prevention Program. Washington State Dept. of Labor and Industries Consultation & Compliance Services, (Olympia, Wash., 1996).
• Washington Administrative Code, chapter 296–155 (also referred to as WAC). Washington State Dept. of Labor and Industries, (Olympia, WA, 2000). Click the link to 296–155. You will be able to find the most current regulations online, long after you've finished this course.
• http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.17

We will read the first text, How to Write an Accident Prevention Program, in the first part of Lesson One. It gives a good overview of the requirements for an accident prevention program and how to implement it. For the second half of Lesson One and the rest of the lessons you'll be reading sections of the Revised Code of Washington (chapter 296-155, which governs safety standards for construction work) relevant to the lesson topic (you'll also read chapter 49.17 of the Revised Code of Washington [referred to as RCW 49.17] in Lesson One). Occasionally I'll refer to other chapters of the WAC (you'll find direct links in the lesson), or to OSHA regulations.

Optional Readings

As a comparison with Washington State regulations, you may also choose to examine Selected Construction Regulations for the Home Building Industry, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). You can read this on the World Wide Web, at http://www.osha-slc.gov/Publications/Homebuilders/Homebuilders.html

How to Read the Regulations

Like most governmental regulations, the WAC is not scintillating reading. My goal in having you read this is for you to become familiar with its organization and with the general scope and requirements it lays out for various aspects of construction safety; and for you to be able to find the details you need to know when you need to know them. You probably don't need to read it word for word, though your reading should be closer to that than to skimming. The online quizzes will test your knowledge of specific regulations.

As you read through the WAC, keep two things in mind.

• Those dry, interminable regulations are written, almost literally, in blood. Think of the worst possible case in a violation of these regulations: it has probably already happened. The regulations are in place to prevent such a thing from happening again.
• The WAC book is rectangular, and the regulations are written for a rectangular job site. Almost no job site is shaped exactly like that, and almost no project is exactly like the ideal one for which the regulations were written. You, as well as the inspectors, will use common sense in applying the regulations to the infinite variety of job sites and conditions.

Online Illustrations of Hazards

To help make safety and health issues more real and understandable to you, we've provided a gallery of photos of actual job site hazards (as well as an occasional safe practice). You'll find links ("View Illustration X") in each lesson to photos that are relevant to what you are reading. All photos include comments; some include questions intended to get you thinking about the situation shown in the photo. Links to the illustrations for each lesson are also in your online syllabus.

Quizzes

Each lesson also includes a short quiz, which you will find in your online course syllabus. Questions on these quizzes will be based on the online illustrations; they require short answers that you will find in the regulations or in the course materials.

You are required to take each quiz to complete this course, but the results of the quizzes do not factor into your final grade. They are meant to provide both you and your instructor a measure of how well you understand the lessons; use them to test your own knowledge. Quizzes are administered through an online tool and are taken each Friday. The quizzes are automatically graded, so you will be able to see which questions you answered correctly and also receive feedback about your selections. The quizzes are part of the point scale, worth 2 points each. Points are received just for the effort of doing them and doing so on time.

Grading

I use a 200-point scale as I grade, divided as shown below.

Remember that you will not be graded on the online quizzes—only on whether or not you complete them. The online discussions and the course project will be evaluated both on the participation and quality of your work.

This point system translates into the University of Washington's 4.0 grading system as shown below.

Converting Course Points to 4.0 Grading
Grade		Points
A	4.0–3.9	200–195
A-	3.8–3.5	194–185
B+	3.4–3.2	184–175
B	3.1–2.9	174–170
B-	2.8–2.5	169–160
C+	2.4–2.2	159–153
C	2.1–1.9	152–145
C-	1.8–1.5	144–135
D+	1.4–1.2	134–128
D	1.–0.9	127–120
D-	0.8–0.7	119–115
F	0	114 and below

Study Tips

• Get to work right away and keep up.
• Plan and organize your work. Make a schedule for yourself. Use the suggested weekly schedule in this introduction as a guideline.
• Make contact with your classmates regularly. Participate in online discussions and e-mail back and forth with classmates and with your instructor. Use the General Discussion Forum to discuss questions and topics about the course other than those in the required discussion forums.

Using your Certificate Handbook

You received a copy of the UW Distance Learning student handbook before this course began. The handbook contains a complete overview of administrative information as well as what is required of you as a student completing the Construction Management Certificate Program. The handbook includes details on how to submit assignments, plan your time, use the UW libraries, use electronic mail, and use the online course discussion tool. Refer to it regularly!

How Do I Ask Questions?

There are a number of ways you can ask questions in this class. One of the best ways is to ask during the weekly conference call. This gives your classmates a chance to benefit from any answers. One or more of them may have a good answer to your question, giving you some alternative perspectives from how I might answer. I will try to answer any questions that aren't adequately addressed by others. If you want some personal attention you can also e-mail me.

About the Course Developer, Al Sutherland

Al has over twenty years' experience in safety and health in Washington state and across the country. Recently retired from the Department of Labor and Industries in Washington State, Al was a Senior Safety and Health Specialist whose duties ranged from developing training programs on the subject to the investigation of high profile industrial accidents. Early in his safety career he was a Safety Inspector, and made hundreds of construction site inspections every year, including 120 accident investigations. Following that career, Al did eight years of construction safety consulting on behalf of the state of Washington.

Al began instructing the construction safety class at the U of W in the mid-nineties and continues to do so. He is also working as a Safety Administrator for Dick Pacific Construction out of Honolulu, as well as doing private consulting and speaking on the subject of industrial safety.

Before You Start Lesson One . . .

Let me know something about you. Please post a short biography of yourself. In one or two paragraphs, summarize your resume: your education, a brief work history, what you're doing now that's relevant to this course, and what your goals are for this course and the Construction Management Program.

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