Construction Management 333

Construction Safety

Course Introduction

Safety is a fundamental part of managing a successful construction company and project. Besides being required by 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 safety rules and practices to your workers and management. You'll learn how vital safety is to a construction environment, how it can benefit both workers and management, and how it can actually enhance the value of your company.

As the project manager or superintendent, 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. In some states you can also be held personally liable for acts of negligence that lead to an injury.

Course Objectives

In this course you will develop a project-specific accident prevention plan (PAPP). PAPPs are known by various names in different states. A PAPP is the same as a site safety plan; the two terms can be used interchangeably.

Upon successfully completing this course, you will be able to

• describe management and employee responsibilities for job site safety and health;
• identify safety and health issues for each phase of a construction project;
• implement procedures and policies to promote worker safety and health during a construction project;
• develop a site safety plan, or PAPP, 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/DOSH (Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act, now Department of Occupational Safety and Health) or OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration);
• conduct your own safety inspections and evaluations and use your findings to correct hazardous conditions and prevent accidents; and
• successfully navigate OSHA or DOSH codes to minimize your risk of citations.

Course Organization

• In Lesson One we'll discuss accident prevention programs and OSHA regulations.
• In Lesson Two we'll discuss accident investigation and the true cost of accidents.
• In Lesson Three we'll discuss job hazard analysis and personal protective equipment (PPE).
• In Lesson Four we'll talk about cranes and equipment used on a construction site.
• In Lesson Five we'll discuss trenching and excavation, and learn how to classify soils.
• In Lesson Six we'll will review electrical safety and hand- and power-tool hazards.
• In Lesson Seven we'll review types of scaffolding and other elevated work platforms.
• In Lesson Eight we'll cover fall protection work plans, equipment, and prevention.
• In Lesson Nine we'll cover environmental hazards and hazard communication.
• In Lesson Ten we'll look at confined space and miscellaneous safety items.

Completing This Course

To complete this course successfully you must

• post a response to the discussion questions in every lesson, and respond to the postings of at least two of your classmates;
• 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.

Participation in the weekly conference calls is highly recommended. If you cannot participate in a conference call, be sure to follow any discussion on the discussion forum for the week, as you may be able to learn from the online discussion the most important points discussed in the conference call.

Refer to the Course Schedule in the online syllabus for due dates.

Suggested Weekly Schedule

I suggest you organize your course work for most lessons according to the schedule shown in the following table. Each lesson is based on a week's schedule of assignments.

Sunday	Assignments Assignments from the previous week are due no later than Sunday night; Submissions tool will not accept assignments any later than midnight Pacific, Sunday night.
Monday thru Thursday	Assigned reading in the textbook. Complete all assigned readings prior to Tuesday's conference call. Participate in weekly conference call. Thursday night: Post and reply to forums before 12 p.m. deadline.
Friday	Take the online quiz. Start working on your assignment. (Submit Sunday night; points will be deducted for late submission.)

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 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 links to

• this Course Introduction;
• the Course Schedule, including due dates for assignments;
• information About Your Instructor; and
• lessons, assignments, and quizzes.

Each lesson includes

• assigned readings from the textbook and code sections;
• 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 on the week's topic;
• links to illustrations;
• an assignment;
• a quiz; and
• a discussion forum.

Assignments

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

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 or superintendent that is refining and implementing the CAPP. In Lesson One you will develop an outline of your plan based on an assessment of the potential hazards on the course project site. In Lesson Two you will complete an accident investigation and determine the true costs of the incident. In Lesson Three you'll write a plan for safe use and maintenance of personal protective equipment (PPE) and develop a job hazard assessment (JHA) for selecting the PPE. In the remaining lessons you'll fill in the aspects of construction work.

Each of these assignments builds toward completion of the final product, a PAPP that you will turn in at the end of the course. This PAPP 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 are the hazards on this specific job site?
• Hazard Correction/Control< br /> Can the hazards be eliminated? 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 administrated 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) on your safety rules? Will you have weekly safety meetings, special training sessions?

Every PAPP is also required to include a fall protection work plan (which you will write in Assignment 7), a Hazard Communication Program (which you will write in Assignment 9), and an emergency plan (which you will create in Assignment 10).

The PAPP you create in this course will be similar to 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. PAPPs vary depending on the type of work you do. A general contractor's PAPP will be more comprehensive than a rebar contractor's, although both contractors are required to have one.

Submission Guidelines

Please use the Submissions link on your online syllabus to submit your assignments. Except for the final, I do not accept assignments via my personal e-mail. Late or early assignments are only accepted with permission.

What Makes a Good Assignment?

As we've seen, the OSHA requires that an accident prevention plan include the following five elements:

• Management Commitment to Safety and Assignment of Responsibility and Accountability
• an Emergency Plan
• Hazard Identification
• Hazard Correction/Control
• 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 will investigate an accident, calculate the true costs of the accident, and develop an emergency plan; and in Assignment 3 you'll develop a job hazard assessment (JHA) to establish rules for selection, use, and care of personal protective equipment (PPE). Assignments 4 through 10 will include

• job hazard analysis describing the work area or type;
• your identification of potential hazards on the course project;
• your plan for correcting or controlling each hazard (JHA);
• your set of safety rules for each work section and guides for training workers.

The JHA should be in the three-part format. The training sections of your safety program can be 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. I have found that some students presently work for contactors and have safety programs readily available. Grading is determined by the amount of effort and comprehension of the topic and not on the volume of rules. These company programs should be used as guides.

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 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. This is an important part of an online class since some students attend class from overseas; for some of them this is their only opportunity for discussion of the topics.

Conference Calls

Note: To prepare for conference calls see each lesson, "Reference Materials for Conference Call."

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 Readings

Required Textbooks

Goetsch, David L., Construction Safety and Health (Prentice Hall, 2002).
ISBN: 0130932159

Three additional required texts 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.
• Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act

How to Write an Accident Prevention Program gives a good overview of the requirements for an accident prevention program and how to implement it.

Throughout the course you'll be reading the sections of the Revised Code of Washington (chapter 296-155, which governs safety standards for construction work) relevant to each lesson's 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.gov/Publications/Homebuilders/Homebuilders.html

How to Read the Regulations

Like most governmental regulations, the WAC is not scintillating reading. The 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 when you need them. You probably don't need to read it word for word, though your reading should be closer to that than to skimming. The Definitions, General Requirements, and Specific Details are important. You should know how to search for a specific code when needed. The online quizzes will test your knowledge of specific regulations.

As you read through the codes, 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 Figure 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.

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, OSHA, or the textbook; 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. 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 two points each.

Grading

The class is graded on a 200-point scale, divided as shown below.

	Total
Ten Discussion Forums (2 points each)	20 points
Ten Quizzes (2 points each)	20 points
Ten Written Assignments (10 points each)	100 points
Final Project	60 points
Total possible	200 points

Remember the online quizzes are self grading; you need to complete them to earn credit. The online discussions, assignments, and the course project will be evaluated both on your participation and the 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 1.1-0.9	127-120
D- 0.8-0.7	119-115
F 0.0	below 115

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.

How Do I Ask Questions?

There are a number of ways you can ask questions in this class. If you have questions about lessons or assignments, please post them in the discussion forum. Please do not e-mail me directly with your questions, as I will post all responses to questions on the forum as a resource for other students. It's not that I don't want to hear from you-on the contrary, I want to hear what you have to say or ask, and I want all of your co-students to hear it as well! You will find your co-students to be a great source of help and ideas, too! Of course, you may e-mail me if you have a personal issue you need to discuss.

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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