New York City’s new construction safety-training law, which will require from 40 to 55 hours of instruction for workers on many building projects, is a noteworthy effort to prevent more deadly construction accidents. The city’s Dept. of Buildings says 12 construction workers have died in each of the past two years. The City Council had debated and changed the law all during the year. In recent weeks, two more workers fell to their deaths from Manhattan high-rise projects, adding urgency to the effort. The council finally adopted the law unanimously late last month (ENR 10/9 p. 44).
But worker training is only one color in the construction-safety rainbow. The employee-focused methods used by companies with the best injury records are no secret and have been spelled out over the years by groups such as the Construction Industry Institute. They include a firm commitment to safety management by top-line leaders, detailed safety planning at the crew level, empowerment of staff to stop unsafe work, involvement of craftworkers in peer safety observations, having one safety staff member per 50 to 100 craftworkers, regular drug testing, and the use and measuring of active, leading-edge safety indicators. Only a handful of companies working in New York City are known to practice safety so ambitiously. Unfortunately, in the law, the council has failed to induce all firms to take this more comprehensive approach.