Safety, building inspections are full-time jobs

Bob Coffman, Las Vegas

Friday, May 9, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

I completely disagree with the Las Vegas Sun’s Tuesday editorial, “OSHA needs help,” which proposes that local inspectors be handed job-site safety responsibilities. I’ve been working for general contractors for 30 years and I’ve served as safety director on a $120 million project in California. Safety is a full-time job, and any safety officer on a large site has his or her hands full on any given day.

Likewise, a building inspector — worried about safety rails, frayed electric cords, power tools with guards removed, workers without the proper PPE (personal protection equipment) for the work they’re performing, heavy equipment with no back-up alarm, forklift operators not wearing seat belts, hot work being performed with no fire extinguishers in the immediate area, workers in raised scissor lifts without the gate chain secured, workers in man-lifts with no harness tie-off, metallic ladders being used near electrical panels, fall hazards, unsafe excavations, confined space violations, cutting of shatterable material without safety glasses and face shield, flammable materials being stored in a stairwell, hazardous materials, liquids in containers with no warning labels, incomplete or unsafe scaffolding, dry-cutting of block on concrete without adequate ventilation of silica dust, workers below steel flying overhead, improperly stored oxygen, acetylene and propane bottles, etc. — might possibly not have his or her full attention on a building construction flaw.

And if because of this a Kansas City-skywalk-type disaster were to happen, everyone would be saying: “Would the inspector have caught the problem if he hadn’t been consumed with site safety issues?”