TOO FAST.

By Alexandra Berzon

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Nevada workplace safety regulators say a building contractor’s poor safety practices and rush to finish work at Echelon on the Strip led to the death of a construction worker in June.

The findings by the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration contained the most explicit connection to date between safety and speed in the midst of the $32 billion building boom on the Strip.

Nevada OSHA refused to back away from its findings in the fatal accident despite objections from the contractor, Marnell Corrao Associates. It was the third consecutive case in which the agency has refused to back down from the findings of its investigators. The Las Vegas Sun reported in spring that the agency had routinely reduced or withdrawn citations after contractors objected. Since the Sun began its inquiries, however, Nevada OSHA has held firm.

The accident occurred June 16, when the now-stalled Echelon project was still being built at top speed.

Carpenters stripping what are known as “frame shoring towers” that mold concrete in a hotel basement had been pressured for days by their foremen to hurry up.

One of those workers was Lyndal Bates, 49, of Tempe, Ariz. Before the accident, Bates mistakenly tied his safety harness to a piece of the A-frame-shaped scaffolding that he was taking down. When he threw that piece to the ground, it pulled him down with it. He landed on his head after falling 13 feet.

His death was one of 12 at Strip construction sites in the past 22 months. OSHA released its findings in another of those deaths this week, a fatal accident at MGM Mirage’s CityCenter that killed Dustin Tarter, a crane oiler.

The investigation of Bates’ death found that Bates was following company orders as he took apart the scaffolding. The agency criticized the Marnell foreman supervising Bates for pushing employees to follow unsafe practices and work at unsafe speeds.

“The crew foreman directed employees to work alone, to throw all shoring system components to the ground and rushed them to hurry-up, which deviated from the ‘common’ practice for falsework removal, from the company established procedure as well as from the manufacturer/supplier specifications noted in the Design Plans,” OSHA’s report said.

The foreman was not provided specialized training for the tasks and workers were not properly trained in fall protection, OSHA found. The company was also cited for illegally cleaning up the site following the accident, which could have altered evidence before inspectors could visit it.

Marnell was fined $11,000 for one “regulatory” and four “serious” violations.

Marnell disputed that finding. The company told OSHA it did not take steps to clean up the site, and argued that OSHA did not consider employee training records.

After failing to persuade OSHA to change its conclusions, Marnell tried to file an appeal, but it missed the deadline. On Tuesday, the company sent OSHA a letter asking permission to appeal.

The company would not comment to the Sun about the case.

Marnell was cleared by OSHA of fault after an investigation in April of an employee injury at Echelon.

The company’s workers’ compensation safety ratings for its projects nationwide are slightly better than average, according to a person close to the company, but its record at Echelon is far worse. This year, there have been 44 injuries among Marnell employees at Echelon among 280 workers. That’s an injury rate of 25.8 per 200,000 hours worked. The national average for the sector is 6.9 injuries per 200,000 hours worked.

Rob Stillwell, spokesman for Echelon owner Boyd Gaming, defended Marnell’s safety record.

“We selected Marnell for their reputation as a solid construction company with a very impressive safety record,” Stillwell said. “They have a great history of being an excellent builder and quality construction company and their regard for safety is a top priority.”

Two months ago, Boyd announced it was stopping construction on Echelon until the financial climate improves.

Bates was one of three American Indian workers to die on Strip construction sites during the recent rash of deaths. He was married with three adult children. His brother, also a carpenter, worked on safety at Echelon.

In its seven-week investigation, OSHA found employees who said they had worked either in tandem with another worker or from a scissor lift to lower the A-frame forms to the ground with a rope — the common and correct way to dismantle the forms. Other supervisors on the site required their crews to follow that procedure.

But two days before the accident, Bates’ foreman began to scream at workers to move more quickly by throwing the scaffold pieces to the ground and by working alone, OSHA investigators were told.

On the day of the accident, employees told OSHA, the foreman was “really rushing them.”

Bates was “tied to the scaffold that he threw because the foreman told us that we would have to throw down all (the scaffolding) to do the job quicker,” one employee who witnessed the death wrote in a witness statement translated from Spanish and included in the OSHA report.

“At the beginning we did it with a rope but (the foreman) did not want it done that way and he was rushing us and there was not safety on the floor. Everything was in disorder. It could have happened to anyone and it was worse that it happened to my friend.”

The rush to finish enormous, fast-paced Strip jobs on deadline has become a safety concern among Strip workers, union leaders and observers as the industry has suffered a rash of deaths that outpaces that of even the 1990s construction boom.

But rarely does Nevada OSHA explicitly point out the connection during the course of an investigation.

One exception: In an informal conference report following the December 2006 death of a Perini Building Co. foreman at Trump Towers, Nevada OSHA Chief Administrative Officer Tom Czehowski wrote, “Employer set safety culture to fail by allowing unsafe equipment use and not enforcing training. Foreman (deceased) was a member of management and placed productiveness before safety, just as the employer has.”

Despite that statement, OSHA reduced the fines against Perini for its conduct in that death from $18,900 to $8,300.