Penalties levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) continue to increase in size. In 2025, the maximum penalty for a serious violation was $16,550. A willful or repeated violation costs a roofing contractor as much as $165,514 last year. With OSHA penalty amounts scheduled to increase each year, it is important for every roofing contractor to ensure its employees receive proper safety training. 

Roofing contractors must either self-inspect their jobsites or engage a third-party safety consultant to inspect them, ensuring employees understand the provided safety training. And when those inspections reveal safety infractions, it’s important for the employer to administer swift and effective discipline to discourage repeat offenses. But even with the most robust safety program, if the roofing contractor and its employees are unfamiliar with how an OSHA inspection is actually conducted, including not knowing the company’s rights and their own rights during the inspection, the company may very well end up with an OSHA citation with a mountain of evidence.

Preparing for an OSHA Inspection

The first notice of an OSHA inspection is often when the inspector arrives on-site, having observed what is alleged to be a plain view violation of OSHA’s fall protection rules or ladder set-up rules, for example. In most instances, the inspection commences with the roofing contractor crew being called down from the roof. 

It’s important for the roofing contractor to assign someone other than the crew foreman to serve as the company’s representative in response to any OSHA inspection. The best person for this job is often the company’s safety manager. Roofing crews, and particularly the crew foreman, need to be trained on how to respond when the crew learns that OSHA is on site to conduct an inspection. 

It's imperative that roofing crews be trained to stop work and contact the company representative assigned to interact with OSHA. In the meantime, the crew foreman should be trained to verify the compliance officer’s credentials while asking the compliance officer to wait for the company representative to arrive before continuing with the inspection. The roofing contractor is within its rights to ask the compliance offer to wait until an appropriate company representative can come to the project site to speak on behalf of the company. Generally, the compliance officer will wait for up to an hour for the company’s representative to arrive.

In the event the compliance officer insists on proceeding with the inspection without the company’s assigned representative present, it is important for the crew foreman to know that the company does retain the right to require first a search warrant. After all, the inspection is considered a search by a federal officer under federal law. Roofing contractors should pause, however, before asking a compliance officer to obtain a search warrant. Requiring the search warrant will buy no favors from the compliance officer when it comes to recommending citations. But where the compliance officer is being unreasonable, just suggesting that the company may require a search warrant for the inspection to proceed can buy time for the company’s assigned representative to arrive on site.

Touring the Site

Most OSHA inspections involving roofing contractors will involve photographing the site and taking relevant measurements. The company’s representative charged with interacting with the compliance officer should come equipped to the inspection with a camera and measuring stick. The company’s representative should follow every photograph taken by the OSHA inspector with one of their own. Alternatively, a record should be kept of every photo taken by the compliance officer to ensure that every photo is produced by OSHA, in the event that a future citation is contested. The company representative should also follow every measurement taken by the compliance officer. A record should also be kept of other information obtained by the compliance officer during the inspection. 

In fall-protection violations, the compliance officer may already have video of the violations made before announcing himself or herself to the crew. In those instances, the company’s representative should ask to view a copy of the video and take notes, while carefully avoiding making any admissions. The roofing contractor’s representative should also take written notes of any pertinent comments or observations that the compliance officer makes during review of the video and otherwise during the inspection tour.

Employee Interviews

Perhaps the biggest trap for roofing contractors subject to an OSHA inspection is when their employees are asked, or compelled through a subpoena, to sit for an interview. Despite the time and financial commitment made in the company’s safety program, if an employee is not trained on their rights during an OSHA inspection, is not trained on how to interact with a compliance officer during an interview, and is not prepared for the interview, the employee's interviews can torpedo the company’s defense to any forthcoming OSHA citation. 

Any prudent roofing contractor will train its employees on their rights when asked to participate in an interview with the compliance officer, including providing instruction on how to interact with the compliance officer during the interview.

This training becomes especially important for non-supervisory employees, who may be paid hourly, speak a foreign language, and may have difficulty understanding the compliance officer. Under OSHA rules, the compliance officer is entitled to interview non-supervisory employees outside the presence of the employer. The company and its attorney can be present for interviews of supervisory employees, such as foremen or superintendents, whose testimony will be attributed back to the company. Interviews of non-supervisory employees, however, are considered “privileged.” While the employer cannot be present during an interview with a non-supervisory employee, the non-supervisory employee is entitled to his or her own representation during the interview. 

To avoid any potential conflicts of interest following the inspection, if a non-supervisory employee asks for legal representation during the interview, an attorney other than the attorney for the company should be retained. To address any language barrier issues, the employer is permitted to engage an interpreter to sit with the non-supervisory employee during the interview.

Employees cannot be compelled to participate in an interview with the compliance officer, unless the compliance office has procured a subpoena, which compels the employee’s attendance at the interview. It’s certainly within the bounds of the law for a roofing contractor to educate its employees on their right to refuse to participate in an interview or to end the interview at any time, when the compliance officer is without a subpoena. The company needs to be careful, however, to be clear that the company is not instructing or suggesting to the employee not to cooperate with OSHA, but is instead educating the employee on the employee’s rights. The company also needs to be explicit that there will be no adverse action taken against an employee who cooperates with OSHA.

The company should train employees to know and understand that everything told to the compliance officer becomes part of OSHA’s file. Prior to any OSHA inspection and as part of a company’s safety training program, employees need to be made aware that if they sit for an interview with the compliance officer, they may be asked to sign a statement following the interview. In almost all cases, the statement consists of the compliance officer’s notes during the interview, rather than a statement authored by or written by the employee who gave the interview. Employees need to know that they can never be compelled to sign a statement prepared by OSHA, and that they can object to any audio or video recording of the interview.

In instances where the OSHA inspection results from an accident that must be reported to OSHA, it is important for the roofing contractor to interview its employees about the accident before the compliance officer interviews them. The company should obtain written, signed statements from its employees during these interviews. Those signed statements can go a long way to combating or refuting any contrary information provided in an interview statement procured by the compliance officer.

Conclusion

An on-site OSHA inspection presents roofing contractors with opportunities to provide the compliance officer with the strongest evidence to use against the company. This does not have to be the case. Rather, those roofing contractors that train and educate their employees on how an on-site OSHA inspection actually proceeds will find that the information provided by their employees to the compliance officer during the inspection is, in fact, the best evidence to defeat any citation. This is particularly true with employee interviews. Be sure your employees know and understand their rights when they are working.