Chip Macdonald

 I recently toured three large scaffold rental yards.  

Let’s define a roof fall as any unarrested free-fall of an employee originating from a roof deck launch point and resulting in a terminal impact with the ground or an impeding structure (like a lower roof). Like any other falling object, a fall victim will accelerate at 32 feet/second2.

“Here we go again!” a residential contractor recently complained to me, and I couldn’t really disagree with him. On June 16, 2011, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will be enacting yet another new residential fall protection compliance directive - STD 03-11-001.

There are many ingenious methodologies designed for motivating safe work practices among your employees. One of the most popular methods of controlling the way in which workers make decisions concerning jobsite safety is to offer them incentives.

The Experience Modification Rate (X-Mod) is a percentage-based multiplier (pricing mechanism) established by each state’s Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB). It’s used to calculate an employer’s workers’ compensation premium based on a number of empirically confusing statistical factors.

I’ve been employed across the country as an expert witness in a number of construction injury cases over the years. As an OSHA Standards-based consultant, I am typically hired by law firms which represent the injured or deceased worker.

Most state civil judiciary legally consider roofing within the “inherently dangerous” occupation category. When you consider the steep pitches, heights to grade, surface traction conditions, material handling tasks, bulk material weights, environmental factors of wind and weather and the perpetual force gravity on the worker’s center of mass, it is no wonder that falls from or through roofs cause numerous injuries and deaths every year.

The predominant labor activities in which most roofers injure their lower backs involve lifting dead loads, twisting during transition and overreaching. It’s simply unreasonable to believe we can eliminate these motions during most roofing operations. It’s just the nature of the beast.