Lessons in Safety

In September, a construction worker suffered serious injuries after falling more than 30 feet down an elevator shaft at a south Fort Myers motel. In April, a crane at the Sanibel Causeway project collapsed, killing a worker and hurting another. And in August 2004, lightning struck and killed a subcontractor at a home under construction in Pelican Preserve.

Southwest Florida is growing by leaps and bounds, a dynamic that generates pressure on contractors and other businesses to meet relentless project deadlines, sometimes with dangerous results. "People are trying to comply with contracts that are signed," says Frank Subzda, owner of Fort Myers-based safety consulting firm US Safety. "Contractors are borrowing employees from other people to accomplish things. And it just goes on."

In short, the premium on productivity has a sharp impact on work-place safety.

"I wouldn't even hesitate to say that in most of your accidents that result in a fatality, rushing played a factor in the root cause," says Michael Dock, safety manager for Collier County. For example, workers might not have wanted to spend the several hours needed to set up adequate fall protection for a job they believed would take only about 30 minutes. But by trying to speed things along, they leave themselves vulnerable to accidents.

Beyond the terrible toll in injuries and lost lives, industrial accidents can cause financial woes for victims, their families, companies and the consumer; so many people pay the price for unsafe work places.

There is good news, however, Subzda adds. "A lot of people over the last several years, maybe due to increased insurance premiums or awareness of OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration], have become more aware of safety at the job site," he explains. "And if you plan for safety, you plan for everything."

:: By the Numbers ::

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,703 fatal work injuries were counted in the United States in 2004. That amounts to 4.1 fatalities per 100,000 workers, a slight uptick from 2002 and 2003, when fatality rates were 4.0 per 100,000.

Florida recorded 422 fatal work injuries in 2004, up from 347 in 2003. The top two causes of the deaths were transportation incidents (198 fatalities) and falls (75 fatalities). Most of the Sunshine State's work-place deaths occurred in the construction trades, transportation, utilities, professional and business services, and mining and natural resources industries, such as oil and gas extraction operations.

One trend that's under scrutiny locally is the injury rate among non-English-speaking workers. Of the 422 fatal work injuries in Florida in 2004, 119 of those injuries occurred among Hispanic or Latino workers. It's still not clear whether language barriers contribute to the number of accidents or whether it's simply a result of more non-English speakers entering the work force.

Age is yet another factor that enters the work-place-injury equation. "If someone has been doing the job for a while, they may get complacent, and complacency kills," says Dock. "Plus the older we get, the less we can lift. We need to educate our workers to know their limits." Almost half of the state's work-place fatalities in 2004 occurred among workers ages 45 or older.

:: The Local Picture ::

In Southwest Florida, construction is big business, so it's not surprising that many work-place accidents occur in this field. But injuries and fatalities also occur in manufacturing, agriculture and other industries. For example, in 2003, an employee at Immokalee-based Cyto Meridian Inc. had two fingers crushed by a 50-ton press. OSHA found that machine guards designed to prevent such injuries were never installed on the company's presses. In 2005, a jury in Florida's Lee County Circuit Court awarded the employee $1.19 million, according to published reports.

"This area is growing so rapidly," says Durell Phillips, executive director of the Southwest Florida Safety Council. "We have more traffic, so we have more crashes. We have more building, so we have more things that occur."

But a number of initiatives are under way to improve safety, and sometimes major accidents in the area serve as a wake-up call. "Every time you have a high-profile accident, it makes people stop and think about what they're doing and how something like that could happen to them," says Robert Nesbit, program manager at the University of South Florida's OSHA Training Institute Education Center.

The Collier Building Industry Association is focusing on fall protection, installation of guardrails inside multistory structures and scaffolding assembly in order to improve the safety of construction workers. "That's what we're hearing back from OSHA that people need to pay attention to," says Scott Coulombe, the industry association's executive vice president.

When Collier County calls for proposals on construction projects, it lists insurance and safety requirements for the specific job, going beyond OSHA regulations and getting into specific details about fall protection, heavy-equipment operation or other relevant issues. "We will request specific written information for the job from each company," says Dock. "Safety and quality go hand in hand. If you hire a contractor who has a tight safety program, they'll tend to do better work in the long run, because they'll take their time and do it right the first time."

Cape Coral-based Compass Construction takes safety seriously, so much so that it's considering a partnership with OSHA in which the agency would be invited to job sites to do courtesy inspections. In order for the plan to succeed, all subcontractors that the company works with would have to participate, all the workers on site would be required to take a 10-hour OSHA class, and all foremen would have to receive additional CPR and first-aid training. "The objective is to create the safest work environment that we can conceivably create for the safety of all workers on the job," says Dan Luft, the company's vice president.

Weekly self inspections of job sites and monthly safety meetings already help set the bar at Compass Construction. The company also cites workers who violate safety policies. First-time offenders get a warning, and subsequent offenses yield fines from $100 to $500. "That usually gets their attention," says Jim Smith, director of field operations.

:: The Benefits of Safety ::

The most obvious advantage of a safe work environment is the welfare of employees. If they are safe and working to their full potential, it leads to a more productive work environment.

But safety also affects a firm's bottom line. "By lowering the experience, frequency and severity of injuries, you can save money on premiums and property damage as well as lost-time wages," says Dock. "Safety is definitely good business."

"There is a hidden cost to work-place accidents," says Subzda. Financially, not only does a company have to deal with insurance payouts and OSHA fines, it also might potentially face a long, drawn-out legal battle. "And then there are the intangibles," he says, including the emotional state of workers who witness an injury or fatality. "Anything you can think of that can be negative to come out of an accident usually shows up in some form or another. The psychological impact is tremendous and devastating."

:: How to Improve ::

OSHA should be the first place companies turn for information about work-place safety. The federal agency offers information about current safety rules and regulations as well as assistance with compliance issues.

But that's just the beginning. "The way we look at the OSHA standards, they're minimum criteria for the employer to follow," says Nesbit. "We expect most employers to go well beyond the OSHA standards for their people."

USF's OSHA Training Institute Education Center is one of 20 such facilities in the United States and offers a variety of courses for businesses in manufacturing, construction and general industry. Companies can learn how to develop safety programs, how to properly use equipment and how to effectively train employees. "What we try to do is to reach down to the average worker level with these classes, to the people who are actually doing the work," says Nesbit. "We think we could prevent a whole lot of injuries, even with new employees coming on to job sites, if management puts in place a good safety program and makes sure that the program is followed."

Another resource is the USF SafetyFlorida consultation program, a free service available to all small businesses in the state. "We're trying to build trust with the employers to allow us to come in and explain to them what kinds of training and education can be offered to their employees," says Charlene Vespi, associate director of the program. "We like to help employers understand that workers-comp costs and injuries have an impact on their bottom line."

According to Subzda, it's vital that companies review their safety policies annually and stay current on rules and regulations as well as equipment use and other industry-specific issues. "Either you keep up or you get left behind, and if you get behind you lose out," he says.

Training is also key, especially since the area's building boom has created a tight labor market that often forces companies to hire less-skilled workers. "You have to do the training so that employees know the potentiality of where they're at and what they do to put themselves in harm's way," says Subzda. "Then provide them with equipment and training so they don't have to put themselves in the situation." An important component of this is having training materials and classes available for Spanish-speaking and other non-English-speaking employees.