Introduction

When an employee attempts to conduct an activity that is covered by OSHA, the employer is required by law to ensure workers are protected by the requirements in the standard that addresses that activity. OSHA's laws and standards are the minimum requirements the employer must abide by when workers are exposed to workplace hazards. Major differences in a particular OSHA standard and ANSI accredited standard committee (ASC) standards are the following:

  1. Even though ANSI standards are also minimum requirements for protecting the worker, the standard is developed by a committee of experts in the field of that standard, and addresses more safe work practices and accepted safe industry practices than the OSHA regulations have specified. The OSHA regulations are designed for enforcement, where the ANSI standards are developed with industries' best practices to assist the worker in mind, and provide references, examples, and state-of-the-art procedures.

  2. The ANSI standards are required by established rules and procedures to be reviewed every five years, and the committee votes to revise, reaffirm or withdraw each standard. This allows committees and ANSI to ensure the information and recommendations in the standard are relevant and up-to-date. Some of the OSHA standards are more than 40 years old, referencing old technology and practices.

  3. Each ANSI standard gives the reader more references, examples; some have been used in the past to be the base language of new OSHA standards.

This panel discussion will discuss the following A10 standards:

  • A10.2 Safety, Health and Environmental Training

  • A10.21 Safe Construction and Demolition of Wind Generation/Turbine Facilities

  • A10.25 Sanitation in Construction

  • A10.29 Aerial Platforms in Construction

This session is designed with enough detail to reach the intermediate level of attendee's knowledge of construction activities; however, it is comprehensive enough to offer technical information to an advanced audience. The attendee will go away with an appreciation of the new A10 standards under development, and a recommended revised language to one standard under revision (A10.25). I will discuss A10.2 and A10.21 for this paper.

Keywords:
demolition, requirement, health, construction activity, training requirement, hazard, construction, employer, knowledge management, safe construction
Subjects:
HSSE & Social Responsibility Management, Safety, Professionalism, Training, and Education, Information Management and Systems, HSSE standards, regulations and codes, Communities of practice, Knowledge management
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2017. American Society of Safety Engineers
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