UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PRIVATE

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON CONSTRUCTION

SAFETY AND HEALTH

Thursday, January 24, 2008

		The meeting came to order at 8:30

a.m. in Room N3437 of the Frances Perkins

Building, 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.,

Washington, D.C.  Linwood Smith, Chairman,

presiding.

PRESENT:

LINWOOD O. SMITH, Chairman

FRANK MIGLIACCIO,JR., Employee Representative

DALE DAVID HAGGERTY, Employee Representative

ROBERT KRUL, Employee Representative

EMMETT M. RUSSELL, Employee Representative

THOMAS L. KAVICKY, Employee Representative

MICHAEL J. THIBODEAUX, Employer Representative

THOMAS SHANAHAN, Employer Representative

DANIEL D. ZARLETTI, Employer Representative

DAN MURPHY, Employer Representative

KEVIN BEAUREGARD, State Representative

STEVEN D. HAWKINS, State Representative

THOMAS A. BRODERICK, Public Representative

ELIZABETH ARIOTO, Public Representative

MATT GILLEN, Federal Representative

STEVEN F. WITT, Designated Federal Official

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ITEM                                    PAGE

Opening Remarks and Introductions          3

ACCSH Chair Linwood Smith

Remarks - Directorate of Construction/    12

DFO

Director Steven Witt

Remarks - Office of Communications        18

Veneta Chatmon

Remarks - New Member Welcome              23

Assistant Secretary Edwin G. Foulke, Jr.

DSG - General Industry Standards Update   54

Directorate of Standards and Guidance

OSHA's Role in National Response Plan     86

Directorate of Science, Technology,

and Medicine

OSHA's Structural Response Team          112

OES Director Mohammad Ayub

Afternoon Session

MN I-35 Bridge Collapse and OSHA's       135

Role

Director MN OSHA Jeff Isakson

Area Director Mark Hysell - Eau

Claire, Wisconsin

DOC - Standards Update                   185

DOC Deputy Director Noah Connell

Construction Cooperative Programs        201

Directorate of Cooperative and State

Programs

Public Comment                           240

ACCSH Chair/Members of the Public

ACCSH Governance/Work Group Reports      239

ACCSH Chair/Work Group Co-Chairs

Remarks/Reconvene January 25, 2008

	P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

	8:34 a.m.

Opening Remarks and Introductions

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Thank you for your attendance today at the Advisory
 Committee on Construction Safety and Health.

We appreciate everyone being here.

		Just a little business first.  The bathrooms, restrooms are right up
the hall to your left.  There's a break room on the fourth floor,
restaurant up on the sixth.

		Please turn your cell phones on vibrate or turn them off.  Reception's
not real good in here to start with, but that would help.

		The first thing we want to do is go around, and we have a lot of new
members up here, but we want to go around the room and introduce the
members of the committee to start with who are all, I believe, sitting
up here.

		The only one not here at present is Tom, and he's involved in a
medical situation.  He should be here shortly.  He is in town.  So we
should have a full Board today, and hopefully everyone will be present.

		So, the first thing we'd like to do is go around the room and let
everybody introduce themselves, and let's start up here at the head
table.

		I'd like the new members particularly to tell a little bit about
yourself, if you will, and we would appreciate that.

		Let's start with our solicitor.

		MS. SHORTALL:  My name is Sarah Shortall.  I'm from the Office of the
Solicitor, and I'm the counsel for ACCSH.

		MR. MURPHY:  Dan Murphy, Zurich North America.

		MS. ARIOTO:  Elizabeth Arioto, Consulting Services.  My past
experience is 10 years as a nurse.  I worked for like 13 years with an
ironworking company as their safety director.  I worked for the GC as
their safety director for seven years, and I'm a consultant.

		MR. SMITH:  Can everyone hear?  Can you hear?  Okay.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Frank Migliaccio, Executive Director, Safety and
Health, for the Iron Workers International, and I represent labor.

		MR. HAGGERTY:  I'm David Haggerty.  I'm with the International
Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and I represent labor.

		MR. HAWKINS:  I'm Steve Hawkins, Assistant Administrator with the
Tennessee OSHA Program.

		MR. RUSSELL:  Good morning.  Emmett Russell with Operating Engineers,
35-year member.

		MR. KRUL:  Bob Krul with the United Union of Roofers, and I don't want
to say how long I've been there, but I also represent labor.

		MR. THIBODEAUX:  Mike Thibodeaux, Consultant with the National
Association of Homebuilders.

		MR. KAVICKY:  Tom Kavicky, Safety Director, out of the Chicago and
Northeast Illinois Regional Council of Carpenters.

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Dan Zarletti, Vice President of Safety for Kenny
Construction Company in Chicago.

		MR. BEAUREGARD:  Kevin Beauregard, Assistant Deputy Commissioner,
North Carolina Department of Labor, and a State Representative.

		MR. GILLEN:  Matt Gillen.  I'm the NIOSH Construction Program
Coordinator.

		MR. SHANAHAN:  Tom Shanahan.  I'm with the National Roofing
Contractors Association.  I've been there for 19 years and responsible
for their health, safety and education-related areas.

		MR. WITT:  Steven Witt, Director of Construction, OSHA.

		MR. SMITH:  Linwood Smith, T.A. Loving, Goldsboro, North Carolina, and
I'm an Employer Representative.

		Let's start right here and go around, if we would.

		MR. CARNEY:  Dave Carney, Stonesmith Patented Systems.

		MR. SCHNEIDER: Scott Schneider with the Laborers Health and Safety
Fund North America.

		MR. BURTON:  Richard Burton, NESH Institute.

		MR. MIDDLETON:  George Middleton, Toll Brothers, Inc.

		MR. BIRD:  Charlie Bird, Balfour Beatty Construction, Fairfax,
Virginia.

		MR. TRAUGER:  Tom Trauger, Winchester Homes.

		MS. SHAFER:  Carmen Shafer, Grunley-Walsh, Rockville, Maryland.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Chris Trahan, CPWR.

		MR. DRESSLER:  Dick Dressler, the Association of Equipment
Manufacturers in Milwaukee.

		MS. BILHORN:  Susan Bilhorn, Jacobs Engineering.

		MS. MYERS:  Michele Myers, the Associated General Contractors of
America.

		MR. AHAL:  Bill Ahal, Alberici Corporation, St. Louis.

		MR. HENDRICKS:  Mark Hendricks with Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Company.

		MR. BRUMBAUGH:  Larry Brumbaugh, Maracay Homes.

		MR. BETHANCOURT:  Jeremy Bethancourt, LeBlanc Building Company.

		MR. HOLT:  Dave Holt, Pardee Homes.

		MR. OLIVA:  Joel Oliva, the National Commission for the Certification
of Crane Operators.

		MR. BRENT:  Graham Brent, also with the National Commission for the
Certification of Crane Operators.

		MS. PUNJ:  Shweta Punj, Inside OSHA.

		MS. MORGAN:  Theresa Morgan, also with Inside OSHA.

		MS. HANSEN:  Heidi Hansen, Law Office of Adele Abrams for ASSE.

		MR. IBARRA:  Robert Ibarra, Directorate of Construction with OSHA.

		MR. MASARICK:  John Masarick, Independent Electrical Contractors
Association.

		MR. CLOUTIER:  Steve Cloutier, Bovis Lend Lease out of Charlotte.

		MR. BURKHAMMER:  Stew Burkhammer, OSHA today, retired tomorrow.

		MR. PARSONS:  Bill Parsons, OSHA, Directorate of Construction.

		MS. CHATMON:  Veneta Chatmon, Office of Communications.

		MR. SMITH:  Right.  That's our right hand.

		The first thing, if you're from the public and you would like to speak
during the public comment period, please sign the list at the back in
order that we can look over that list and see how much time we've got
and try to see if we can accommodate you.  Please make sure you sign the
list if you'd like to speak as a member of the public.

		The next thing I'd like to do just very briefly, and it's not much
about it, but if you look in the Federal Register, the mission of our
committee, so to speak, or our mission statement, it says, "The
aforesaid Section 107 requires the Secretary of Labor to seek the advice
of the advisory committee in formulating construction standards
thereunder."

		So our role is to provide advice to the Secretary of Labor through
this committee on standards that may be promulgated by them.

		With that, I welcome you.  It's real good to be here.  We've not had a
lot of meetings recently.  This is the second meeting since I've been
chairman.  The first meeting, I was in the hospital, I believe, and did
not make myself.  So I'm extremely glad to be here, extremely glad to be
in good health and appreciate it in a lot of ways.

		If you would, to the members, minutes are in your packet.  I'd like
for you to look over them from the last meeting that we had, and I'd
like to have a motion that we accept those, please.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  So moved.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  I have a motion.  Is there a second?

		MR. KRUL:  Second.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  Any discussion?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  All in favor, please say aye.

		(Chorus of ayes.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  All opposed, likewise.

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you very much.  Yes, Bob?

		MR. KRUL:  Mr. Chairman, just a point of order.  The minutes reflect
at the October 11th and 12th meeting that the minutes of the previous
meeting were not available at that meeting and would be made available
at this meeting, and I only see these minutes.

		MR. SMITH:  Right.  Could someone see if we make those available to
the members of the committee today?  We would appreciate that.

		I want to recognize Bob Krul, Robert Krul.  He is our former chairman.
 He was a great chairman.  I enjoyed serving on this committee under
him, and I'm already counting on him as an advisor and told him to
please let me know, keep me straight.

		So thank you, Bob, for your years of service, we appreciate it very
much, as chairman.  Glad you're still on the committee.

		MR. KRUL:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

		MR. SMITH:  At this time, we will call on Mr. Witt to make a few
comments.

Remarks - Directorate of Construction/DFO

		MR. WITT:  Thank you, Linwood.

		First of all, let me welcome the new members of the committee.  Thank
you for agreeing to support our advisory committee.  Your service is
appreciated, and thanks to those in the audience who have taken the time
to be with us today and hopefully tomorrow, and we look forward to your
participation during the public comment period.

		For those who don't know me, I've been the Director of Construction
since October of 2006, but I actually have a long relationship with this
committee.

		In 1978, almost 30 years ago, I was the counsel to this committee, the
position that Sarah's holding now, and I joined the Department of Labor
in 1972.

		Some of my previous responsibilities have been Executive Assistant in
OSHA, Director of Technical Support, Director of Health Standards,
Director of Safety Standards, Director of Standards and Guidance, Deputy
Assistant Secretary, now Director of Construction, and I would like to
say that I'm very pleased with my current assignment.

		I've enjoyed working with those involved in the construction industry.
 It's been a very interesting and challenging 15 or 16 months, and I
look forward to the next two days.

		I think we have a full agenda.  We'll have reports from a number of
the OSHA directorates and some other discussion items, reports from the
work groups.  I think we have a lot of work to do the next two days, and
I believe that it will be a productive meeting and we will be, and
Linwood will mention this later, we will be making plans for our next
meeting and hopefully in the near future, we won't be waiting as long as
we have since the last meeting in 2006.

		Let me just comment for a moment on the nomination process that we
followed.  In January of last year, we published a Federal Register
Notice asking for nominees to this committee and were pleased that we
received over 60 nominees, many of them well qualified.

		I'm extremely pleased on the selections that the Secretary of Labor
made.  I think we have an excellent committee, a committee with a lot of
experience in the construction area and a lot that they can do to
support this committee and provide advice to the Assistant Secretary.

		Based on that very open process, as we move forward in the future, I
think it's the Assistant Secretary's intention as we fill vacancies as
they occur, as terms expire, we will continue to make this an open and
as transparent a process as possible so we can attract the most
qualified members to this committee.

		And with that, I'm going to turn it back to Linwood and look forward
to the next two days.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I wanted to make one comment about the nominations for
officers.

		I wanted to add one other thing about the nominations process.
Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke has wanted to make the process more
transparent and accessible for anyone who's interested in viewing the
process and/or in submitting nominations, and so with this last round of
nominations, not only did we put the nomination request in the Federal
Register but everything that we received in response to that was put
into the public record.

		So that at any time, if any person would want to check that and see
that information, they'd be able to do so and we keep that part of our
ongoing docket system.

		With that, I also would remind any person who has an interest in the
future in applying, we will continue to put that in the Federal Register
Notice and we will put it in our docket. So we caution you about
submitting certain types of personal information that you wouldn't want
to make public, like your birth dates or your Social Security numbers.

		Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  Also, Stew Burkhammer, Stew left the room to
go get these minutes.  There will be a retirement party for him tonight
after work across the street at one of the local restaurants.  I'm sure
all of you know him personally, but they've asked that we contribute $10
apiece to help defray the cost.  They have him a real nice gift and
snacks provided.  It will be a cash bar. We're looking for a big crowd.

		Is Veneta here?  Anyway, we will have someone in the room in a little
bit to take up your money if you'd like to contribute and you'd like to
go to that.  We would certainly be glad to have you.  Look forward to
seeing you there tonight after work.

		Okay.  Veneta was on the agenda.  She did meet with us yesterday and
went over the orientation for the new members.  We appreciate that.  At
this point, we're running a little bit ahead of schedule which is a good
thing.

		Okay.  Right here is the young lady who can take up your money, if you
would like to contribute $10 and get on the list to go to the party.

		Please, if anyone in the back of the room would like to sign up for
Stew's retirement party to go and they've got $10 they'd like to
contribute, please.  Would you raise your hand if you'd like to --

		MR. WITT:  And it's 5 to 7 this evening across the street at this
really fancy bar called My Brother's Place.  So, tie and jacket
required.  It's upstairs, and we'll begin hopefully right after we
finish here.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you very much.  Raise your hands again so she can
see you.  Thank you, Leah.

		MR. KRUL:  If you don't have a gun when you go in, they'll search you
and give you one.

		(Laughter.)

		MR. SMITH:  Hopefully we're going to have a little fun tonight with
Stew and anybody that's been in the safety business 43 years needs a
little special recognition.

		Okay.  We have Veneta, and you want to just give a little update?

		MR. WITT:  I assume not all of the members were present yesterday
afternoon when you went over the administrative details for the
committee.

		Would you just summarize them?  We put you on the agenda for a few
minutes.  Just summarize what you discussed yesterday afternoon with the
committee members that were present.

Remarks - Office of Communication

		MS. CHATMON:  Basically, I shared with the members that were here the
procedures for doing travel as an ACCSH member.  Basically, things have
changed.  Everything is done by me and my assistant, Frances Durant, and
all I ask that you do is just contact me with your travel arrangement
plans.

		I will put in the TA and process it and e-mail you a copy, and upon
your return to your designated locations, I ask that you send back to me
your hotel receipts and any other receipts over $75, so a voucher can be
processed for reimbursement.

		If you need any additional information, you know, please contact me at
202-693-1912, and Frances's number is<PHONE_NUMBER>.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  Any questions for Veneta?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you very much.  You now have the minutes of the
meeting that was referenced earlier.  Take just a second and look over
those, and we'd like a motion that they be accepted into the report.

		Okay.  Do we have a motion that they be accepted into the report?

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  I make a motion they be accepted.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you, Frank.  Is there a second?

		MR. GILLEN:  Second.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you, Matt.  All in favor, please say aye.

		(Chorus of ayes.)

		MR. SMITH:  Any opposed, likewise.

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  Take just a minute, if you will, and look over
the agenda for the meeting, see if you would like anything added or
updated on the agenda.

		Any questions or comments about the agenda?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Thank you very much.

		Okay.  I noticed earlier at least a couple people in the audience that
have been members of this Board before.  I'd like for them to stand and
anybody else that's in the audience that's been on this Board.  Please
stand.  We'd like to thank them for their years of service.

		Of course, Stew was once chairman of this Board.  I think Steve, you
were chairman, weren't you?

		MR. CLOUTIER:  I was an acting chairman.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Acting chairman, and Scott Schneider, who just
recently went off.  Let's give them a hand for serving on this
committee.

		(Applause.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  We're told that Secretary Foulke will be up in
just a couple minutes.  So, we're kind of waiting on him at this point.

		If anybody on the committee has a comment they would like to make at
this time?  Yes, sir, Frank?

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Frank Migliaccio.  I have a question.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Why did we not have a meeting last year?

		MR. SMITH:  I am going to defer that to Mr. Witt.

		MR. WITT:  We did not have a meeting because the decision was made
when we published the Federal Register Notice last January asking for
nominations, and we thought the process would go fairly quickly in
getting selections made by the Secretary of Labor.

		The process took longer than we had planned, and the decision was made
by the Assistant Secretary, because he also thought it would move more
quickly than it did, that the next meeting of the committee would be the
committee with the seven new members present, and the decision was made
not to have a meeting with a committee where almost 50 percent of the
members' terms had expired.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.

		MR. WITT:  But it is his intention, as I said, he may say this
earlier, it is his intention to hold a meeting in the next several
months.  So we will hopefully not have that type of delay again.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  We'd like for the members of the committee to
go ahead and submit their schedules for the last of April and the first
of May.  That is the tentative date that we will be having another
meeting at this point, and please submit that to Michael Buchet, if you
would, and we'll hopefully be able to have another committee meeting
then.

		Thank you, Frank.  Any other questions?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  If everyone would then, let's just kind of stand at ease
till Secretary Foulke gets here.  Should be just a second.  Please don't
leave the room.  Hopefully he'll be coming in very shortly, but just
please feel free to stand up for a second and stretch your legs.

		(Whereupon, the foregoing matter

		went off the record at 8:55 a.m.

		and went back on the record at

		9:05 a.m.)

		MR. SMITH: I'm going to carry this gavel home with me.  It works
better up here than it does at home.  I need something to get people's
attention at home.  Thank you for your attention.

		At this time, it's my privilege to introduce to you Assistant
Secretary Edwin Foulke, and he will make a few comments, and I turn it
over to you, Mr. Foulke.

Remarks - New Member Welcome

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  I'm going to make comments?  Okay.  That's right.

		Good morning.  How are you all doing this morning?  Hope that
everything's going well.

		I just kind of wanted to start by welcoming -- I think there's seven
new members to the committee, and also thank the members, the returning
members, for your service to our country.

		I know that you all could be at other things.  You have a lot of
responsibilities in your normal jobs, and I know it's difficult to be
able to be here and take your time away from your jobs, but I do
appreciate your service to the country, but I think you recognize, as I
do recognize, that this is important to not only your particular
companies but to your particular industry and that there are a lot of
critical issues that your industry faces, and so what you all do here is
going to be very important and help people.

		I talk a lot in my speeches about the bottom line.  I don't talk about
the bottom line being the financial bottom line, but what I see as the
true bottom line for any business and our bottom line for OSHA is making
sure that people go home safe and sound every night back to their
families and loved ones, and so I just want to say thank you for what
you all do and I thank you for it.  I appreciate you all being involved
in this.

		It is important, and over the years, I know that ACCSH has been
involved with a lot of recommendations to OSHA, and it's been extremely
helpful to OSHA in helping its recommendations for the reg agenda but
also recommendations for other things that we do, the guidance documents
and stuff like that.

		So I just want to say thank you for all that and that you have a lot
more work to do because we still got a long way to go.		Even though our
injuries and illnesses and fatality numbers are down, the rates are down
to the lowest that we've had in a long time, we still can't stop there
because I know you believe and I believe -- you believe the same that I
believe, that obviously one fatality is one fatality too many.

		So we still have a lot of work to do, and I really do appreciate you
willing to be able to serve.

		I also wanted to thank Chairman Linwood Smith for agreeing to chair
the committee again.  Once again, you know, it's a difficult thing to
have to take time off of your jobs, but like I said, this is a
significant commitment that you all have made, and I do really
appreciate that.

		You really are helping us fulfill our mandate to ensure that we have
safe working conditions for all of our employees.

		I also want to recognize Stew Burkhammer.  Where is Stew?  Stew, you
know, I really did want to say thank you to Stew.  I've already said
thank you to Stew, but I wanted to thank him for his contributions on
his impending retirement after a decade of service to ACCSH and the five
years he's been at the OSHA's Directorate of Construction as the
Director of OSHA Office of Construction Services.

		Is he still outside?  Okay.  Well, I'll make sure we thank him
properly.  So I did want to thank him.

		I did want to kind of talk a little bit about what we've been doing at
OSHA and -- that is of interest and involved in the construction
industry and would be of interest to the committee.

		We've been involved in a lot of different things, and one of the
things that -- an area that we've been involved with much more in-depth
than probably we have over the last seven, ten years is emergency
preparedness.

		We really have a lot more focus on that, and the most recent example
of our involvement in emergency preparedness or emergency response, I
guess, is more the case in this one, was the Minneapolis Interstate
Bridge Collapse back in September of last year and also the wildfires in
California this Fall.

		Once again, what I really am -- I guess what was very interesting to
me was the fact that we had a really good partnership with our state
partners, working with the states in both of those responses.

		We worked hand in hand with our state partners and agencies, state
agencies to ensure that the response and recovery crews on the scene
could work safely, and because of that, I think we did prevent people
from being injured in both of those areas, and I'm very excited about
how we responded and how quickly we were able to respond to it and how
thoroughly we responded to it.

		I understand that Jeff Isakson, Director of the Minnesota OSHA State
Plan, will be here this afternoon, I believe, to discuss with you more
about what happened there.

		But I would just say that we are aware that emergency response crews,
particularly construction people, need immediate information and advice
to stay safe while they're working in these type of situations, these
highly hazardous situations, and we're continuing to improve on our
abilities to respond quickly and to provide the information and provide
the assistance that those response crews need, and so we'll continue to
do that in the future.

		Also, I understand later this morning, you're going to be hearing from
Ruth McCully, who's our Director of the Directorate of Science,
Technology, and Medicine, about the OSHA's Role in the National Response
Plan.

		I was at a -- on Tuesday, I was at a meeting at the National Press
Club where the Secretary of Homeland Security rolled out the National
Response Framework which is the overall document now that we're going to
be working under for all federal, state, local, tribes are going to be
-- gives us a framework of how we're going to be responding to all types
of emergency situations.

		I also understand that Mohammad Ayub, Director of OSHA's Office of
Engineering Services, will brief you about OSHA's Structural Response
Team in national emergencies, and I think you'll find that very
interesting.  He had provided us a briefing during the Minneapolis
bridge collapse of what was going on there which he responded to
personally, and so I think that you will find that very informative.

		Another area that we've been working that I think -- this kind of goes
across all industries, is the issue on pandemic flu guidelines and the
pandemic influenza generally.

		We are looking at this.  You know, there is no pandemic flu at this
time, but all the experts agree it's not a matter of if it will occur,
it is a question of when it will occur, and so it's difficult to predict
when it will occur or how severe it will be, but the most important
thing is that we're going to be prepared for that, and it's important
that all companies, all industries are making preparations now because
it is clear that if and -- or when the pandemic flu hits, that we will
not -- no industry, no company is going to be able to respond if they
haven't done any preparation in advance.

		This is not something that you can just prepare for once it shows up.
You can't wait, say we(ll wait till it shows up, wherever it shows up,
and then we'll start planning, because this is going to take some
detailed response.

		So, we're taking this issue, the federal government is taking this
issue seriously.  OSHA is working to fulfill our role under the
President's National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza in that we're
charged to make sure that government employees are able to -- that the
government runs, that employees are able to come to work, and our
response is also to make sure that the businesses run and companies run
and providing the information needed to allow that to occur.

		So to meet this potential challenge of the pandemic, OSHA has
developed two major guidance documents on pan. flu, one for general
industry which outlines a whole tiered approach of how you would handle
a pandemic, and the other one, the other document, which is a much -- is
probably -- a fairly thick document dealing with pandemic response for
health care industry.

		So we've been working on that, and basically the guidance allows
information on how the influenza would spread, how employers can
maintain operations, how to protect their employees, steps for
identifying whether you're a low, medium, or high-risk workplace, and
tips for employees, to provide your employees to stay safe while
traveling and living abroad to work because that's one area that we also
focus on, even those American workers that are out working on the --
outside the country.

		So we've been -- we'll be sharing that, and Ruth can actually -- we
have a couple directors, but Ruth's been involved with that preparation
and so if you have any questions on that particularly, she can provide
that information.

		On the regulatory agenda, you know, the Cranes and Derrick Negotiated
Rulemaking Advisory Committee had been working to complete the analysis
and review all the requirements to publish a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking.

		With respect to the cranes and derricks standard, we are in the latter
stages of development of the proposed rule, and if you had looked on the
Federal Register, we were looking to publish the Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking in January of '08.

		Unfortunately, we're just not going to be able to make that date
because this is a very detailed rule.  It is going to be an extremely --
it's a large document is what it comes out to be and so it is just
taking a lot -- taking us longer to get things through, to get things
completed on this document, but our goal is to publish that NPRM this
year on cranes and derricks.  So we'll be moving on that, and we're
committed to move on that project.

		One of the things that we've done -- that we did complete in November
of last year was to publish a final rule on payment for personal
protective equipment, and under this rule, employers are required to
provide personal protective equipment or PPE at no cost to the
employees, except under certain circumstances.

		The rule contains exceptions for clothing and gear and clarified
OSHA's requirement regarding payment of employee-owned PPE and
replacement PPE.

		We must have done something well because I think the time period for
appealing, filing an appeal on that, has passed, and we didn't, as far
as I know, we did not have anyone appeal that particular standard.

		You know, I think we made a good -- we did a real good job of
balancing all the issues that were involved in that.  It was a
complicated standard.  There were some really complicated issues, but I
think that foremost, it really kind of spelled out and clarified when
employers are required to pay for PPE which is, for the most cases,
almost all cases, but there are certain exceptions, and I like it
because now we have, I think, a clear and consistent policy on what
employers have to pay for and also the standard projects that we're
going to provide -- by implementing this rule will result in 21,000
fewer occupational injuries per year.

		So you know, I think that's important.  That demonstrates how this
standard is going to be useful in that respect.

		But I think, you know, the whole main thing is that, you know -- one
thing the rule did not change is what personal protective equipment was
required, and we've had some questions on that from different groups.

		But the standard only dealt with who was paying for it.  What type of
personal protective equipment is necessary and when and how you
determine that, what hazard assessments that you have to do, has
actually been spelled out in previous personal protective equipment
standards.

		So the new one did not impact at all as to what PPE was required.
It's just who was going to pay for it.

		Also in November of 2007, we proposed a rule for confined space in
construction and general working conditions in shipyards.

		Yesterday, in the January 23rd Federal Register, we announced a 30-day
extension for the comment period, extending it to February 28th, on the
proposed rule for confined spaces in construction.

		And I believe Noah Connell, the Deputy Director of the Construction
Directorate, is going to give you -- talk more about this in the
Construction -- his Construction Update.

		Trenching.  In 2008, OSHA will continue to -- its trenching initiative
as part of its commitment to focus on enforcement efforts in one of the
most hazardous working conditions in your industry.

		I do have some good news to report.  In the last four years, in
collecting data, calendar years 2003 to 2006, we've seen a marked
decrease in trenching fatalities in the industry, about 50 percent.  So
we went from 59 fatalities in 2003 to 29 fatalities in 2006.

		Clearly, we're making progress in this area.  Once again, one fatality
is one fatality too many, and we're going to have to keep striving to
get that number to zero.  That has to be our goal, and we're going to
continue to target outreach and ensure that that number in trenching
fatalities continues to drop until we achieve our goal of zero.

		Another construction-related OSHA activity is our teen summer job
campaign involving construction jobs.

		We have set up a five-year plan to target different industries dealing
with teen summer jobs, and we're looking at the next generation of
working men and women, and so three years ago we launched this
initiative to improve the health and safety of teenagers, thousands of
teenagers in the workforce each year, and we're going to be -- this
year, it's going to focus on construction and probably residential
construction is where we're going to -- will be the focus of this
campaign.

		We're going to be kicking that off.  We're hoping to do a high-profile
campaign kick-off, possibly in New York City, and at the same time,
kicking the whole program off, having a ten-city, one in each region,
ten-city kick-off this Spring.

		So we're going to -- the focus obviously is to raise national
awareness of the need for employees when they're hiring young people to
provide appropriate safety and health training and protective equipment.

		I remember when -- one of my first jobs when I was working in law
school in the summer time when I was in law school was in construction,
and I was doing road construction, and I was driving a -- I did a number
of things, but one of the things I drove was a pan, which you know is a
fairly large piece of equipment, and my safety training involved showing
me what the seatbelt was.

		So I understand the need for this, and I also understand that a lot of
teenagers, some of you all may have some teenagers, kind of feel like
they're bulletproof, so to speak, that they can't get injured, and
unfortunately accidents occur so easily and that's why we need to have
this campaign.

		It's been very successful over the two years we've done it already,
and this will be our third year.  So once again, we're hoping to impress
upon the teens that there are hazards in the workplace that they need to
be aware of and at the same time encourage employers to make sure that
all teenagers, even though they are a summer job, that they're fully
trained before they get put on the job and they understand the hazards,
and so we'll be doing that.

		Another area that we've been moving in construction is our cooperative
programs for construction, and I believe Paula White is going to be
talking to you today.  She heads up our Directorate of Cooperative State
Programs, and she's going to provide you details about our cooperative
programs in the construction industry.

		We've been very -- obviously the last year, I guess it's been a little
over a year, we had our -- we opened up our voluntary protection program
into the construction, started doing model program, and right now we
have 64 construction companies that have attained the recognition for
safety and health by attaining VPP status in the construction area.

		This is more than any time in the program's 25-year history, and we're
opening the VPP to more general and specialty trade contractors, once
again, to demonstrate that  for those companies that have great safety
and health programs, to recognize them for their great programs, and I
think we have a number of companies here that have facilities or sites
that are in VPP and we do appreciate that.

		Our OSHA Challenge, which is our program to help employers reach -- to
move forward in their safety and health program to attain a VPP, has had
tremendous results.

		It's basically a three incremental stage program and after one year of
OSHA Challenge, construction companies report a rate reduction averaging
more than 30 percent, 30 percent reduction for those companies after one
year of being in the Challenge program.

		And since we introduced our strategic partnership program in 1998, we
have partnered with more than 350 construction employers, and so once
again here we have labor, management, and the government working
together at the start of these large projects to go through the program
and basically say how we're going to look at safety and health on this
particular project, what are we going to anticipate are going to be the
hazards, and so we really do appreciate that.

		And I am really excited about how we've done on our outreach programs,
our partnerships in the construction area, and hopefully we're going to
continue to focus on that -- well, we are going to focus on that more,
to try to get more and more companies working with OSHA, construction
companies working with OSHA to make sure that we have more safe and
healthy worksites and that we protect our employees.

		And once again, it goes back again to what Mike had said.  The true
bottom line of any company should be making sure that your employees go
home safe and sound.

		So I just want to say, I'll end by just saying thank you for what you
all have been doing and your involvement in this program really is
important, and I do appreciate that, and looking forward to working with
you, and you have my commitment, personal commitment, that whatever I
can do to help to make this committee a success and that I'm going to be
here to help you do that.

		So thank you for your service to the country and to this committee.
So, Mr. Chairman?

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you, Assistant Secretary Foulke.

		And Stew just walked back in the room if you'd like to say a little
word about him.  What can you say, right?

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  That's right.  There he is.  Stand up.

		MR. BURKHAMMER:  I'm standing up.  When you retire, you shrink.

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  I do personally want to thank you for your work in
the construction area.  You've been involved with the ACCSH Committee, I
understand, for over ten years, been with the Directorate for five, but
pretty much your whole life has been committed to safety and health in
the construction area, and so I really do appreciate the work that
you've done with us and your service to that.

		So thank you very much for that, and we'll definitely miss you, but
just because you(re retired doesn(t mean we(re not going to use you in
some other fashion.  We'll still work you to death.  Thank you.

		(Applause.)

		MR. SMITH:  I think it also would be prudent for this committee to go
on record as thanking Stew for his service to this committee and also to
the Directorate of Construction Office.

		Could I hear a motion to that effect?

		MR. KRUL:  So moved.

		MR. SMITH:  Second?

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Second.

		MR. SMITH:  All in favor, say aye.

		(Chorus of ayes.)

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you very much, Stew.  We really appreciate it.

		At this time, are there any questions for Secretary Foulke?

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Sir, it's my understanding that the OSHA Training
Institute is trying to make some changes in the way it structures or
picks the trainers.

		Can you give us a little background on that, please?

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  Well, I can give you a little background on what
we're trying to do with the whole program.

		Last year, I took -- the Training Institute had been part of another
directorate, and so I decided that -- you know, when I first got
involved with safety and health, I started practicing law in '78, and I
think it was about '79 or '80 is when I first started doing OSHA work,
and at that point in time, I remember that people used to talk about the
OSHA Training Institute.

		It was like that is where you went  to get trained and that was where
you really needed to be involved in -- that's where we had -- that was
-- it was like kind of the gold standard for training for safety and
health, and so as a result of that, I decided it really needed to be its
own directorate.

		So we established it as its own directorate, pulled it out of -- it
was in State Plans, is where it was, under there, made its own
directorate, and I put Hank Payne, Dr. Hank Payne, in charge of that,
and my charge to him was to make sure that the OSHA Training Institute
became the gold standard again for training, safety and health training
in the country.

		So we're moving on that, and we've been reviewing, as I understand,
all the different training programs.  We're actually reviewing all the
-- I know one area that we've done is we're actually revamping all the
CSHO training to have much more detail, reviewing what training they
should have and to do that.

		We're also expanding the training programs that are available, and I
know that they've done some -- they have talked about doing some
additional changes on the program on training the trainers and stuff
like that, expanding the requirements for the trainers, I believe, but I
can't say right offhand what that is, to tell you the truth.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  My understanding of what they were trying to do, and
somebody else can fill this in here a little bit, that they were looking
for the OSHA 500 instructors to be basically professionals from
colleges.

		Now, you being a lawyer, I don't think you'd want an ironworker out
there practicing law because we don't actually know what we're doing
there, and I personally feel as though --

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  They may be better than some lawyers.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Maybe.  But there's some out there that -- I mean, I
can only speak on behalf of my program, the OSHA 500 instructors where
we have six master instructors, I'd pit them against any academic person
out there teaching safety and health, and the reason I say this is
because they work it every day.  They're not full time.  They work in
the field.

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  Right.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  And that academic person, they can do a lot of book
learning, and we found this out when we trained the compliance officers
under Subpart R, that we had the OSHA people in there training, and we
had different -- we had ABC in there with us, we had contractors
training with us, and there was a variety of people, and it seemed like
-- and, you know, here we can talk to some of the people who were
actually there.

		The field personnel that were doing the training, your compliance
officers got a lot more out of those people than they did out of anybody
else, and I find it interesting that Dr. Payne or any of his people
under him would want to take that knowledge away from the instructors
that's going to be out there protecting these people.

		So I'm a little --

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  I'm glad you raised that.  I will have to look
into that to see what -- no, I'll look at it and see what we have
because I can understand what --

		MR. WITT:  If I may, Frank, my understanding is Dr. Payne will be
joining us some time today, and if he does, I spoke to him the other
day, I think he's --

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  Is he coming in or not?  I thought he wasn't
coming in.  But go ahead.

		MR. WITT:  Maybe there's a change.  He had indicated to me the other
day he would be coming in, and he will be available, if he is coming in,
to respond to your comment.  If not, I know he has prepared a summary of
what the activities that are going on related to the outreach or train
the trainer, and I will get those from him and distribute them to the
committee.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Up until today, I mean I hope it still goes on, but
the subcommittee of the OTI, I chair it, and I found it interesting that
nobody even approached us about any of this information that they want
to change.

		I would have thought they would at least come to the committee, said
something to us, and then we could have brought it as our subcommittee
to this full body, but we had no knowledge of it till, you know, till
after all the letters went out there, and it's real interesting how they
sort of circumvented --

		MR. WITT:  I've heard a little bit about this, but I'm not exactly
sure -- I'm not fully informed what is all required or what they're
looking to make -- change the requirements to.  So I'll look at that.

		I mean, all I can -- I know what I've charged Dr. Payne to do is to
bring this to -- the OSHA Training Institute to be the gold standard for
safety and health training.

		Now, you know, obviously practical experience always is very
important, and to me, at least it's my thought that practical experience
is important to be able to provide insight in how things are really done
in training, and so we'll just look at that and get back with you on
that.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  I'd appreciate that.

		MR. WITT:  Maybe today.

		MR. SMITH:  Other questions?  Yes, Bob?

		MR. KRUL:  Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for coming in, and I heard your
remarks that you had no appeals on the PPE standard, but let me try to
shave the corpse one more time.

		It's still problematic for those of us who deal in collective
bargaining agreements, especially when we do maintenance work in
industrial facilities, when an owner mandates that steel-toed boots
and/or metatarsal equipment has to be worn as to whose responsibility
that is.

		I understand the exceptions, but it still seems that that's like a
nebulous area that isn't clear when it comes to -- protective footwear,
exactly whose responsibility it is.

		I know what the employers( side is because those of us on labor have
heard that argument a hundred times, and in fairness to the employers,
their argument is that ought to be equipment that a construction worker
should just purchase in the event that he or she has to go out on to a
site where this equipment is mandated.

		And from the safety and health viewpoint, you can go to Walmart or
Kmart and get a pair of steel-toed shoes, but are they really what
you're looking for for protection, and our argument with our apprentices
that may come in in the first year and only be making 60 percent of what
a journey person makes, this becomes quite a financial outlay for them.

		And we understand management's viewpoint on those quick turnaround
jobs where they may have hundreds of people and looking at a $125 per
boot, but it gets a little jumbled when the owner mandates that in order
to come on his facility that you have to have this equipment in order to
perform maintenance work.

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  Well, I think with respect to metatarsals, we did
say that they could be required to pay for the -- not the built-in ones
but the ones that go over top of the shoes or they could provide a
credit for that.

		So it is a complicated issue, you know.  One thing I try to do is I
went through all the testimony.  There were a lot of different things we
looked at, you know.  We get in this thing about the tools of the trade
and everything else.  That was the kind of thing that we had opened or
reopened the record to look at those things.

		So like I say, I think we tried very hard to make sure we had the
right type of balance and hopefully -- you know, like I say, it's a
complicated issue, and that's why  I guess it took the standard so long
to get around through there.

		But I'm glad that we finally finished the standard and got it out and,
you know, maybe we'll have to look and see down the road what other --
if there's any changes, you know, that will be made.

		And I suspect that we're going to have questions on requests for
letters of interpretations on the standard, too.  As a matter of fact, I
know we will.  We've already had two groups that have asked us about
specific items dealing with certain PPE.

		So thank you.

		MR. KRUL:  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Other questions?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Any comments?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  We'd like to thank the Assistant Secretary Foulke for
coming in today and making these comments and also being available to
respond to questions and taking your time to work with this committee.

		This is a dedicated group, as you alluded to, and we gladly give our
time to try to help our industry and appreciate your role in that
regard, also.

		Thank you very much.

		ASST. SEC. FOULKE:  Thank you, and thank you again for your service.
I appreciate it.

		(Applause.)

		MR. SMITH:  At this time, we want to take a 15-minute break, and I'd
like to ask the committee to please stay present.  I think there's going
to be some photographs that they want to take at this time.

		(Whereupon, the foregoing matter

		went off the record at 9:38 a.m.

		and went back on the record at

		9:56 a.m.)

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Let me have your attention, please.  We'll start
back.

		MR. KRUL:  Mr. Chairman?

		MR. SMITH:  Mr. Krul has asked for one minute.

		MR. KRUL:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  In light of the discussion with
Secretary Foulke on this whole issue of the proposed recommendations and
changes to the OSHA Training Institute, and for the benefit of the
committee, the four major recommendations that the OTI is proposing, --

		MR. SMITH:  Sir, Mr. Krul, if I could, this afternoon, later on this
afternoon, they're going to arrange a conference call with Dr. Payne at
OTI.

		Would it be appropriate to wait till then?

		MR. KRUL:  We could wait, but in light of Mr. Migliaccio's comments, I
think this motion is in order.  The Chair could rule me out of order.

		What I would like to do is make a motion that this committee recommend
to the Assistant Secretary that he direct the OTI that any proposed
recommendations come through the work group formed by the OTI for any
proposed recommendations and changes to that program.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  I'd like -- the Chair would like to ask, if we
could, that we wait till we get Dr. Payne on the phone, let him explain
it, and then the motion would certainly be in order.

		MR. KRUL:  That's fine, Mr. Chairman.

		MR. SMITH:  Let's give him the opportunity to address us first.

		MR. KRUL:  That's fine.

		MR. SMITH:  If that's okay.  Thank you very much.

		Okay.  Our next presenter, as soon as I put my glasses on, will be
Amanda Edens with the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, and she
will be discussing -- giving us a general industry standards update.  We
thank her for appearing before this committee.

		MS. EDENS:  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  And I need to move.

		MS. EDENS:  Yes, you do.

DSG - General Industry Standards Update

		MS. EDENS:  I'm going to cover the first 15 minutes, and then I'm
going to turn it over to John Steelneck who's going to speak a little
bit about our new rulemaking with regards to a new fit testing
alternative for respiratory protection.  We just did one on a new Bitrex
method, and then we have another one coming up, and I'll leave it to
John to kind of discuss after I get through.

		What I want to do is to go quickly  over some of the Directorate of
Standards and Guidance activities, primarily our regulatory projects,
and I'll talk a little bit about a few of the upcoming guidance products
we have.

		Unless you don't know, the current regulatory agenda we just published
a little over a month ago in sort of a new method.  It generally comes
out in paper but now through the magic of e-government, it's on the web
which is kind of hard to -- you know, a lot of people kind of still like
paper, I think I'm one of them, but now it's all electronic.

		So if you actually get the Federal Register version, there's only like
two regulatory items, but those are the significant items we have, and
the other 26 items are in this website, reginfo.gov.  So if you want to
go and look at all the different items we have, seventeen of which are
the responsibility of the directorate in which I'm in, you can see the
details of those.

		I'm not going to go over all of those.  I was going to pick out a few,
primarily the ones that have some impact or may impact on construction.
I will not cover the two construction ones, cranes and derricks or
confined spaces, because they're in our Construction Directorate, but
these are ones that we're working on in DSG that also have some
construction implications.

		I heard some questions just when I came in a little bit about PPE
payment.  This is one we've had for a few years and finally finalized
this November where it doesn't really address anything in terms of what
PPE is required, but mainly the issue is the payment of PPE, and this
sets the requirement that employers pay for most types of PPE and there
are some exclusions that we have in this, and I think you discussed
these maybe a little bit earlier.

		So I'm not going to really get into a lot of detail about this, but
things like ordinary safety toe wear and things like that.  They're not
covered by these things, but things that are required, especially under
the general PPE standard or the substance-specific standards that we
have, the employer's required to pay for those.

		We also have another big project which we refer to as our consensus
standards project, and there's a lot of different little rulemakings
embedded in there.

		One of the first ones we did was a direct final back in 2004, and so
the overall goal of this project is that, as many of you are probably
aware, a lot of the standards, in particular a lot of the safety
standards, we have used consensus standards as the basis in some form or
another for the existing OSHA standards, and over time, these consensus
groups have updated their standards, and OSHA has not been able to keep
up pace.

		So the point of this project is to try to look at the ones that we
could address in a short fashion, and some may take a little bit longer,
but to pick off as many as we can and in as quick a fashion as we can to
update some and make them more consistent with current consensus
standards.

		The most recent one that we did was another issue with PPE, not with
payment but with the consensus standard on PPE, and this covers head,
foot, and eye protection, and we published this in the spring of last
year and completed hearings last month.  So the rulemaking record on
that will close in a little while, and we'll evaluate that record and go
on and complete the final.

		Another one that we published, it's almost a year ago now, was our
final standard on Subpart S.  This is a general industry standard.  So
we have a counter in the construction industry, but this one was geared
to look primarily at electrical installations in general industry.  It
was published as a final in February of last year, became effective this
summer.

		But there has been one issue with regards to temporary wiring and
ground fault circuit interrupters, and the reason I bring this is up,
because it does use some terminology which has created some confusion
because the terminology it uses is that it requires the use of GFCIs
where temporary wiring is used, and it gives these examples, and one of
them is construction-like activities.

		What we're trying to get at is the standard covers general industry.
So first of all, you'd have to make a cut about whether it's
construction or general industry, and once you've made that
determination, you come into the general industry standard, but there
are some activities that we believe are sort of construction-like in
nature and the hazard is the same, and so we would require the same type
of requirement.

		But this particular phrase has sort of created a little bit of
confusion.  So what we're going to plan to do is have a technical
amendment to explain what we mean here.  It's not meant to try to draw
the line necessarily between construction and general industry but more
to try to explain to people what our impetus was behind this particular
provision.  So really it's just for clarity's sake.

		Another electrical standard we have is working on Subpart V.   I mean,
typically, we sort of generically refer to it as Subpart V because most
of the work is going to cover the construction standard for electric
power generation, transmission, and distribution, but there is a small
part that's also general industry, dealing with maintenance under
1910.269.

		We proposed this back in '05, commenced hearings the next year, and
right now in our current reg. agenda, we're estimating final publication
some time spring of this year.

		We had to do a little bit of adjusting because in order to complete
our PPE standard, we had to pull somebody off of that standard out of
the Maritime Office to work on PPE and subsequently had to pull somebody
out of our Electrical Office into Maritime to backfill that.

		So we got a little bit, in terms of trying to cover all the different
work we had, we had a little bit of delay on that one.  So we might not
quite make that, but we're still working hard to make that date.

		The main things that this will cover are trying to address
communication issues between host employers and contract employers,
things to protect from electric arcs, both in terms of PPE as well as,
you know, laying out ways in which you would determine the energy in
certain systems, address minimum approach distances, fall protection for
employees working in aerial lifts, and also training to help them
understand how to determine the -- energies of different power lines
that they would be working on or around.

		Going to more sort of the health end, we have our work on hazard
communication where what we're trying to do now is -- the United States,
in particular individuals in OSHA have been heavily involved in getting
the globally harmonized system of classification of labeling of
chemicals, and so right now, the United States is at the point of
adopting this system.

		OSHA is one of those agencies, as well as EPA and CPSC have some work
there, too, but what we're working towards is a proposal that would
amend the current hazard communication standard to adopt this globally
harmonized system where we would be more in line with the way the rest
of the world classifies and labels chemicals.

		We had an ANPR last year or actually over a year ago now, and that
period, comment period, closed at the end of last year, and we just
completed the peer review of our economic analysis.  So we're moving
forward trying to get this done as quickly as possible.

		There was an international goal of adopting the hazard communication,
the GHS, by 2008, but we, as well as a number of other countries, are
finding that rather challenging.

		In particular, because, I mean, the hazard communication sounds very
ideal and it's a very simple concept in terms of, you know, trying to
get everybody to have the same sort of system to classify and label
chemicals so that everybody -- if you're going to cross countries, you
have sort of a unified way of identifying hazards and recognizing them
so that, you know, employees would have less confusion if they're seeing
labels coming from different countries.

		The complexity that's entered into it in OSHA is that, you know, we
have a number of different standards which use phrases like "flammable,"
"explosive," and things like that.  So we have to be very careful about
how we adopt these definitions because they can have the unintended
consequence of affecting another standard.

		For example, something like the process safety management standard
where you have a certain definition for reactive or something like that.
 You start changing the definition, you know, you might inadvertently
change the scope of, say, the PSM standard.

		So we have to be very careful and go through all the different
standards that have these sorts of definitions to figure out ways in
which it might impact those standards and ways in which we might lessen
that impact.

		Another standard that has some impacts in construction is our standard
on silica.  It's been around for a long time like a number of other
substances under the air contaminant standard.

		There's a fairly large amount of non-compliance with the existing
PELs.  There's a lot of complexity of this in terms of sampling and
whatnot.

		We did the SBREFA process a couple years ago, and now we've been in
the process of trying to pull together our health effects and risk
assessment to the point where we can get it peer reviewed.

		We were fairly well along in that process, but then OMB passed some
new guidelines about peer review, and so we had to sort of take a step
back in order to be in compliance with those guidelines, and we also
spent a fair amount of effort getting our conflict of interest form out
because when you go out and seek peer reviewers, you have to get their
conflict of interest, and if you get more than nine people that you're
requesting it from, OMB considers that a survey.

		So you have to actually have that form approved, and sort of the
approach we took on that, rather than just making it very specific to
silica, we thought it would be in our best interests to get this
conflict of interest form filled for any chemical that we might have
peer reviewed so that we wouldn't have to keep going back every time we
wanted to, you know, go and seek more than nine people to get their
input on a risk assessment.  So that took a little bit of time to get
that figured out.

		Beryllium, another substance that was adopted back in the early '70s.
It had some earlier work in 2002, both in terms of an RFI and some
safety and health hazard information bulletins, and most recently, we
completed our SBREFA review.

		We started that back in September, and the panel report was just
recently signed off by OMB.  So I think that panel report will be, if
not already, sent to the Assistant Secretary, and probably we(ll be able
to make that publicly available on the website.  Is that right, Sarah?

		MS. SHORTALL:  Yes, it was signed this week.  The report went to the
Assistant Secretary this week, and it will be put into the record for
the beryllium rulemaking.

		MS. EDENS:  We have another project that is now in its third phase and
it may even have a fourth or fifth phase, it's called the Standards
Improvement Process, and basically this effort all along is to try to
look at things that are sort of outdated, that might be duplicative, so
that it could be simpler for employers to understand, and so now we're
in our third phase.

		We published an ANPR in December of '06, and the proposal now is under
development.  It's going -- departmental review right now.

		Some of the issues that might be of concern in construction, (1)
there's an issue regarding posting of the requirements for the hazard
assessment that's required under the PPE standard.

		We're looking at updating our definition of potable water.  Also,
we're trying to clarify some of the triggers for medical surveillance
and exposure monitoring and making them more consistent for the lead
standard and also attempting to remove some redundant training
requirements under the comprehensive health standards.

		As you may know, we have sort of a hazard communication standard that
has an overarching training requirement, and then in a lot of existing
health standards, there's lots of different ways in which that training
requirement is explained.  So we're looking at some ways to sort of
harmonize those and make it simpler for employers who may have to comply
with a number of different standards.

		Hearing and conservation.  We did an ANPR a few years back, and then
we held a couple of different stakeholder meetings, and since that time,
we've been putting a fair amount of effort into going out and doing site
visits and doing some analyses to collect different kinds of programs
and to evaluate sort of the current practices out there and how
effective they are so that we could do sort of the necessary technologic
and economic feasibility assessments that we would need to do in order
to move this standard forward.

		And finally, just to mention this, I don't know how much it will have
in construction, but we did an RFI in September of last year regarding
emergency response and preparedness, and really this was sort of an
outgrowth of sort of 9/11, where we do have a lot of different sort of
emergency response requirements out there.

		We have HAZWOPER.  We have some requirements for emergency programs
and different standards and things of that nature, but now sort of the
nature of emergency response and preparedness has changed, and the way
people have to sort of respond to sort of the modern environment where
we have either things that are purposely done or sort of these things
like pan. flu and the nature that we really hadn't thought of in the
past, and so this effort is to sort of look at that in the new way we're
looking at emergency response and to get people's input on how OSHA
should best move forward dealing with these new sort of challenges in
the emergency response environment.

		Just a couple quick things on guidance.  I won't spend too much time
before I turn it over to John.

		I guess guidance now has been a new mission in our directorate for a
few years now, and we've been fairly productive.  I'm not going to go
through a lot of these right here, but we're finding it very challenging
and rewarding to get a different kind of spin on things, not just doing
regulations but doing some guidance projects, and we have a lot of
creative people at our directorate and have been fairly active in
putting some things out.

		In particular, we have the OSHA pan. flu guidance which we did as a
part of a larger federal effort.  This one right here is the general
one, and then our colleagues in the Directorate of Science, Technology,
and Medicine did a more specific one regarding healthcare.

		This just lists a few of the guidance products we have in development,
and I'll highlight the one at the bottom which we have come to this
committee before with this issue which is working with Portland cement.

		As you know, we did not include Portland cement under coverage of our
hexavalent chromium standard because we felt that there were existing
standards to address the particular hazard that comes with Portland
cement which is primarily from a dermal exposure.

		So partly as a result of just our own need to make sure that people
understood those standards and also as an outgrowth of some of the
settlement work that we did with the Building Construction Trades
Department, we had this - I don't know if it was a pamphlet or a
document, whatever you want to call it, it's going to be Working Safely
with Portland Cement.  This will address what the major hazards are as
well as clearly identify the standards that employers have, the
responsibilities they have under those existing standards with regards
to working safely with Portland cement.

		The silicon exposure document, that is now in OSHA clearance process.
So  hopefully that would not take too long and we could get it through
the department and have that out in not-too-distant future.

		And the ergonomics and shipyards, we actually published that a few
months back and got comments, and I don't think we got a whole lot of
criticism on that one.  So hopefully it shouldn't take too long to turn
around that document and get that out in a final.

		And with that, I will turn it over to John to let him complete, and
then we'll take the last five minutes or so for questions.

		MR. STEELNECK:  All right.  I am John Steelneck.  I'm the project
officer on OSHA's respirator standard.

		When the OSHA published its respirator standard in 1998, it contains
OSHA-accepted qualitative and quantitative fit test protocols in
Appendix A, but it also contains in Part 2 a way to get new fit testing
protocols approved by OSHA, basically by going through what's called
Section 6(b)(7) rulemaking, notice and comment rulemaking.

		Now the last time I was before the advisory committee here was to
present the abbreviated Bitrex NPRM.  That was in October of 2006.
Since then, it has gone through the system, has been approved, and it
was finally published in December 26th of 2007, and is out right now for
public comment.  Public comments on that are due February 25th, 2008,
and then we'll go forward and look at the comments and hopefully
finalize that.

		At the time I presented that before the advisory committee, I also
told them that we had just received the PortaCount.  The PortaCount is
the most widely-used qualitative, quantitative fit testing machine out
there.

		It's widely used for doing quantitative fit testing using the
PortaCount really, and I said that we would be coming to the next
advisory committee meeting to present that.

		Well, I'm now here.  History of the TSI, Inc., the manufacturer, the
one who manufactures and distributes the PortaCount, submitted their
peer-reviewed article to start their review system for an abbreviated
set of fit test protocols, two new protocols for use with the
PortaCount.

		This was published by Dr. Roy T. McKay, who's a researcher, works at
the University of Cincinnati, but he's also Chairman of the ANSI Z-8810
Fit Testing Subcommittee currently, and so he's very knowledgeable about
fit testing, and I think that's why they got him to do their testing for
them.

		There are two protocols.  Basically, one of them just does the exact
same protocol that OSHA has, but instead of using 60 seconds, a one
minute exercise, they cut the time in half to 30 seconds.  Then they
have a second protocol which has five exercises.  They eliminated two
exercises, deep breathing and the first normal breathing, which are both
where you don't really move your head a lot, and instead they did other
things to make it a tougher, more constrictive fit test.

		Basically, they raised the pass/fail criteria for the second protocol
from 100 to 200 for half mask and from 500 to a thousand for full face
pieces.  This is basically to eliminate the number of false-positives
that make it a more stricter fit test.  It provides a more conservative
fit test by raising the pass/fail criteria and that worked pretty well.

		That second fit test performed very well.  It actually showed up when
compared to the ANSI Z-8810 standard has and their Appendix A-2 a set of
criteria for evaluating new fit tests and for all the criteria, it
turned out very well.

		As you can see, basically here in the actual standard, proposed
standard that I distributed back here, there is -- they are in the
actual -- Page 11 is the actual values and you see for both half masks
and full face pieces, the Protocol Number 2 exceeded all of the ANSI
values.

		The Protocol Number 1, which is where they just reduced it to 30
seconds, has a problem in that the sensitivity was only 91 percent when
they really needed 95 percent.  That's a problem.  Basically, they have
a false-positive in the test, meaning for the quick test, somebody would
pass.  There's a chance that one person might pass that would fail with
the full 60-second OSHA test and that is a problem for us, but we're
proposing to put it out for public comment to see what comments we do
get on that from the general public.

		Okay.  We have invited comments basically on the accuracy and
reliability of the proposed protocols.  We ask a number of questions on
Page 15, as you can see, describing how do they look at the
peer-reviewed article, how well is it controlled, do they see problems,
what do they feel the problem is, especially with the one issue we have,
the 91 percent, and I think that will probably be a problem.

		The second protocol performed very well against the ANSI standard
criteria and that looks in much better shape, but we'll see what the
public comments are.

		Finally, once we've presented it here, this is a very short review,
and what will happen is after you folks have a chance to look at it and
make any comments, we will then proceed with the OSHA clearance process
here within OSHA before we send it to OMB, the same process we did with
the Bitrex fit test, after you saw that last time, and we will go
through and publish it in the Federal Register, hopefully some time
later this year, and that's what we're planning to do with the revised
PortaCount fit test method.

		Thanks.

		MS. EDENS:  I think that's all we have, unless you have some
questions.

		MR. MURPHY:  Amanda, Dan Murphy with Zurich.

		Amanda, hearing conservation in construction.  Have you begun to do
any research on what, if anything, is happening out there?

		MS. EDENS:  Well, yes.  I mean that is the purpose of our site visits,
is we have a contractor who's going out, surveying some of the sites
where they have hearing conservation programs in place, trying to
evaluate what kinds of things they have, what kinds of things they don't
have, and trying to see, you know, are they being effective, and so
we'll look at, you know, basically what we can collect from the
different places that we go and see if they are effective, if they're
not, and also to kind of get a baseline of sort of what is out there, so
that if we were to have, you know, a standard, it would help us to
assess, you know, how much more would people have to implement and what
would it take to get them up to a place that we feel would be adequate
in terms of our hearing conservation program.

		MR. MURPHY:  Okay.  Because it's a major issue in the construction
business.  We've had those discussions at this committee in the past,
and I guess if you need any assistance in trying to take a look at that,
please contact me because I have a great interest in trying to solve
that problem, but I'm not sure how to solve that problem, especially
from a medical monitoring perspective.

		MS. EDENS:  Thank you for that offer.

		MR. RUSSELL:  Yes, on hearing conservation, do you have any time table
or goals or next steps really clearly outlined as to where it's kind of
heading?

		MS. EDENS:  No.  Right now, the current step in the most current reg
agenda that just got published in December has it down as undetermined.
So, we don't have a next step plotted out at this point that's on our
agenda.

		MR. RUSSELL:  Could at least we, you know, think about some methods of
trying to define that, you know, so that it's not open, if you follow
what I'm saying?

		MS. EDENS:  Well, I think, you know, every -- at least twice a year,
we go through the different projects that we have on the reg agenda and
try to make some management choices about what the next steps are going
to be in terms of what we know, what resources we have and that.

		So, you know, the new agenda will come out in like April or May,
depending on how quick OMB gets all the different requirements together,
but we'll be going through that next cycle and we go through each of
these items.

		I mean, the best I can promise you is that we will look at that item
like we look at all the other items we have in trying to figure out what
our next step will be and that will be made, you know, in conjunction
with the Assistant Secretary and the department as well.

		MR. RUSSELL:  Thank you.

		MR. BEAUREGARD:  Amanda, Kevin Beauregard with the Department of
Labor, North Carolina.

		Can you expand or explain what went into the decision on the pay for
PPE in regards to logging boots?  I noticed that there is an exception
for logging boots.

		MS. EDENS:  Well, I'll make an attempt.  I mean, the best person,
Kevin, you heard Jim Maddux was at OSPA last week, and really take this
with me not -- I'm not sort of the expert on PPE, but there were already
some issues under the logging standard where they address the issue
about PPE in the logging standards and this rule was not trying to get
into that particular one.

		So, I think it really was a division of having two different rules and
trying to make them sort of consistent.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Kevin, in the 1994 Federal Register Notice announcing
the final rule for logging, there is a very large discussion for why
logging shoes were the one item that employers were not going to be
required to pay for.  For all other items of PPE that were required
under that standard, employers were specifically required to pay and it
was specified in the standard.

		So, if you want an exact cite, give me an e-mail and I'll send you the
explanation for it.

		MR. BEAUREGARD:  Okay.  Great.  Thank you.

		MS. EDENS:  Thanks, Sarah.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Amanda, Frank Migliaccio with the Ironworkers.  I
have a few things.

		When you were talking about the Portland Cement, you said that there
was a Working Safe with Portland Cement.  There's cards going to be out.
 Are they out yet?

		MS. EDENS:  No, they're not.  They are -- we had them.  They're pretty
much almost ready to be released.  It's not really a card.  It's going
to be -- I don't know how to best describe it.  I don't know if it's a
pamphlet is the best word.  It's not going to be like a little quick
card, though.

		It's cleared pretty much all of OSHA.  I guess we're trying to clear
up some issues about whether or not it needs to go to our departmental
clearance folks, and I think they said that that wasn't necessary.  So,
hopefully we can get that out pretty soon.

		The only step that might be taken now is to give it to our
communications people to make it pretty, so we have all the right
information, but we do like it to look nice as well.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  It would just be interesting to get some of those
cards and reproduce them ourselves.

		MS. EDENS:  Sure.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  The other one is you talk about the consensus
standard on the PPE.

		Is there any talk about taking the consensus standard with the
construction and general industry and maritime and putting it all
together as one?

		MS. EDENS:  I don't know.  I'd have to get back to you on that one.  I
don't know the answer to that.

		Sarah, do you?

		MS. SHORTALL:  That's another standard that I was working -- I have
been working on.

		This is sort of the first phase of a number of different things that
we're doing on some of the PPE standards.  So, it was decided to take it
sort of a step at a time with the idea and notion that, you know, based
on what we got for comments during the December 4th hearing, that would
give us the information we needed to also then thereafter address
construction, and we did have representatives from the construction
industry who did come to testify at that hearing.

		MR. MIGLIACCIO:  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Yes, sir?

		MR. RUSSELL:  Emmett Russell.  One last question.

		As it relates to silica, I know that's kind of a construction industry
and we may have a presentation from construction, is it appropriate to
ask that then or is it appropriate to ask now, you know, what's the
status of silica?

		MS. EDENS:  That's really in our directorate.  We're taking both of
those, unless Steve wants to answer.

		MR. WITT:  As the former director of Standards and Guidance, I think
that would be appropriate for Amanda to answer.

		MR. St. AMOUR:  Right now, the reg agenda has it down as the peer
review being completed in January.  Since we haven't started it, I'm
fairly certain that it won't be completed in the next five days.

		So, I mean, what we're doing now is it's cleared some of our SOL
attorneys or not cleared but we're working out just some of the last
comments and hopefully we'll be taking it down to the Assistant
Secretary and  he can decide sort of the timing on that one.

		So, I don't know.  What more specific did you want?  That's the next
step, is in the reg agenda, just to complete the peer review of the
health effects and the risk assessment.  So, we haven't really projected
the date beyond that particular step at this point.

		MR. RUSSELL:  But it's definitely still in the process of moving
forward?

		MS. EDENS:  Yes.

		MR. RUSSELL:  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Other questions or comments?  Yes, sir?

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Dan Zarletti from Kennett Construction.  I wanted to
just ask a question on Subpart V.

		Does April '08 sound like a firm, still a firm date, and who will be
the key person to contact?

		MS. EDENS:  The key person working on that is Dave Wallace.  He's the
office director in Office of Engineering Safety where that project
resides.

		As I mentioned before, Dave has had to do some double duty because
we've had to do a little bit of personnel shifting in order to meet the
deadline we had for the PPE standard.  One of the experts on that was in
another office and Dave sort of had to do some double duty.  So, he had
to do that.

		The deadline on that probably might slip a couple months, but it
shouldn't be too far.  We're fairly well down the road on that, unless
something unexpected, you know, were to come up because we did complete
the hearings and we have staff working on it, but I can never predict
when something will happen and, you know, you have to reopen the record
or something like that.

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Right.  But is there anything in print now as a draft?

		MS. EDENS:  No.  The only thing that's out there would be the
proposal.

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you.  Other comments by anyone that hasn't spoken?

		(No response.)

		MR. SMITH:  Amanda, we thank you very much for your presentation and
for your time here before the committee this morning.

		MS. EDENS:  You're welcome.

		MR. SMITH:  Is our next presenter  here, the Directorate of Science,
Technology, and Medicine?  Okay.  If you would come forward and get your
presentation ready, we would appreciate it.

		Okay.  We thank Ruth for coming this morning, Ruth McCully, and look
forward to her presentation and she's going to be talking about the OSHA
National Response Plan, I believe.

		MS. McCULLY:  Right.

		MR. SMITH:  And we'll turn it over to you at this time and thank you
so much.

		MS. McCULLY:  Well, thank you.  I have some handouts.

		MR. SMITH:  Do you have a PowerPoint?

		MS. McCULLY:  I do not have a PowerPoint.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Good.  I can sit here then.

		MS. McCULLY:  You can.

OSHA's Role in National Response Plan

		MS. McCULLY:  I'm Ruth McCully, and I'm Director of the Directorate of
Science, Technology, and Medicine in OSHA, and what I've been asked to
go over with you all today is the National Response Plan, and actually
we don't have a national response plan anymore.  It's called the
National Response Framework  and what is being distributed is materials.

		The National Response Framework was rolled out on Tuesday at the
National Press Club.  The Secretary of Homeland Security, along with a
number of other secretaries and assistant secretaries, our Assistant
Secretary was there, rolled out this new National Response Framework and
so the materials that you have that are going around are the press
release.  There's a Q&A document and then, you know, What's New in the
National Response Framework.

		Then there is a -- I have the color version, you all do not, but it's
another handout that is called Introducing the National Response
Framework, and this introduces you to a center which will be on the
Internet that you can go to.  It will be updated periodically with
documents that are relevant to the National Response Framework.

		So, my goal today is to really go over with you what is this new
document, the National Response Framework, how does it differ from the
National Response Plan, what does it mean to us, and in particular to go
over the revised Worker Safety and Health Support Annex because that has
gone through a number of revisions, and one of the handouts that has
gone around is the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex to the
National Response Framework.

		All right.  So that's the goal, and then after that, if there are any
other questions related to the directorate, I'd be happy to take them.

		This was a process that was a long time coming.  Just to set the
stage, prior to 9/11, the country had four response plans, basically.
It had the Federal Response Plan which is probably what the states and
locals are most familiar with.  It gets activated if there's a natural
disaster.

		There was a Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan for
radiological events.  There was a Con Plan which was for terrorist
events, and there was a National Contingency Plan for major spills that
came out of basically the Oil Spill Act that was passed by Congress.

		After 9/11, one of the lessons learned was the country needs one plan.
 So, they did away with those plans and we came up with the National
Response Plan.

		The National Response Plan was basically the country's largest MOU.
It was signed by every single secretary, including some private sector
organizations, the American Red Cross, for example, and this document
was signed in 2004, went into effect in April 2005.

		We were rolling it out through the end of June of 2005 and then we had
Hurricane Katrina, the country's largest natural disaster, and we never
really had an opportunity to really exercise the National Response Plan,
but as a result of that, one of the reports that came out, really the
lessons learned from Katrina was the National Response Plan wasn't
working.  It was too big.  It was a very thick document.  It was too
much to get through.  It wasn't flexible enough, and as a result, the
country really needed a framework instead of a plan that was too
dictatorial, I guess might be the best word.

		So, the idea to come up with a National Response Framework really came
out of the White House Lessons Learned Report on Katrina.

		The process for this started a year ago.  About a year ago, work
groups were established to say how can we redo this document in a way
that will be most useful to the users and that's not necessarily the
Federal Government.

		All response is local.  So, how do we come up with a framework that
includes the  local entities, the states, but also talks about how the
Federal Government can assist in those types of situations?

		There were a number of work groups that were established.  There were
about 400 people who participated in work groups in the development of
the National Response Framework, and the Response Framework was sent out
for comment in September of 2007.

		So, it's basically a document that focuses on response as compared to
the National Response Plan that focused on planning, preparedness,
prevention, response and recovery.  It does have sections on planning,
it does have sections on recovery, but the main emphasis of the National
Response Framework is response.

		What are the organizations, what are the coordinating structures at
the local level and the federal level that are going to be engaged in
response?  It really lays out how the states will function, how the
locals will function, and then how the Federal Government will function.

		It follow the incident command system.  The incident command system is
the language of response and that was one of the items that was really
kind of lacking in the National Response Plan.

		So, the National Response Plan makes sure that the incident command
system is integrated into this framework.  It relies on another document
which is called the National Incident Management System which really
lays out the structures and how locals, states and Feds will respond in
an incident command structure type of organization.

		It also says, for example, that the National Response Framework is in
effect always.  In the past, the National Response Plan, for example,
had to be implemented by the Secretary of Homeland Security.  This is
saying that the National Response Framework is always in effect.
There's other mechanisms for calling in different organizations, if
needed.

		So, it's a tool that is really geared for senior officials, federal
officials, and senior officials at the state and local levels.   It also
addresses tribal entities as well.

		It's a document that is geared to be scalable, depending upon the size
of the event that's being responded to, and it also includes -- it's a
base document that's relatively short.  It's about 60 pages, which is
nice compared to what the regular one was, and it is also supplemented
by emergency support function annexes, support annexes, and incident
annexes.

		You will see, for example, that there are some things that have been
eliminated from the document.  For example, it goes into more -- let me
make sure -- I want to make sure I've got this right.

		It really defines the whole notion of what a Principal Federal
Official is.  There was a lot of concern about that.  A Principal
Federal Official will be appointed by the Department of Homeland
Security if you have a large event, but for most events, it's really
going to rely on a federal coordinating official which is appointed by
FEMA.

		A little bit about the background in establishing this is that we
received a number of comments, which I'm trying to find right now.  Here
they are.  Just bear with me a minute.

		All right.  We received a number of comments.  A total of 5,700
comments were received on the National Response Framework and on the
annexes.  The National Response Framework was put out for comment in
September, the annexes were put out for comment in November.

		So, we had over 300 entities that commented and over 5,700 comments
that had to be resolved, and it was a pretty aggressive schedule that we
were all put on to try to resolve those types of comments.

		As I mentioned, there's an NRF Resource Center and that's in one of
the handouts that you have.  I have been on it.  I tested it.  It's
user-friendly.  It's intuitive.  You can go to it pretty easily and get
to different documents, and I would suggest if you have an emergency
response person in your organization, you make them familiar with this
because this is going to be something that, as changes come up, they're
going to be reflected on that National Response Framework, on the
National Resource Center.

		Why this is important is they make the point, particularly in the
cases of the annexes, is that these are living documents and they can be
changed at any time.  There isn't going to be a type of -- it makes it
appear that there won't be a situation where they're going to say, okay,
we want to now make changes to the National Response Framework.  This is
the process.  They can take any of these annexes at any time and make
changes to them.  So, it really is going to be a dynamic type of
situation.

		There will be an aggressive training program that is going to go along
with the National Response Framework.  There is going to be awareness
training for emergency support functions that is scheduled for mid
March.  Awareness training for support annexes is also scheduled for
March, and the incident annex training is scheduled for April.

		They're also planning to have position-specific training, and why this
is relevant to us in particular is that in this framework, it specifies
a safety officer and a safety function.  So, we want to make sure that
we're involved and for that position-specific training to make sure that
that safety function training addresses the issues that it needs to
address for emergency response and preparedness.

		Some of the things that are new in the Response Framework.  We've done
away with some of our teams.  We no longer have emergency response
teams.  We now have incident management assist teams, basically the same
thing, a new name, a new acronym.

		My experience in the emergency response world over the past seven
years is if you don't like that acronym, just wait awhile, it'll change.
 Half of it is just trying to keep up with the acronyms.

		The other changes that you'll see that are probably most relevant,
ESF-6 is no longer being taken care of by American Red Cross.  The
American Red Cross is no longer the primary agency.  That's been taken
over by DHS-FEMA.  That's the one for mass care, emergency assistance
and housing and human services.

		There's been a collapsing of some ESFs.  After Hurricane Katrina and
with household pets and animals, there was a real concern about people
being separated from their pets.  Pets are family members and for some
individuals, it may be really the only family that they have and it's
important that their pets and them stay together.

		So, for ESF-11, for agriculture and natural resources, a primary
function of safety and well being of household pets has been added to
that function to make sure that pets are not separated from their family
members.

		There's a new annex that has a support annex that has been
implemented.  There's been considerable work going on over the past
couple years over at DHS on critical infrastructure and key resources,
and these are really private sector entities.

		We're talking about utilities.  We're talking about chemical
industries, so forth, and so there's a new support annex that details
processes to ensure the coordination and integration of these critical
infrastructure and key resources.

		If there's a major disaster going on, we want to make sure that those
issues are addressed and that those critical infrastructures are
maintained and continues to function.  So that's been elevated.

		There is also an incident annex that has been added on mass evacuation
and clearly that's one of the lessons learned from Katrina, is how we
effectively do mass evacuations.

		In the past two hurricane seasons since Katrina, there's been
considerable -- there have been exercises that have been done and a lot
of focus on mass evacuations and so now with the National Response
Framework, there is an incident annex that deals specifically with mass
evacuations, so we don't end up with a situation like we had with
Katrina where, in the middle of a flood, you're trying to evacuate
hundreds of thousands of people.

		Probably one of the issues that people are most concerned about in
this meeting is the worker safety and health support annex.

		As you know, the Department of Labor put forward a recommendation that
the worker safety and health support annex be elevated to an emergency
support function rather than a support annex, and this got -- and
Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke presented the case for elevating it to an
emergency support function.

		However, when it was heard, the decision was made by the Interagency
Community that it remain as a support annex rather than an emergency
support function.

		This process was overseen by both the Department of Homeland Security
and an interagency work group called basically the Domestic Readiness
Group which is made up of assistant secretaries across the Federal
Government, so it's an interagency group, and they viewed the worker
safety and health support annex as an annex that should be called up
basically whenever there's any type of disaster.

		There are workers who are involved, health and safety of those workers
needs to be ensured, and so it's an annex that plays a role in any of
those entities.

		Now, in the process of doing that, we have redrafted the worker safety
and health support annex, and this is based on our lessons learned from
Hurricane Katrina as well as input that we received from the GAO and
their findings in the GAO report, and what I'd like to do is go over
what some of them are here, kind of walk you through just some high
points of this document.

		First thing that you can see is in the Scope, the second bullet there,
is that it's very clear that this annex is structured to provide
technical assistance and support for response and recovery worker safety
and health and this really lays out the types of activities that you can
find as a result of this support annex.

		For example, the activities within the scope of this support annex
will include the development of health and safety plans, identifying and
doing assessment of health and safety hazards, conducting exposure
monitoring, collecting and managing data, providing technical assistance
and support for PPE programs, incident-specific response and recovery
worker training, medical surveillance, providing exposure and risk
management information, and providing technical assistance in the form
of assistance relative to industrial hygiene, occupational safety and
health, engineering and occupational medicine.

		So, the scope kind of lays out what are the specific types of
activities, resources, that will be provided by this annex.

		The annex clearly lays out, for example, under the Organization on
Page 2, that the annex operates under the direction and leadership of
the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health.  So,
DOL-OSHA is the coordinating agency for this and the Assistant Secretary
basically leads the direction of this annex.

		At the local field level, the OSHA Regional Administrator is the
regional leader for the annex.

		One of the questions that came up, for example, is what is the
breakdown between what the worker safety and health annex would be
responsible for and what FEMA would be responsible for, and on Page 3,
you'll find that that is covered, and on the top of Page 3, it talks
about within the joint field office, FEMA is responsible for the safety
and health of its own employees as well as the safety and health of
staff in FEMA-managed facilities.

		This annex is responsible for the safety and health of all other
workers, if it's implemented, and so the coordinator, the representative
of the coordinating agency of this annex, would report directly to the
FCO, the federal coordinating official, and would report on safety and
health issues relative to response and recovery workers beyond the FEMA
jurisdiction.

		In the initial actions at the bottom of Page 3, this is new to
annexes, it will talk about, for example, that within two hours of
notification, the OSHA Assistant Secretary will ensure that all DOL-OSHA
parties are fully informed, that it will alert cooperating agencies, and
that we will send representatives over to the National Response
Coordinating Center, which is housed over at FEMA Headquarters.

		At the local level, the regional administrator will assume control for
operations of this annex in the field and will staff the regional
response coordination center.

		So, we didn't have this in the past.  We now have seats at the two
major coordinating centers, both at the national and at the regional
level, to address worker safety and health issues during a response and
that is new.  That didn't exist before.

		In incident-related actions, within two hours of being notified as the
coordinating agency, we will convene, probably through a conference
call, a meeting of the appropriate agency representatives of our
cooperating agencies, and on the front page of the document, it lists
the cooperating agencies.

		These include the Department of Defense, specifically the Coast Guard,
the Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, which
includes NIOSH and Federal Occupational Health.  We will also include
the Department of Homeland Security and that specifically is FEMA as
well as the other cooperating agencies, EPA.

		So, we will look to all of our cooperating agencies for assistance.  I
left one out.  Department of Health and Human Services, this is a key
player for us, is the National Institute for Environmental Health
Sciences.  They are a key player for us, particularly in the demands
that come for training of workers.

		All right.  Under the Incident-Related Actions, rather than having a
menu like we did last time, we tried to group that and you'll see that
the incident-related actions that we have include worker safety and
health needs assessment, which will include monitoring as well as
observation of safety hazards, the development of health and safety
plans, safety and health assessment ongoing monitoring, personal
protective equipment, depending upon the event.

		We will assist in the monitoring and/or providing information and
technical assistance for PPE programs, including the selection, use and
decon of PPE, and in coordination with FEMA and ESF-7, we will work with
them on the logistics to make sure that if PPE is needed, it's being
purchased and it's being delivered to where it needs to be delivered.

		We'll also focus on data management which, as you know, in an event
can be its own type of difficult situation to deal with to get that type
of injury and illness data from federal agencies and from private sector
entities.

		Training and communication is always key and we will start work -- and
we usually rely on NIEHS.  They have the master trainers and we use them
to put basically just-in-time training together for those response and
recovery workers.

		We will work with ESF-8, which is HHS is the lead agency for that, on
worker health and medical surveillance and we have our staff of
occupational physicians who have worked with HHS in the past in doing
those types of situations, doing that type of work.

		And then in the area of psychological resiliency, we will continue to
work with HHS, Federal Occupational Health, in the Substance Abuse
Mental Health Services Administration, to address psychological
resiliency during emergency response.

		So, as the last few pages of this document then list the
responsibilities of the coordinating agency, that being DOL-OSHA, as
well as the cooperating agencies and for each cooperating agency, it
gives a summary of what the functions of that organization would be
during emergency response.

		The other change that comes about in this is that established at the
joint field office is an Interagency Safety and Health Committee that's
made up of representatives of the federal agencies that are representing
the emergency support functions in the joint field office and we would
chair that Interagency Safety and Health Committee.

		What we found in Katrina, for example, that committee met daily in the
early days.  It continued to meet during that 12-month response recovery
period, although it ended up at the end meeting once a week, but we
would basically be involved and that's where you really get to share the
information of what hazards are being seen, getting information out
there as far as changing requirements for PPE or changing requirements
for controls.  So that Interagency Safety and Health Committee is an
important communication tool during response activities.

		So that is a summary of the new National Response Framework.  I really
do urge you to take a look at the website and you can download the
information and have your own personal copy.

		This has not been published in the Federal Register yet.  Once it's
published in the Federal Register, it will become effective 60 days
after publication in the Federal Register.

		MR. SMITH:  Thank you very much, Ruth.

		Are there any questions or comments for Ruth while our next
presenter's coming forward and getting ready?  Yes, sir?

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Yes, Ruth.  This is Dan Zarletti from Kennett
Construction.

		You mentioned training that's coming up in March and April.  Is that
on the website, information about where and when?

		MS. McCULLY:  I don't know.  I mean, this is just information that I
just received yesterday.  So, as we get information on training, I'd be
happy to send that over to Steve Witt and he can send it out to you all.

		MR. ZARLETTI:  Thank you.

		MR. SMITH:  Thomas?

		MR. KAVICKY:  Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

		Ruth, Tom Kavicky, Carpenters Union out of Chicago.

		As we all know, Ruth, OSHA was heavily criticized during the World
Trade Center and Katrina for not enforcing standards.

		Does the annex account for that?  How is OSHA going to enforce those
standards or are they in the future responses?

		MS. McCULLY:  That's really covered under a directive that we have for
the agency, and the directive is -- basically, it's our National
Emergency Management Plan, and during -- although it does away with --
although the National Response Framework does away with the term
"incident of national significance," if there's a large-scale incident
and, for example, the annex is implemented, initially that response will
be a technical assistance response rather than an enforcement response.

		And the decision to go -- to return to enforcement will be made in
consultation between the regional administrator and the Assistant
Secretary, and we have looked at the different types of approaches that
we can take to work out those issues as far as enforcement versus
technical assistance.

		But in the early days, when we're in a response and we're talking
about a large-scale disaster response and recovery, we would be
operating in a technical assistance mode.

		Now, as things change during that event, as things start to return to
normal, if there are situations where you have basically a resistance to
putting in the corrections that we are asking to be put in, then the
agency can look at the use of the enforcement tool in those particular
situations.

		So, it's not a black and white answer at this point.  It's really on a
case by case basis.

		MR. BEAUREGARD:  Just real briefly.  Can you go over the interaction
with specifically state plan, OSHA states, when you implement or when
the annex is implemented?

		Particularly, this kind of follows on the question that was just
asked, is that in state plans, if enforcement is necessary, the state
plan states actually have jurisdiction over local and state emergency
responders, fire departments, paramedics.

		In OSHA-regulated states, there's no enforcement ability over those.
So, how do you plan on interacting with the states and coordinating
within state plan states?

		MS. McCULLY:  Well, the regional administrators have been given
direction by the Assistant Secretary and past assistant secretaries to
coordinate with the state plan states and what we have found in both
real world, whether it be the Minnesota bridge collapse or in exercises,
for example, we just completed a top-up exercise in Oregon, is that
we've been able to basically put forth to the world one OSHA and, you
know, when we go into those situations, the state plan does have
jurisdiction in those areas and we're there and we pretty much provide
assistance to that state plan who often doesn't have the same depth and
volume of resources that we have.

		What we have experienced is we haven't found that to be a problem and
that in both exercises and in the real world, when you're working within
this command structure, certainly at the local level, the fire tends to
be the incident commander.  So, you're working with them and they're
paying attention to what you're requiring and I think you'll hear with
the Minnesota bridge collapse, for example, they used a very innovative
technique on daily checking on what the requirements were, and I think
you'll hear a story as to how that worked very effectively.

		But it is all working together.  I mean that's the thing with an
emergency, is making sure that we're all working together.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Thank you very much, Ruth, for your time.
Appreciate that.

		We're ready for our next presenter.  It will be our last presentation
before lunch.

		OSHA's Structural Response Team, Mohammad Ayub, I think.  Mohammad,
are you ready?

		MR. AYUB:  Yes, I think we need to turn on the computer.

		MR. BUCHET:  If there's anything wrong, it's my fault.

OSHA's Structural Response Team

		MR. AYUB:  I think for the next one half hour, I'm going to walk you
through some of the actual construction collapses that we have gone out
to help in the enforcement mode.

		From 1 to 2 o'clock today in the afternoon, you are going to hear
about the Minnesota bridge collapse.  So, I'm not going to deal with
that collapse now and I'm not going to steal the show.  So, they will be
here at 1 o'clock and they are going to talk about that.

		Before I proceed, I just wanted you to know as to who are the members
of the National Structural Collapse Team.  It's now coming up, I
believe.  Okay.

		This team right now comprises six people and they have been drawn from
National Office and here you are.  We are going to add at least two more
members soon in the team and this team in theory, it is only in action
when the Assistant Secretary activates the National Emergency Plan, but
in the case of a normal construction collapse, we can also draw some
assistance from the team.

		I'm just now waiting for the slide to show up there.

		MR. THIBODEAUX:  Keep going.

		MR. AYUB:  Okay.  This team, while the National Emergency Plan has not
been activated, it goes through training, one week of training goes
through in classroom environment and one week of training goes out in
the field, and the third week of the training is kind of a cross
training between  the full team that we have because in the case of a
collapse of a nuclear power plant, you might imagine that there will be
radiation, there will be some chemical.

		So, there is a need for the full team to act together.  That's why we
have a cross training between the full teams.

		Next slide, please.  Okay.  These are the members of our Structural
Response Team, and as I said earlier, we are going to add two more
members soon.

		Number 1 and Number 2 are by training, education and experience as
chemical engineers and from 3 to 6, they are construction safety
specialists and they have varied training in the disasters in the
cranes, in all sorts of activities there.

		Now, if you go to the Slide Number 3, this is what is one of the
primary functions that you'll see, is to provide engineering assistance
to the field in case of the major collapses.

		This slide should not be confused with the earlier slide because this
slide is active all the time 24/7.  Any time there is a collapse, in
Jacksonville, Atlanta, New York, the RA is going to call the director of
the DOC and they will come to some agreement  that yes, there is need
for some engineering help and we will provide that help.

		In this slide, we are into the enforcement mode.  In Slide Number 2,
we were only in the technical assistance mode.  So, in this slide, we
will provide them engineering assistance.  We will write a report to
tell what was the cause of the collapse and we will also discuss whether
or not there was violations of the OSHA standards or violation of the
industry standards.

		When we go out there, we have three objectives in our mind.  The first
objective is that the part of the structure that has already collapsed,
it remains stable, there are no further collapses, and the part of the
structure that has not collapsed, it is braced, it is shored, such that
there are no unplanned collapses.

		Number 2.  We have an objective to find out whether or not any of the
OSHA standards or any of the industry standards have been violated, and
the third objective is to find the cause of the collapse.

		Can we go to the next slide, please?  I'm going to walk you through
some of the recent collapses that we have gone out in the field to help
the RA here and area office.

		One thing I would like to share with you, that based upon our 65
investigations that we have conducted so far of the immediate collapses,
15 to 20 percent of them are caused by the structural design flaw.  It's
not the fault of the contractor.  It was the manner in which it was
designed.

		For example, Tropicana Garage collapse in Atlantic City.  You will
also know about the Jacksonville, Florida, garage collapse.  Light Tower
in Atlanta, a major sign in Georgia, which you see if you are driving
I-95, there's a huge sign, that sign collapsed and killed three
employees.

		There was a steel chimney in Austin, Texas, and that failed.  Just to
give you a few examples, that about 15 to 20 percent of the collapses
take place because the structural engineer did not design the structure
properly as per the described codes.

		The first major incident I'd like to run by you is the Jacksonville,
Florida, garage collapse.  It was a five-story poured-in-place garage
and on December 6th in the morning at about 6 o'clock, they were pouring
the roof slab.  That was the last to be poured and -- can you activate
that?

		This is a five-story poured-in-place garage.  It is a one-bay
post-tension slab with slopes in the roof and also one-bay post-tension
beams and that green area is the area that was being poured on December
6th.

		As they had started pouring concrete at about 12:30 a.m. in the
morning and they worked four hours, except the two bays on the south,
the entire garage collapsed.

		The contractor was from Atlanta, Georgia, and we are finding -- we are
not there yet.  We have not yet concluded our findings, but it seems
that there are some major structural design flaws and also the fact that
the amount of reshoring was not enough.  He had only shored one level
and two levels of reshoring, even though the shop drawings said the
shoring calls for the reshores be placed up to the ground floor.

		Now, the next slide is going to show you the manner in which it was
collapsed.  The last two bays that you see on the south did not fail but
all the other five bays failed and as I said earlier, one of our prime
functions is to make sure that the area of the building which has not
collapsed, it remains stable, and we determined at the site that even
though it had not collapsed, it is in danger of collapse, and the basis
of that was that it is a one-bay post-tension slab and all the cables
have lost their inner strength.  It had become loose, therefore those
slabs had no strength in them, and we asked the contractor that no one
should be allowed to go underneath those two bays that have not failed.
The contractor might have decided that he is going to demolish that,
too.

		So, one more thing I would like to share with you, that by statute, we
have only six months time in which we have to conclude everything.  So,
from the date of the incident, we have -- I mean the DOC has about four
months in order to write a report, in order to conclude the findings, in
order to write the basis and to find out as to what was the cause of the
collapse.

		In four months, you will find that some of the evidence are not out
there yet.  For example, in this case here, until today, the debris have
not even been removed.  So, we don't know where the shores, where were
the reshores.  We have no benefit of any test data on the strength of
the concrete.

		So, we work under a big constraint here, but our citations are not
based upon the cause of the collapse.  Our citations are based upon
whether or not any standards have been violated, but some of the
information comes out way later, like eight months or one year after the
collapse.

		The next incident which was a major incident of the Tropicana Garage
Collapse that killed four garage employees and until last night that was
the largest construction settlement, $101 million, but last night in
Boston, due to the Big Dig at the airport, the settlement, I heard, was
about $450 million.  So now it is no longer the largest construction
settlement here.

		This is a very interesting case here and as I said earlier, part of
the reason that the garage collapsed was the structural design flaw.

		It was a very unique system that they had here.  I don't know how many
of you have heard the word "filigree."  There was a filigree panel here.
 It is a two-inch thick precast concrete slab that acts as a form work
for the poured-in-place concrete and it also becomes a part of the
permanent slab.

		That is the system that was used here.  It's not very popular in all
parts of the country, but at least in New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, it is fairly popular here.

		So, this is a garage here.  It was an eight-story garage and on
October 30th, while the seventh floor was being poured here, we can see
the filigree slab and the filigree beam and the shores here and while
the sixth -- I'm not sure whether it was the sixth floor or the seventh
floor.

		It was being poured and the exterior bay, which was about 60 feet
wide, it collapsed from the seventh floor up to the fourth floor here.

		Here you see the duration of the deflection of the slabs and those are
the shores and those are the reshores and there was a big contention of
the contractor that he was not required to extend the reshoring up to
the first floor.

		We'll see in this kind of animation that the reshoring and the shoring
was only for three levels and the problem was essentially in the beam
column joint in the exterior.  The beam was much wider and the column
was very narrow.

		For example, the column was only 12 inches wide and on that narrow
column, a 48-inch beam was going to rest on.  Loading that column in a
very eccentric manner here.  Outside is the collapsed here area.

		Can you go to the end?  Okay.  You'll see here that was the floor at
the top.  That was in whole and ACI, which is the Concrete Institute
that says that you have to take a 50 pound per square foot as the load
of the construction load that will account for the people that are
standing on that floor and some of the equipment, and as you can see,
there was only one level of shore and two level of reshore and why that
was being poured, the slabs, exterior beams, and the columns failed.

		One of our primary functions was to ensure that those bays which have
not failed remain stable.  So, we worked with the contractor and we came
up with a plan as to shore them and guide those columns and brace those
columns so that there's no other failures.

		There was also a shear wall here that was freely standing about 80
feet without any support of floors.  Even though it did appear to be in
danger, but when we ran the computations, we found that it is in no
danger.  It can take a wind speed of up to 110 miles an hour.

		So, when we go out there, we have to keep in mind that those parts of
the structures which have not failed, there's no unplanned collapse of
those structures.

		One of the recent incidents that we had was in U.S. 90 in Mississippi.
 The old bridge was destroyed by the Katrina storm and they were
building a new bridge about 20-40 feet east of the old bridge, and one
of the big bridge piers, it is 12 feet wide, six feet long, 39 feet
high, it was being pulled.

		Can you go to the next slide?  And while it was being pulled, the form
work that you see in the bay, it's now 12 X 6 and the thing that you are
seeing are the rebar which went into the foundation and as they were
coming up pouring the concrete into the form work, they had almost gone
up to the required height and the entire form work collapsed and it
killed two of the employees.

		When we did the investigation, we found that the reason was two
reasons.  One, that the rate of pouring was too high.  They were pouring
nine feet per hour.  You can imagine at what speed it was being poured
because the area of the bridge pier is 12 feet by six feet.

		We also found that the concrete had superelasticizer and it also had a
retarder.  When you have a retarder in the concrete, the setting time is
quite increased. Instead of having an initial setting time in about one
half hour, it is going to set in three hours, in four hours.

		So, all this much concrete coming up into the form work, it applied a
lot of direct pressure on the form work and the form work was not
designed for the pressure of the fluid concrete.

		Next slide.  This is Peachtree in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was an
elevator shaft being poured and the form work being built and the reason
was that they had made the elevator door opening taller.  When they made
the elevator door opening taller, the beam which was embedded in the
concrete did not have enough meat below the insert and because it didn't
have enough concrete below the insert, the entire concrete dropped off
and it failed and it killed a couple of people.

		In Virgin Islands, -- oh, by the way, we also exchange engineering
assistance to State OSHA plan, if they need it.  They need to ask us and
if we believe that, yes, there is a need to exchange the engineering
assistance to them, we will do that.  We have helped in Virginia,
Portland, Oregon, Minnesota, and some other places here.

		This was a very huge manmade landslide.  They were trying to build a
parking lot and they compacted the slope too steep and when we conducted
a stability analysis, we found that the angle of repose was too great.

		Can you show that?  This is the area of the manmade landslide.  Any
time when you are told about the landslide, we are always reminded of
the nature of landslides.  It's usually caused by nature, but this was a
manmade landslide.

		Next one, please.  Oh, this is a major area of concern for us.  Can
you show?  These are the roof trusses and we are finding more and more
that the roof trusses are collapsing when you build a church, when you
build an auditorium or when you build a large span structure.

		This is a restaurant which was being built.  I think it was a
restaurant or perhaps an office building.  Any time you have a span of
the roof trusses greater than 90 feet, there is a problem.

		According to the Truss Plate Institute, you have to have a
professional engineer design for you a bracing plan as to how these
trusses will be braced.  They need to be braced at the top core, the
bottom core, and the diagonal.

		But most truss erectors of these projects are very small-size
erectors.  They are like, I mean, son and father or like three people
and four people and they just are confident that if they can do an
erection of  a 12-feet truss, why can't they do the erection of a
90-feet long truss?

		These we are finding almost everywhere in Atlanta, in New Jersey, in
Philadelphia, in New York.  So, what we are going to do right now is
that we are right now working with the Truss Plate Institute and some of
the leading designers of the trusses, like Mitek, and we are going to
hold a seminar at certain places.  It's not yet final, but we are still
working on it.

		But the main problem is how to bring these contractors in the hall
because they are so small in size that there's not a good record of
them.  So, we are working with the Carpenter's Union and we will also
work with some other unions in the Eastern United States so that OSHA,
along with the Truss Plate Institute and also along with the major
designers of the trusses, we can at least hold some seminars so that we
can focus on the need that if you have the long wooden trusses, there
should be a flag.  You need to brace them properly.

		In this case, not only were the trusses not braced properly, they also
placed on the top of the truss 2 X 4 and 2 X 6 and 2 X 8 bundles on them
and that load was such that it failed the trusses.

		These trusses are very light trusses and they will only gain the
strength if you have the plywood on the top because those members are
the compression members and they will only gain the strength if you have
the plywood at the top.  If there's no sheathing at the top, it has very
little  strength.

		It is in our backyard here.  It was an office building and one day, we
held a  big promotion and a big roof collapse took place there.  The
whole roof of a 22-story building and the entire floor shoring collapsed
on the floor and when we did the analysis, we found that the shores were
not done properly and also there was space shoring that was placed on
this floor that was not meant to be placed on the floor.

		This was for the floors below and there has never been any design for
the shoring for that ever.  Why?  Because there was an upset beam there.
 I mean, it was like a 12-feet wide 18-inch deep upset beam and for that
heavy load, the contractor never ever asked the shoring supplier to come
up with a shoring plan, and even though there was an inspector there
hired by the owner, there was an inspector by the county and when we
talked to them, they said that this floor had the same shoring plan that
was meant for the floors below can also be used here at the roof, even
though on the plan, it says that this drawing is meant only for floors
and not for roof.

		So, the inspector was there and in spite of the fact that at times,
you have the inspector hired by the owner, you have inspector by some
other people and still the problems come up here.

		Okay.  So, because of the time frame, I had only presented to you a
few of the major incidents that we had gone out in the field to help.

		This is primarily a DOC activity and as I said earlier, one of the
primary functions of the DOC is to provide engineering assistance to the
field, to go out to the field and help the area office.

		If you have any questions to ask on any of the incidents or if you
have a general question, I will be glad to answer them.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.

		MR. GILLEN:  Thanks.  That was a terrific presentation.  Enjoyed it.

		I just wanted to say that from NIOSH's perspective, we would be
interested in hearing from your investigations if you uncover what you
think is a good research topic, an engineering-related research topic.
We'd be interested in hearing that.

		I was wondering, also, it might be something for the DOC to think
about, is in cases where you find that perhaps a new type of
construction method perhaps isn't really adequately addressed by current
regulation, is there something where there might be a need for thinking
about how to address these types of problems in the future, it would be
useful to hear more about that or get your recommendations in those
regards as well.

		MR. AYUB:  Okay.  Most of our investigation reports are on the OSHA
Intranet, not on Internet.  They are on the OSHA Intranet.  So, you have
access to that. NIOSH?  No?

		MR. GILLEN:  No.

		MR. AYUB:  Okay.  We will be glad to provide you with copies of our
reports here, but based upon my experience here, 99 percent of the
collapses take place not because of very big mistakes done by the
contractor but from very simple blunders, simple blunders, and when
there's a need to get engineering assistance, the contractors shy out.

		They are quite shy to call the structural engineer in the field and
get help from them.  If they will do that, I think most of the incidents
will not take place.

		There are some shortcuts that have been used and thank God that there
is so much factor of safety in the design of the bridges and the
buildings that they don't fail, but if you do a very simple blunder,
very, if I may, stupid mistake, it's going to fail the building or the
bridge or the tower or the tunnels.

		They need to concentrate and they need to realize that if there's a
need for engineering assistance, ask for it, get it.  You are not
qualified enough to solve the engineering problem.  Get help from the
right source.

		MR. SMITH:  Okay.  Thank you.  Yes, Tom?

		MR. KAVICKY:  Just a quick comment, Mr. Chairman.

		Couldn't OSHA develop specifically for the truss collapses, we've had
the same issues out in Chicago, a safety and health information bulletin
regarding that?