What Everybody Should Know About OSHA’s On-Site Consultation Service

Topic: Safety Management

Using OSHA’s on-site consultation service can help identify potential hazards, improve safety and health management systems, and even qualify you for a one-year exemption from routine OSHA inspections.

OSHA’s on-site consultation service is delivered by state governments free of charge, using well-trained professional staff. As the name implies, most consultations take place on-site, although limited services away from the worksite are available.

Primarily targeted for smaller businesses, this safety and health consultation program is completely separate from the OSHA inspection effort. In addition, no citations are issued or penalties proposed.

It’s confidential, too. Your name, your firm’s name, and any information you provide about your workplace, plus any unsafe or unhealthful working conditions that the consultant uncovers, will not be reported routinely to the OSHA inspection staff.

Your only obligation will be to correct serious job safety and health hazards—a commitment which you are expected to make prior to the actual visit and carry out in a timely manner.

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How to Get Started

Because consultation is a voluntary activity, you must request it. Your telephone call or letter sets the consulting machinery in motion (contact your state’s occupational safety and health agency or call OSHA at 800-321-OSHA).

The consultant will discuss your specific needs with you and set up a visit date based on the priority assigned to your request, your work schedule, and the time needed for the consultant to adequately prepare to serve you.

OSHA encourages a complete review of your organization’s safety and health situation. However, if you wish you may limit the visit to one or more specific problems.

Opening Conference

When the consultant arrives at your worksite for the scheduled visit, he or she will first meet with you in an opening conference to briefly review the consultant’s role and the obligation you incur as an employer.

Walk Through

Together, you and the consultant will examine conditions in your workplace. OSHA strongly encourages maximum employee participation in the walk-through. Better informed and more alert employees can more easily work with you to identify and correct potential injury and illness hazards in your workplace. Talking with employees during the walk-through helps the consultant identify and judge the nature and extent of specific hazards.

The consultant will study your entire workplace or the specific operations you designate and discuss the applicable OSHA standards. The consultant will also point out other safety or health risks that might not be cited under OSHA standards, but nevertheless may pose safety or health risks to your employees. And the consultant may suggest and even provide other measures such as self-inspection and safety and health training you and your employees can use to prevent future hazardous situations.

A comprehensive consultation also includes:

• Appraisal of all mechanical and environmental hazards and physical work practices

• Appraisal of the present job safety and health program or establishment of one

• A conference with management on findings

• A written report of recommendations and agreements

• Training and assistance with implementing recommendations

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Closing Conference

The consultant will then review detailed findings with you in a closing conference. You will learn not only what you need to improve, but also what you are doing right. At that time you can discuss problems, possible solutions and abatement periods to eliminate or control any serious hazards identified during the walk-through.

Follow Up

Following the closing conference, the consultant will send you a detailed written report explaining the findings and confirming any abatement periods agreed upon. Consultants may also contact you from time to time to check your progress. You, of course, may always contact them for assistance.

What Consultants Will Do

• Help you recognize hazards in your workplace
• Suggest general approaches or options for solving a safety or health problem
• Identify kinds of help available if you need further assistance
• Provide you a written report summarizing findings
• Assist you to develop or maintain an effective safety and health program
• Provide training and education for you and your employees
• Recommend you for a one-year exclusion from OSHA programmed inspections, once program criteria are met

What They Won’t Do

• Issue citations or propose penalties for violations of OSHA standards
• Report possible violations to OSHA enforcement staff
• Guarantee that your workplace will “pass” an OSHA inspection

Part Two: How do you find answers to difficult OSHA questions?

Its a question I often get. OSHA
regulations are notoriously difficult to understand and today we’ll uncover a
unique process to answer your compliance questions.

This will be easy – trust me. . . .
Last week we discussed the top two ways to understand the complicated OSHA regulations and this e-newsletter will cover the final three. So without delay here they are:STEP THREE: Compliance Directives.These Directives are similar to interpretation letters, except they are not addressed to the general public. Compliance directives are written by OSHA headquarters to the compliance officers in the field.By reading a compliance directive you’ll get first hand information about what the compliance officer looks for in the field. You’ll better understand how they would interpret a hazard in your workplace.The compliance directives are very powerful indeed!STEP FOUR: Legal CasesPlenty of court cases involving OSHA have been heard and ruled upon and they provide a good form of guidance.Additionally the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is an independent Federal agency created to decide contests of citations or penalties resulting from OSHA inspections of American work places.The Review Commission, therefore, functions as an administrative court, with established procedures for conducting hearings, receiving evidence and rendering decisions by its Administrative Law Judges (ALJs).And the final step is…STEP FIVE: Educated GuessWe’ll if you’ve exhausted the first four steps and you still don’t have a clear answer, your final step is to make an educated guess. Key word here is
educated – the solution you choose must reasonably demonstrate that it protects the workforce.This can be quite a slippery slope so let’s use an example. Reading the OSHA regulations you’ll find that adequate space must be made available for immediate access to an eyewash station. Let’s say you have a very tight warehouse and often time’s pallets are stacked near the emergency eyewash station. You attempt to find a minimum clearance distance between the eyewash
station and the stored pallets but you can’t find anything definitive – you’ve gone through each of the previous four steps, but no answers.What should you do? First determine if the eyewash is visible to those in the warehouse. Next determine if employees have unimpeded access to that eyewash.
Finally, determine if there are any other clearance related regulations, not for eyewash stations but for other equipment.What you’ll find is a required electrical clearance of 3’ [1910.303(g)(1)(vi)]. This provides you a minimum clearance distance and depending on the layout, even this might not be sufficient, but at least it’s
a start.And finally, remember that for these situations where you cannot find an answer to your OSHA questions you can always request a letter of interpretation.That’s it – five easy steps you can use immediately to answer your most
difficult OSHA questions!