New York Contractor Agrees to Pay $750,000
New York-based concrete construction contractor 160 Broadway Corp., d/b/a Broadway Concrete, will make safety improvements on its sites and pay a $750,000 fine to settle fall protection citations issued by OSHA last June. A total of $877,000 in penalties accompanied the citations. The citations were issued for hazards at the 77 Hudson condominium construction site in Jersey City, N.J. Broadway initially contested the case but withdrew its notice of contest as part of the settlement, signed Jan. 26, 2009, which changed 13 of the 15 willful citations to repeat violations.
Broadway and a sister company, Regal Construction, have agreed to abate all of the cited hazards and also to:
- Employ a full-time chief of construction operations and a corporate safety director to oversee construction operations and have authority over senior job superintendents on OSH issues
- Employ a full-time site safety director on each large project and have a safety director inspect smaller projects at least weekly
- Give the safety directors authority to stop work and direct changes to ensure site safety
- Reduce the salary of senior job superintendents who fail to comply with applicable OSHA and job safety practices
- Complete a comprehensive review of current construction means, methods, and safety procedures, including a crew-based, task specific hazard assessment for every phase of current construction operations
- Develop a new corporate safety and health plan
- Write a site-specific safety and health plan for each new project before work begins, ensure the job superintendent reads it, and provide copies to on-site employees
- Provide safety and health management training to superintendents and supervisory personnel working on each site
- Train company and subcontractor employees on each site's safety and health plan
- Give OSHA officials information about major projects and access to all job sites without need for a warrant for the next four years
"This settlement commits and challenges these employers to take broad, effective, and long-lasting steps to make employee safety and health a vital and ongoing business priority," said Robert Kulick, OSHA's regional administrator in New York. "Active and engaged safety and health management is a critical tool for reducing worksite hazards and their associated human and financial costs."