Repeat Florida roofing safety violator gets OSHA fines reduced from $114,000 to $67,000
A Melbourne roofing contractor already paying two sets of federal fines and with another set in debt collection got its most recent group of fines reduced by $46,749.
Turnkey Construction Planners has been doing business in Florida since 1990 and is run by president Chad Gressani. Since February 2014, Turnkey has been fined nine times for workers toiling without proper fall protection.
The most recent fines, issued in March by the Department of Labor, concerned work at 1900 SW Aledo Ln., The Parc at Gatlin Commons apartment complex, and 4561 SW Masefield St., both in Port St. Lucie.
At the former, OSHA’s Citation and Notification of Penalty says workers putting in a roof dip edge on a residential garage roof with a 5:12 pitch didn’t have protection from a 9 to 10-foot fall. That was the Repeat fall protection violation (vioations can be classified as Willful, Repeat, Serious, Other-Than-Serious). The other citation was for the portable ladder employees used to get on the garage roof not extending three feet past the roof edge.
At the Southwest Masefield Street worksite, workers installing shingles on a 4:12 pitch roof lacked “conventional fall protection” from a fall of at least nine feet to terra firma. That also was classified as a Repeat violation.
Each of the Repeat violations were worth $51,952 in proposed fines. Combined with the $10,390 ladder violation, that was $114,294 in proposed fines. According to OSHA’s website, Turnkey went for an informal conference and got the fines settled to $31,167 and $31,172 for the Repeat violations and $5,206 for the ladder violation.
That’s a $67,545 total., for which OSHA’s site says there’s a “penalty payment plan in place.” That’s also what OSHA says about the $106,250 in fines (settled from $199,184) from two 2018 violations.
But $35,491 in fines from 2017 which includes Repeat fall protection violations has been referred to debt collection.
