I-4 Ultimate worker paid the ultimate price. The contractor will pay reduced OSHA fine
A contractor on the I-4 Ultimate highway improvement project got a proposed federal fine halved after safety violations that led to the death of a worker in September from a falling concrete girder.
SGL Constructors, a Skanska-Granite-Lane joint venture, will pay $26,988 of a proposed $53,976 on what were originally four citations. In the informal settlement, one citation was removed, one will be paid in full and SGL got a 50% bargain on the two other citations.
SGL Constructors will pay $134,937 — almost five times more — for a single safety violation that put an employee in the hospital 15 days before the girder tragedy.
SGL notified the Miami Herald last week via email that it “does not comment on these matters.”
Taking these matters in chronological order, the OSHA citation says on Sept. 13 “several piles (of pipes) were unevenly stacked on a slope and not secured...”
Gravity eventually brought what the Department of Labor described as a “large metal pipe” down on an employee. This violation wound up so much more costly than the ensuing fatal violations partially because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration classified it as a Willful violation, the worst kind.
As OSHA defines a Willful violation, it’s one “in which the employer either knowingly failed to comply with a legal requirement (purposeful disregard) or acted with plain indifference to employee safety.”
OSHA describes the Sept. 28 death in Central Florida as “employees in an aerial lift were working at/near the bottom of the concrete girder ascending to take measurements for wood bracing and were exposed to being struck-by an overturned/falling concrete girder.”
Among other things, a temporary bracing was supposed to be in place.
SGL will pay the full proposed $13,494 fine for not providing a workplace free from forseeable hazards by leaving them vulnerable to overturned, falling girders. The Citation and Notification of Penalty says SGL didn’t follow the work plan or approved engineering drawings.
The same proposed fines were sliced to $6,747 each for letting employees walk in a fall zone while a crane held a suspended load and, while the crane was moving a concrete girder, letting employees with nothing to do with the load walk underneath.
A fourth citation, having to do with employees whose primary language was Spanish, got eliminated in the settlement.
Inspectors described that violation as SGL “did not adequately train employees, in their native language of Spanish, to recognize or avoid hazards such as, but not limited to the safe installation of the temporary wood bracing.
“The work plans and engineering drawings for temporary wood bracing are in English.”
