Introduction

Hi! My name is Bill, I work for a family-owned home heating business. We sell fuel oil, kerosene, propane, diesel fuel and coal to mostly residential customers in the northeast.

Safety and compliance have always been very important to our company. We have always strived to provide a safe work environment, and to continually provide training and resources to keep a culture of safety in our company.

But we've always had one gaping hole: OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Act. For whatever reason, in keeping in compliance with Department of Transportation, Department of Environmental Conservation, the Environmental Protection Agency, National Fire Protection Agency, more recently the Department of Homeland Security and a host of other governmental and non-governmental agencies, we never focused much attention on OSHA.

Now, after tremendous growth, we decided to build a new office building. I naively thought that OSHA pretty much applied to physical structures, and with that mindset, I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to get in compliance with OSHA requirements; if we could focus on OSHA compliance as we built the building, we'd avoid expensive retrofitting costs that prevented us from being in compliance before. Boy was I in for a lesson.

I've just (today) returned from a Fred Pryor training seminar on OSHA compliance. I learned that in fact, there's a lot more to it than just your physical surroundings. There are recordkeeping requirements which we have never really done, or at least done right. There are requirements for written Hazard Communication Plan. While we have kept Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) on hand, I didn't know that we were supposed to keep them for all of 30 years, nor that the chemicals we needed to keep MSDSes for many more chemical than I thought. And that's just the beginning.

I learned that, in 2006 there were 38,579 inspections, which generated $84,413,006.00 in revenue for OSHA. do the math: that works out to an average of $2,188.00 per inspection. That's not small change for a small company like ours. I heard horror stories of a safety officer of a large company who was fined $120,000 when an OSHA inspector found an overhead door propped up with a 2x4. A small company was cited for dust on top of the electrical outlet covers. Another company, about my size, had a surprise visit by OSHA and came out with $26,000 in fines. And none of these were related to the physical office building, like I originally thought.

So I decided that, as part owner, it is a critical aspect of my job to make sure we're in compliance with these regulations. As the OSHA guidelines continually point out: abatement and mitigation. I decided with very little effort I could abate and mitigate quite a lot of our glaring defects, and over time, continually picking at the low hanging fruit until the tree is empty, we could get in compliance.

This blog is dedicated to sharing what I learn through this process. I'll be posting daily, as long as there is anything relevant. I'll focus a lot of it in my specific industry. I'll outline the procedural steps we're taking, hopefully to provide a framework for others to get in compliance as well.

I won't be identifying my company or specific location for obvious reasons. I don't hope to invite OSHA in, only to get in compliance so that, if they ever come knocking, I'm ready.

So let's start learning!
Bill