Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Falling Assets

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 16:18:17 -0500

Falling Assets
Mobile Radio Technology, Feb 1, 2004

When 38-year-old Steven Morgan of Mobile, Ala., fell 150 feet to his
death from a cellular tower on which he was working in December, leaving
behind a wife and four children, he became not only a statistic but also
a symbol of a fatal accident rate that has plagued and confounded the
communication tower construction industry over the past decade.

An experienced tower climber, Morgan usually wore a full body harness
connected to the tower with a rope lanyard, but he apparently wasn't
attached to the lanyard that day. Such accidents have become
all-too-familiar and underscore the risks that come with erecting
towers, a business that suffers from a lack of consistent safety
training — or at least the failure to put such training to effective
use. The industry also has been plagued by the prolonged downturn in the
economy, which pressures contractors to undercut the competition with
the lowest bid. In many cases, this has led them to bypass proper safety
equipment and training altogether in an attempt to pare their costs.

“You have two types of companies out there: Those that buy first-class
equipment and show up on the site and train people, and others that
won't train and have homemade stuff they are using to pull people up and
down on towers. Companies that try to do right can't compete with these
jokers,” said Stan Tucker, national sales director of Radiofrequency
Safety International Corp., a safety training company. “There can be a
large difference for bids, because training isn't free and equipment
isn't free.”
“It's a matter of trying to have the safest space shuttle you can build
for $1.69,” agreed Rich Berliner, president and CEO of Berliner
Communications, an end-to-end wireless network construction company.
“There is not sufficient dollars involved in any given job for all of
these things to be done right.”

Nevertheless, Berliner employs a full-time safety director, conducts
safety meetings each week in the office and on job sites, and spends
hundreds of thousands of dollars on the latest safety equipment. The
result has been zero falling accidents, according to Berliner.

No one knows exactly how many deaths are attributable to tower
accidents, because tower-construction workers fall into a variety of
industries and categories, from steelworkers to painters. But even the
most conservative estimates far outpace job-related deaths across U.S.
industry as a whole. The most recent data from the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimated that the fatality
rate for tower erectors — one of the smallest sectors of the
construction industry — averages about 460 deaths per 100,000 employees,
a startling rate compared to the five deaths per 100,000 employees for
all construction industries cited by the U.S. Department of Labor.
NIOSH and the Labor Department indicate that more than 250 people have
died in the tower-construction industry during the past decade. On
average, accidents on towers and cranes result in more than 175 injuries
and 25 deaths each year.

The worst accidents during the past few years were caused by companies
that did not follow regulations, used improper equipment or hired
untrained tower climbers, according to the National Association of Tower
Erectors (NATE). In extreme cases, contractors have been known to tie a
rope on the back of a bumper and pull a climber up using a hoist. Others
have tied a group of workers on a line using a small captain hoist,
which is designed for lifting materials, not workers. Even when
qualified contractors are hired, the multiple layers of firms that end
up on a large job site often results in workers who are not qualified to
climb towers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
and NATE are chipping away at the problem.
Last April, John Henshaw, OSHA's assistant secretary of labor, issued a
letter to more than 50 tower owners soliciting voluntary help to enforce
OSHA safety standards. The agency finds it difficult to visit tower
sites because they often are located in remote areas and usually don't
appear on targeting lists — which red flag companies with a history of
serious injury and illness rates for mandatory inspections.

Specifically, Henshaw suggested that tower owners contract only with
tower-construction companies that have excellent safety and health
records and that all contracts, including those with subcontractors,
force compliance with all OSHA requirements.  OSHA also asked that
contracts incorporate strong language stressing the importance of good
safety and health programs, employee training and education, and
fall-prevention systems.

Rob Medlock, area director of OSHA's office in Cleveland, Ohio, is
beginning to see anecdotal evidence that both tower owners and general
contractors are scrutinizing tower erectors more closely in the bidding
process and researching these companies' OSHA records.

“There is concern about whether subcontractors are qualified, moreso
than even a year ago,” said Medlock.
But tower-safety advocates say it will take more than a letter urging
voluntary assistance to enforce OSHA's safety standards.  Many tower
companies show good intentions by mandating in-house safety training,
but uniform safety standards are lacking, said Patrick Howey, a NATE
administrator. Some training programs consist of nothing more than a
single piece of paper that avows safe tower construction, Howey said.
NATE's primary focus in 2004 will be to create a single training
standard for the industry.

“There's training mandated by a lot of companies right now, and we are
happy to see anything that increases safety and safety awareness, but
one thing we have noticed is that consistency among trainers is
sometimes an issue,” Howey said. “There are different companies training
to different standards.”

Rather than create additional regulations, OSHA is focused on
establishing alliances, partnerships and voluntary protection programs.
The agency also is increasing inspections and providing more outreach
and training — it will make presentations at NATE's annual conference
this month (Feb.  24-27 in Nashville) and other construction conferences
throughout the year.
In late 2001, OSHA and NATE formed a pilot regional partnership in the
Midwest that established tower-safety best practices, which included
having a trained person on site at all times and requiring 10 hours of
field training for each tower climber. OSHA agreed to tighter tower
safety scrutiny on job sites.

Using this partnership as a model, OSHA expanded its tower-safety
program to several Eastern states in late 2003, offering partnerships to
communications structure contractors and tower owners. Eligibility
criteria required tower contractors to implement a number of safety
policies, including OSHA training sessions and work-site evaluations.

There is evidence these partnerships are working. Statistics from the
Midwest partnership show improved compliance rates among all
tower-construction companies in that region, not just those involved in
the project. The first year of the partnership also saw a noteworthy
reduction in the number of serious violations related to fall
protection, said OSHA's Medlock.
“Statistics show that 10 of our Midwest tower-construction partners who
were inspected … received four violations. [But] only one violation was
related to fall protection,” he said. “That is a significant
improvement.”

The number of tower-related deaths in North Carolina has alarmed the
state's department of labor, prompting the agency to craft its own rules
regarding tower safety. The state registered eight tower-related
fatalities from 1997 to 2000, including a triple fatality in which the
workers fell 1200 feet. North Carolina's ninth death occurred in
November 2003, when a 19-year-old worker fell 140 feet from a wireless
tower.

The state's new proposed tower-construction rules — expected to pass
through the state legislature this year — require workers who climb
communications towers be “tied off” to a safety system at all times and
that fall protection be provided above six feet. In addition, new towers
would have to incorporate a “safe climbing device,” while existing
towers would be retrofitted to provide a safe way for workers to access
them.

Already, the state's tower companies are being careful about what they
do, said Ivette Mercado-Bijkersma, safety standards officer with the
North Carolina Department of Labor, who wrote the proposed regulations.
“They feel like they are being watched. … We're happy they feel that,”
Mercado-Bijkersma said. “We have a special-emphasis program here that
deals with construction. Compliance officers can visit any construction
site they want to. When they see a group working on a tower, they
inspect it.”

North Carolina's new standards are expected to serve as a template for
the rest of the country. The Advisory Council on Construction Safety and
Health (ACCSH), a federally mandated construction advisory group that
recommends potential health and safety standards to OSHA, recently
formed a committee to develop construction standards that specifically
address the tower-construction industry and are based on North
Carolina's proposed legislation. Many of the construction regulations on
the books today don't apply directly to the tower-construction industry.

In the end, stiffer OSHA fines may be one of the best tools to combat
the “low-bid syndrome” prevalent in the industry, said RSI's Tucker.
“OSHA has to increase fines to make people take responsibility for
safety.” Currently, fines are based on the size of the company involved
in the accident, and do not consider a firm's violation history nor the
severity of the mishap, according to Tucker.

“We want to see an industry where we don't lose anyone,” said NATE's
Howey. “One person dying is too many.”

FALLING NOT ONLY RISK FACED BY CLIMBERS
By Lynnette Luna

Not only must tower climbers deal with the treacherous conditions
associated with working several hundred feet in the air, but
radio-frequency emissions from towers can make them ill, according to
Stan Tucker, national sales director with Radiofrequency Safety
International Corp., a safety training company.

Personal protection units can tell climbers when they are too close to a
dangerous area, but improper use of the equipment can give workers a
false sense of security, said Tucker.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires all
workers exposed to radio frequency waves to undergo RF safety training.
In addition, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandates that
all wireless and RF-generating sites be fully compliant with its
environmental rules for evaluating the potential for human exposure.
That can be difficult at times, as most municipalities require wireless
operators to co-locate their towers as much as possible, which can
result in total RF radiation exceeding legal standards.

The FCC has aggressively enforced its rules for more than three years.
The commission established a Sept. 1, 2000 deadline for compliance with
its RF guidelines, which regulate human exposure. The first FCC Notice
of Violation for RF exposure was issued on July 12, 2001, and others
have followed. Last fall, for example, the commission held individual FM
licensees liable because the total RF radiation metered at their site, a
telecommunications and antenna farm, exceeded the guidelines by 50%. As
a result, four broadcasters were fined $10,000 each.

The FCC also has established a 24-hour toll-free number for complaints
about RF safety. OSHA also has a role in the enforcement effort; the
agency is called to sites when an accident occurs or if the FCC makes a
site visit.
For liability reasons, Tucker suggests that tower owners employ a third
party to inventory the site to show areas of danger concerning RF or
other site hazards.
a Towering Problem
Fatal injuries per 100,000 employed for selected
industries

TOWER ERECTORS
460.0
PILOTS AND
NAVIGATORS
69.8
FARM OCCUPATIONS
28.0
CONSTRUCTION
LABORERS
27.7
TRUCK DRIVERS
25.0
GROUNDSKEEPERS
15.0
NON-CONSTRUCTION
LABORERS
14.2
ELECTRICIANS
13.5
POLICE AND
DETECTIVES
11.6
CARPENTERS
6.9
AVERAGE FOR ALL
OCCUPATIONS
4.0
Source: U.S. Department of Labor

http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_falling_assets/index.htm
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