Excavation Safety: A Guide to OSHA Compliance and Injury Prevention

Addressing the most common causes of excavation, trenching, and shoring violations, Excavation Safety provides you with the insight you need to ensure compliance and protect workers' lives and company investments. The author provides step-by-step methods for restricting workers from hazardous areas, providing egress from excavations, protecting workers from materials and equipment, selecting competent people to perform self-inspections, and ensuring a protection system is in place. The first part of the book explains the hazards of the excavation site and the need for safe work practices. The second part contains all relevant OSHA standards as well as extensive notes, annotations, and comments. You will learn which actions should be taken at each site to eliminate serious injury, work delays, and additional costs. Such actions include evaluating soil conditions and structure, designing support systems to guard against cave-ins, and conducting self audits to detect potential problems. You will also examine pre-site considerations, including educating workers about unmarked, undetected underground utility lines, identifying employer responsibilities, and establishing a training program based on OSHA's model of voluntary training guidelines. Each chapter includes a content summary for quick reference, and the included case studies provide examples of common excavation errors and the corrective actions required to fix them.