| Open Enrollment Class Announcement
The maximum number of students we can accommodate in these classes is 25,and we’ve had a lot of requests from these areas –so if you’re interested,please reserve your spots as soon as possible. For complete details on each session,please visit the Upcoming Classes page. Class:OSHA 10-Hour Construction
Location:Charlotte,NC –Holiday Inn Airport
Dates &Times:From 6:30PM to 9:30PM Thursday,May the 7th –and From 8AM until 4PM on Friday,May the 8th. Class:OSHA 10-Hour Construction
Location:Hickory,NC –Hickory Conference Center
Dates &Times:From 6:30PM to 9:30PM Thursday,May the 21st –and From 8AM until 4PM on Friday,May the 22nd. Class:OSHA 10-Hour Construction
Location:Asheville,NC
Dates &Times:From 6:30PM to 9:30PM Thursday,June the 4th –and From 8AM until 4PM on Friday,June the 5th. 
OSHA issued a new set of training guidelines for Outreach Program instructors (people like me who can teach OSHA 10- and 30-Hour classes) in February of 2009,and I attended an update/seminar hosted by WVU’s training institute a few weeks ago to get the scoop on the changes.
Most of the changes are on the administrative side of things,and are basically a tightening of the class reporting and recordkeeping requirements. After the recent controversy in New York City where two morons were caught handing out 10-Hour Construction cards after less than three hours in a bar,those changes were something I think we all expected. To be honest,for those of us who have been doing the classes correctly all along,the stricter requirements won’t change much of anything. In my opinion,the most interesting changes have to do with the content of the 10-Hour and 30-Hour Construction classes. For the first time,OSHA has included what they call the Focus Four topics as a mandatory part of each class. Using the 10-Hour class as an example,that means that the 4 leading causes of construction industry fatalities (Falls / Electrocution / Caught Between / Struck By) are required topics,and you’ve got to spend at least 2 hours of the total class time addressing those issues. PPE and Health Hazards are also required topics,but they’ve been reduced to 1/2 hour blocks each.
Read More → Pretty big news in the construction safety world last week,when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for OSHA and against Summit Contractors in a case that reviewed the validity of OSHA’s multi-employer jobsite policy. In 2003,Summit was the general contractor (GC) on a college dorm project in Arkansas. OSHA conducted an inspection and found that the masonry contractor on the job didn’t have adequate fall protection on their scaffolds. In accordance with the multi-employer policy,OSHA cited both the masonry contractor and the GC. Summit appealed the citation,first to OSHA,and when OSHA wouldn’t budge,they took it up the ladder to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC),which is a Federal oversight entity that has the authority to review and overrule OSHA citations. The OSHRC ruled against OSHA,pointing out that OSHA’s regulations only require companies to protect their own employees. There isn’t anything in an OSHA standard that requires a company to protect someone else’s employees. OSHA appealed the OSHRC ruling to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals,and got what they wanted in the ruling issued last week. So what does all of this mean to us? Read More → It’s been five days since T2C was born,and by far the most frequent question we’ve gotten has been “What do you mean by Safety Training Sucks?”So I thought it might be a good idea to take a minute and explain why we chose that as our tagline for the site.
I’ve always said that safety professionals pretty much have it made,because when things go well we can take credit for it,and when things go badly we can always blame the doofuses on the floor or out in the field who got hurt. “If they just would have listened to us,this wouldn’t have happened.” Now,most of the time when I say that I’m joking around;but the fact is that there’s a nugget of truth in it. We focus an awful lot on meeting the regulatory requirements,and a lot less on simply protecting people. We focus on how much time each employee spends in safety training,but we don’t worry as much about how good that training really is. The attitude exists that if you’ve taught a class,and checked off all the boxes on the OSHA reporting sheet,that you’ve actually accomplished something –and if people still make dumb decisions and get hurt because of them? Well,we taught them didn’t we? We did all we could. At T2C we think that’s a cop-out. Read More → 
Welcome to T2C.us,the new webhome of T2C. We hope you’ll take a few minutes while you’re here to look through the T2C Info section on the left to learn a little more about our firm,and the T2C Services section to see what types of safety-related training and consultative services we provide.
As the site grows and develops,I’ll be writing articles,safety tips,and commentaries and posting them here,so we hope you’ll take a moment to bookmark the site,and visit us often to check out the new content. We’d also love to hear your feedback. Drop us a line and let us know what you think of the site,what additional information you’d like to see here,and any questions you might have. We’d especially appreciate it if you’d take a moment to e-mail a link to the site to other business professionals you know who might be interested in our services. Training and consulting firms rely almost exclusively on word-of-mouth for our advertising,and your recommendations will be critical to our success. Thank you so much for stopping by. T2C is genuinely looking forward to serving all of you. - Ken | |
