The national construction fatality rate declined 47 percent and the number of recordable safety incidents dropped 38 percent since the federal government switched to a safety oversight approach known as “collaborative safety” in 1998, according to an analysis of federal safety data released Aug. 27 by the Associated General Contractors of America.

“There is no doubt that the collaborative approach is working,” said Chuck Penn, the executive director of the AGC’s Shreveport chapter. “While even one fatality is too many, it is hard to think of another government program providing so much improvement in so little time.”

The collaborative safety approach represented a significant shift in federal safety oversight when it was first introduced by the Clinton Administration, Penn said. The approach creates incentives for companies to find and fix safety problems before incidents occur while maintaining strong penalties for companies that let safety problems lag until someone is hurt.

Penn noted that in 1998 there were 1.7 fatalities for every billion dollars invested in construction, while today that rate is 0.9 fatalities, a 47 percent drop. Relative to the size of the construction workforce, the fatality rate dropped from 12.9 in 2000 to 9.6 fatalities per 100,000 construction workers in 2008, a 25 percent decline.

He added that while the value and size of the construction market grew significantly, the number of construction fatalities declined from 1,171 in 1998 to 969 in 2008, a 17 percent drop. In addition, the construction safety incidence rate fell 38 percent from 8.8 per 100 workers to just 5.4 per 100 workers while the rate of injured construction workers missed work declined 42 percent from 3.3 per 100 workers to 1.9 between 1998 and 2007.

The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) has also utilized a form of the collaborative safety approach in recent years on a few major projects, through its safety partnerships with some large general contractors like Barton Malow, Walbridge and Christman.

Recognizing that engineering techniques alone are not enough to ensure that exposure to hazards are controlled, the program includes coordination, monitoring and educating the project’s workforce. These components are implemented through the same principles of management control applied throughout all phases of the project. The goal: zero injuries on the project.

And in May, MIOSHA announced a new program,  “Protecting workers in tough economic times,” in an effort to create incentives “to encourage companies to develop safety and health management systems that protect their workers.”

The program allows a 10 percent reduction that may be applied to MIOSHA penalties on offending employers, if the safety problems are promptly abated. It also allows for a penalty payment plan – an extended payment plan will allow employers the opportunity to pay the citation penalty in installments rather than one lump sum.

In addition, “focused inspections” will be implemented – MIOSHA inspections in most targeted general industry workplaces will focus on the primary hazards of the industry, instead of the traditional “wall-to-wall” approach.

*”Other-than-serious” violations relating to focused hazards will not be cited if the violation is abated in the presence of the inspector.

On the federal level, President Barack Obama’s new Labor Department Secretary Hilda Solis has been strongly hinting that OSHA might move away from the collaborative safety approach in favor of more active pursuit and punishment of employers that violate safety rules.