With SWANA joining NSWMA in the realm of safety, the stage is set for resolute efforts to raise waste management from the cellar in which it resides to a level more befitting an activity as seemingly routine as any in our society. For all of the chaos and employee turnover involved in construction activities, the field has experienced genuine improvement in its safety performance over the past several years, quite possibly because a company’s survival is inextricably linked to its safety record. So why not the waste industry?
The Thundering Hoofbeats of the Dreaded EMR
EMR—Efficiency Modification Rating—is the system developed by the insurance industry to measure one activity’s safety performance relative to all others with the same SIC. While the methodology involved is a little more complex, what it comes down to is this: If your EMR is 1.0, your safety performance is dead-nuts average for your SIC group. An EMR greater than 1.0 means your performance is worse than average, while lower than 1.0 means your safety performance is better than average.
Several years ago, large companies, including General Motors and Ford, recognized that no matter what the circumstances, accidents occurring during construction on any of their sites inevitably led to litigation in which they had the deepest pockets around. Realizing that OSHA’s punitive approach was not having the positive effects they hoped for, these pioneers decided to take matters into their own hands by making safety part of the bidding process. Quite typically this was accomplished by refusing to allow contractors with worse (greater) than a 1.0 EMR to bid on projects or to use subcontractors who didn’t meet the same standard. So dramatic have been the results of this practice that it has been adopted by an increasing number project owners—public as well as private—around the country.
Are contractors getting the message? You bet, as half of them wake up to the realization that they are not eligible to bid on a growing number of the most lucrative projects around…and that the safety bar will be even higher in the future as contractors recognize the importance of safety to their competitive viability. Thus, whether as a matter of enlightenment or terror, the road to safety in the construction field is showing real progress.
If ever there were an opportunity for public-sector waste managers to take a leading role, here it is: contracts in which safety goals and minimum acceptable performance were key elements in their requirements, with bonuses and penalties spelled out right from the start. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but here’s one that has found favor in construction trades.
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FORESTER UNIVERSITY
Stormwater Concerns at Your Landfill or Facility?
10 Steps to Construction Site Stormwater Compliance
As you well know, any facility with disturbed soil—and this goes for landfills as well as any of your other areas—has responsibilities under stormwater regulations, and this is a last-minute reminder of a webinar that will give you important information on the subject.
Don’t miss Straight Talk: Strategies for Environmental Compliance author Jennifer Hildebrand as she demystifies the stormwater regulations affecting construction projects and outlines 10 straightforward but essential strategies for stormwater compliance and profitability.
In this webinar, Hildebrand will discuss through photo-documentation, project manager interviews, and site environmental penalty examples the common regulation and site misconceptions as well as the common techniques that expose construction sites of any sort to a high level of risk. Through discussion of the qualitative and quantitative data collected from these real-world case studies, Hildebrand will outline the risk-aversion and profit-focused strategies for compliance of which many construction sites and projects do not take full advantage.
Order the webinar and the manual...and save!
Learning Objectives
Webinar attendees can expect the discussion and education of the following learning objectives:
* Understanding of common regulation and site misconceptions exposing construction sites to high levels of risk
* Understanding of the complex the stormwater regulations affecting construction projects
* Understanding of the 10 recommended strategies for stormwater compliance based upon compliance, risk aversion, and profitability
* Understanding of how to determine with a risk assessment mindset the strategies most important in maintaining your environmentally compliant project, and how to implement these
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Organics Management Master Class Series
5 Live & On-Demand Sessions
Presenters:
Prentiss A. Shaw, P.E., Chris Voell,
Ernest H. Ruckert, III, P.E.,
Daryl R. O’Dell, P.E., P. Eng., and Kyle Nay
March 7th - July 11th @ 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST, 1-1.5hrs*
5 PDH / 0.5 CEU
Organics Management is emerging as one of the largest and most sustainable waste reuse and energy harvesting technologies available. Join Forester University and our panel of industry experts for a comprehensive 5-session live and on-demand master class series exploring new organics technologies and management techniques that are driving efficiencies at solid waste facilities across the country and world.
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