COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXTREME HOMEBUILDING MAKEOVER, OIL AND GAS EDITION “i understand that safety regulations are lax and/or nonexistent in the housing industry but those people standing on beams/heights without safety harnesses would be kicked off the job in the oil and gas biz. people underneath that manlift is questionable too. it’d be nice and safer to see other industries held to the same standards as oil and gas.” [joel, commenting on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Meets Extreme Mud: Houston Edition]
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Kicked off the job? Try FIRED at my company.
Fired at my company as well. Also…the people underneath that manlift isnt what bothered me on that picture.. It almost appears that the people IN the manlift aren’t tied off properly.
Bear in mind that the only reason they are wearing any PPE at all is that they’re on TV. Otherwise those hard hats would all be sitting in the truck.
“…it’d be nice and safer to see other industries held to the same standards as oil and gas.â€
Really? Kinda like BP?
If they were help to higher safety standard now of you would be able to afford a house! We see what standards got us in the Gulf!!
Think you meant it they were held to higher standards most people could not afford a home. I agree. Seems like a big flop in the Gulf.
BP wrote the manual on how to screw up by the numbers. But I bet anyone working at height for BP would be tied off, and everyone would be wearing personal protective equipment.
Home builders are notorious for not following safety rules. Since the workers all work for subs with no assets, there’s nothing for the employer to lose, and no incentive to do things right.
“From Jan:
Think you meant it they were held to higher standards most people could not afford a home. I agree. Seems like a big flop in the Gulf.”
In other words the fact that the construction industries incurred the most fatalities of any private sector industry according to the 2008 BLS stats is an acceptable trade off against the price of a home. Isn’t this the exact same thinking that we are all slamming BP for at the moment?
I can’t imagine that a few hard hats and PPE and insistence that workers are working safely and properly tied off when working at heights would add so much to the cost of a house that I couldn’t afford it.
What is cost of on the job injury or death? I would much prefer to pay a little extra for my house than to know that someone was disabled or died building it.
@marketingwiz: Yes. I guarantee BP has a lower injury/fatality rate than that of the housing industry. so to answer your question. Yes.
@Cathy: Harness/Lanyard runs about 400 dollars total. They must be replaced too. In addition there is significant overhead for training. Including time to train, and productivity losses. These Productivity losses amount to regulations that call for your tie off point be able to withstand a load of 5 kips(5000 lbs). So In the image where the dude is standing on a wood beam, laborers would have to construct a system for him to be tied off to. How do laborers know what can take 5000 lbs? well Scaffold builders do that a lot… how do scaffold builders do that? With an engineer who designs the scaffold? And all the time, and money trickles down to the homeowner.
Finally, in the housing industry there is a large illegal immigrant workforce. They are working at lower wages that US citizens. If they get injured the cost vs productivity/exploitation of that illegal still falls in the companies advantage.
BP – The company that had a construction trailer adjacent to an operating unit (they were only contactors), I remember walking for longer than our lunch break while working on an operating unit at DuPont in the early 80’s. BP (a culture of carelessness) should be fined into oblivion.
And don’t forget, these Extreme Makeover framers – and other workers – have this ONE week to finish a large project. They do not have the TIME to be clipping in, contructing handrails or tying their bootlaces!
They could probably manage to wear the right footwear and pants though don’t you think. Working a construction site wearing a hard hat but with sneakers and micro-shorts (see Candace’s latest photos) is a bit like riding a motorcycle wearing a helmet and boxer shorts.