ConDig (03-May-24)  A Georgia construction contractor has been fined $46,550 after a 31-year-old steel erector fell to his death on a worksite in Arcadia.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said Landmark Erecting Inc. had been cited for workplace safety violations that federal inspectors cited the employer just 10 months earlier.

A U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation found a three-person crew employed by Landmark, based in Hahira, was installing metal roofing sheets on a building in November 2023, when one worker fell 12 feet onto a concrete slab below and suffered traumatic head injuries.

OSHA said that it cited the employer for a repeat violation for again not ensuring a worker used fall protection as they walked along a roof frame. The agency also cited the company for a similar violation at a Tallahassee workplace in January 2023.

“Landmark Erecting’s repeated failure to follow required safeguards to protect employees from falls, especially after we cited the company less than a year earlier for exposing workers to this potentially deadly hazard, is inexcusable,” said OSHA area director Danelle Jindra in Tampa, Florida. 

“All employers – construction industry employers included – are legally obligated to provide workers with a safe and healthy work environment.”

The agency also cited the employer with a serious violation for failing to ensure the availability of accessible medical treatment for the injured employee and an other-than-serious violation for not reporting a work-related fatality within 8 hours, as the law requires.

Last month, OSHA fined a Boston, Massachusetts-based contractor $306,229 for fall violations on a residential worksite in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

Falls in construction continue to be a leading cause of work-related fatalities. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 700 fatalities in 2022 due to falls to lower level, a 2.9 percent increase from 680 fatalities the year before. Since 2012, OSHA has partnered with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and National Occupational Research Agenda – Construction Sector on the Fall Prevention Campaign to raise awareness among workers and employers about common fall hazards in construction, and how falls from ladders, scaffolds and roofs can be prevented