A Job Interrupted Versus a Job Well Done OH&S | 03.25.2020 By Anne Osbourn Confined space work presents a unique environment: one with potential health and safety risks for many workers. Identifying possible threats and pre-emptively planning to thwart them, however, could make a difference in how the workday goes. Working in a confined space can be both challenging and dangerous. Unlike other work environments, confined spaces have unique parameters and special limitations. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a confined space is an area that: • Large enough for an employee to bodily enter and perform the work,
• Contains any other recognized serious safety or health hazard. The special conditions found within confined spaces— namely, physical and atmospheric hazards—mean these work environments should be treated with extreme caution. It should be noted that in spite of the potential dangers, working safely within them is possible. In fact, OSHA says confined space hazards can be prevented if the hazards are addressed before the worker enters the space to perform. OSHA’s standards for governing confined spaces within the construction industry are unique to the industry and
• Restrictions to entry or exit, and
designed to help ensure high safety levels. Specifically,
• Not designed for continuous human occupancy.
OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1200, Subpart AA (effective August
Furthermore, OSHA defines a permit-required confined space as one that: • Contains, or has a known potential to contain, a hazardous atmosphere, • Contains material with engulfment potential, • Has an internal configuration such that entrants could
2015) is designed to help keep construction workers safe from incident, injury, or death by what OSHA says is “eliminating and isolating hazards in confined spaces at construction sites similar to the way workers in other industries are already protected.” Standards, of course, are the guidelines employers must follow to help ensure the safety of those working in confined
be trapped or asphyxiated by inwardly converging
spaces. Here are four other essentials that construction
walls, or a floor which slopes and tapers to a smaller
companies must consider with respect to protecting the
cross-section, or
health and safety of their confined space work crews. ...continued on next page 11
