OSHA implements National Emphasis Program to eliminate highly hazardous chemicals in the petrochemical industry 13 JUNE 2007
OSHA has published a directive implementing a National Emphasis Program to help eliminate workplace hazards associated with the release of highly hazardous chemicals at petroleum refineries.
National Safety Council Report: Accidental Deaths on the Rise 12 JUNE 2007
Accidentaldeaths in the United States are rising at an alarming rate, more than 20 percent over a 10-year period, according to the latest data available.
EPA Advances Public Health and Environmental Protection with New Pesticide Screening 11 JUNE 2007
As a leader in endocrine disruptor research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the final stages to begin screening pesticides for their potential effect on the endocrine system.
Construction is a $1 trillion industry employing over 6.5 million people by over 700,000 companies throughout the United States.
This industry includes building construction, highway construction, heavy industrial construction (e.g., tunnels, airports, and dams), municipal utility construction (e.g., waste water treatment plants), and special trades such as plumbing, heating, and demolition contractors.
Safety
According to OSHA, "One of every five workplace fatalities is a construction worker." In the Construction industry, there is obviously an abundance of occupational hazards. In an industry where such a large portion of the employees are working with occupational risks surrounding them, hazard communication is essential.
Another method of ensuring safety within the Construction Industry is through Hazard Communication Standards (HCS). As stated by the U.S. Department if Labor:
"The HCS provides people the right-to-know the hazards and identities of the chemicals they are exposed to in the workplace. When employees have this information, they can effectively participate in their employers' protective programs and take steps to protect themselves. In addition, the standard gives employers the information they need to design and implement an effective protective program for employees potentially exposed to hazardous chemicals. Together these actions will result in a reduction of chemical source illnesses and injuries in American workplaces."
From October 2004 until September 2005, OSHA issued 412 citations to the construction industry and fines totaling $1,256,322. The average worker incidence rate was 6.4 per 100 full-time employees and the Construction Industry had 1,224 fatalities.
Some of the important environmental issues that are associated with the Construction Industry are emissions regulation, management of hazardous waste, disposal of construction debris, and contact with lead, asbestos, and mercury. There are also situations in which construction companies have to be aware of laws surrounding developments near wetlands or endangered species.
"The sector includes building construction, highway construction, heavy industrial construction (e.g., tunnels, airports, and dams), municipal utility construction (e.g., waste water treatment plants), and special trades such as plumbing, heating, and demolition contractors.
EPA and the states regulate construction site storm water runoff; dredge and fill activities in U.S. waters and wetlands; oil and chemical spills; air emissions; asbestos handling; and solid/hazardous waste storage and disposal. Construction practices may also affect indoor air quality, materials recycling, energy use, and vegetation and habitat quality.
In response to increasing awareness of the environmental impacts of building, "green construction" is a growing trend. Green construction seeks to minimize the impacts of construction activities on the environment. This is achieved through materials selection, recycling and reuse, sustainable design, energy efficiency, etc."
Click here to learn about a few of the Federal Statutes and Regulations associated with the Construction Industry
Some questions to ask yourself:
What can our company do to stay competitive?
Are we losing too much time, money, and other resources dealing with non-compliance?
Are we using the most cost-effective methods to stay compliant?
If not, are we looking to alternatives to our existing compliance system?
Please feel free to browse our website or contact us to see if ehsSUITE is just what your Construction Corporation needs to stay competitive.
The graphical analysis feature provided as a standard tool of ehsSUITE allows users to quickly and easily produce graphical displays of data and information using trend, bar, pie and many other data visualization techniques.
ehsSUITE is the only comprehensive metadata-driven application for compliance management. What this means is that all information delivered to the user, such as calculations, validations, alarms, reports and dashboards, is defined in user-configurable tables and are easily managed using configuration wizards.
The event and task feature of ehsSUITE is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules.
The ehsSUITE has a real-time data collection and handling application that allows users to connect to external sources of data, combine with manual data input and provide a sophisticated infrastructure capable of distributing data in real-time, allowing your company the ability to more efficiently manage data for the protection of air and water quality, land systems, and ground water.
From English to Spanish, from Spanish to German, from German to Dutch and back to English...ehsSUITE speaks any language with a simple click of a mouse. The ehsSUITE platform is the only compliance management software with a built-in language translator.
The beating heart of ehsSUITE is its notification manager. As one great entrepreneur once said, "Set it and forget it!" Once notifications are set in ehsSUITE, you can relax and focus on more important issues than managing a calendar and reminder list. That is because ehsSUITE has the ability to proactively manage events, tasks, and deadlines.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, Health and Safety, and Plant Security.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, such as SPCC, SSM, SPCC, SWPPP; Health and Safety, such as Emergency Response, and Plant Security.
The event and task management capabilities of the calendar tool integrated throughout ehsSUITE provides the user with a range of options from the simplicity of simply managing calendar-based events to the functionality required to manage complex compliance projects.
The ehsSUITE calendar tool is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules and tasks.
With ehsSUITE, web-based displays and dashboards have never been easier or more useful to build and maintain. The page editors provide the users of ehsSUITE a simple and intuitive toolbar to configure powerful data visualization and communication displays and dashboards.
The ehsSUITE provides a regulatory database that may be maintained by the user or may employ the optional BNA XML feed to keep regulations current. All regulations are configured to conform to the BNA standard that provides the user enough flexibility to manage regulations by citation.
The ehsSUITE manages safety equipment by providing the tools necessary for adding equipment, images associated with the equipment, procedures for proper use and deployment, and linking the equipment to an area or facility location.
The ehsSUITE incident management system is a powerful work-process system allowing the user to easily configure incident management systems to correspond to the legacy systems and procedures in place.
The ehsSUITE allows the centralization of MSDS documents to an easier to manage location. Display of the latest MSDS is easy and convenient through the ehsSUITE's web browser.
In addition to providing real-time data, configurable dashboards, reporting in Microsoft Office, and many other features that extend the business value of ehsSUITE software to our users, our Design and Development team has taken it one step further by adding a spreadsheet tool.
ASP.NET AJAX is not just for developers! AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) results in an interactive and client-centric web application which allows the management and display of information to be dynamic and interactive.
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