Over the last 20 years,
Advanced Fire Protection has grown into a statewide fire system installation
company— with three offices and seventy-five employees throughout the State of
Washington. Along with their new business, they have also acquired many new
problems. Advanced Fire Protection’s safety violations contributed to the death
of one of its workers. The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries
has cited Advanced Fire Protection for breaching job safety rules and for wage,
labor and apprentice rules.In a dramatic vote in 1999, the Washington State
Apprenticeship and Training Council actually cancelled Advanced Fire
Protection’s apprentice program for fire sprinkler-fitters, because of the
program’s many violations.
The formal cancellation of Advanced Fire Protection’s apprenticeship training
was a serious blow to their efforts to acquire and adequately train the
sprinklerfitter craft workers that are at the very heart of Advanced Fire
Protection’s business. Here is the background behind Advanced Fire Protection’s
staggering loss of its apprenticeship program.
Advanced Fire Protection first gained Washington State’s approval of an
apprentice fire sprinkler program in February 1994. This approval was a
significant advantage for Advanced Fire Protection, because for the first time
they could provide certified training to their new employees.
However, along with these advantages came responsibilities. Advanced Fire
Protection volunteered, as part of the certified program, to insure that at
least two journeymen workers would be on the job for each apprentice worker. The
most important requirement of an apprenticeship program is the assurance that
apprentice workers are adequately supervised. After all, correct installation of
a fire sprinkler system could mean the difference between life and death for the
residents of a burning building. Maintaining a correct ratio of journeymen to
apprentices would also allow additional on the job training for the apprentices.
Advanced Fire Protection had a history of violating the apprentice to
journeymen ratios. Even before Advanced Fire Protection had an apprenticeship
program, they were caught violating the ratio rules that govern contractors on
federal jobs. They had been working two apprentices without any supervision at
the Sand Point Naval Station in Seattle and were eventually forced to provide
back pay to those workers.
After Advanced Fire Protection obtained their own certified State
apprenticeship program, those problems were supposed to cease.
However, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries received a
complaint about Advanced Fire Protection’s non-compliance with these rules, when
Advanced Fire Protection’s program was barely two years old. The complaint also
charged that Advanced Fire Protection was violating apprenticeship program rules
regarding supplemental instruction and the geographical area covered by the
program.
Washington State Department of Labor and Industries then found that Advanced
Fire Protection had indeed committed violations of the important apprenticeship
ratio program rules. And only one month after Washington State Department of
Labor and Industries issued a Proposed Order and a letter to Advanced Fire
Protection regarding these violations, yet another complaint was filed with
Washington State Department of Labor and Industries against Advanced Fire
Protection. This time, the compliant charged that there were two apprentices
working with absolutely no journeyman supervision on a job at the Seaview
Elementary Project and the Maintenance Center Project both in Redmond,
Washington. In other words, Advanced Fire Protection sent inexperienced workers—
without supervision— to install an important and complex fire protection system
that was needed to protect children in an elementary school and another
facility.
This was not a one-time error, according to evidence presented in the
administrative hearing on these violations. Unskilled, unsupervised apprentices
worked on the fire protection system at Seaview Elementary School continuously
throughout the months of May, June and July and on a dozen other occasions. One
of the apprentices was only 30 percent of the way through his training and
another had only completed 50 percent of his training, yet they were entrusted
with the unsupervised construction of a fire sprinkler system to protect the
lives of young children.
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ADVANCED FIRE PROTECTION WORKER KILLED ON THE JOB— ADVANCED
FIRE PROTECTION CITED FOR VIOLATION OF JOB SAFETY RULES
| On October 29, 1999, a
43-year-old Advanced Fire Protection employee named Kenneth Grimstead was
struggling with a sprinkler pipe installation job late one afternoon at a
Seattle job site. He was teetering— with one foot on a six-foot ladder and the
other foot on top of a temporary wooden stairwell rail— as he wrestled the pipe.
His heavy toolbelt and the two pipe wrenches he was using may have made it hard
to keep his balance. Then the rail broke. He fell down the stairwell about 15
feet and landed on his head, suffering massive injuries. No one is sure how long
he suffered alone, bleeding from his nose, mouth and head and spitting up blood.
Finally, other workers discovered him. They covered Grimstead with a sweater
and called 911.
Although medical aid arrived soon afterwards, Grimstead died, leaving behind
his widowed wife and five young children. He had worked eleven years for
Advanced Fire Protection.
Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, which enforces the
Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act, issued a serious and a general
violation notice against Advanced Fire Protection. The violations were for not
providing Grimstead with a fall protection system, for not developing a written
fall protection plan to protect their employees and for violations of the
"Management Responsibility Requirements." In addition to the serious violation
of the fall protection rules, Advanced Fire Protection was fined $1,000. | |
