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Colonial Mechanical Corporation, Issue No. 4
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April 2003
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The Contractors Critic
Colonial Mechanical
A FIRST ENERGY COMPANY
Reporting on Safety, Productivity, and Honesty in the Construction Industry.
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Climbing Accident Rates & Severe Injuries
COLONIAL WORKER SEVERELY INJURED
IN A FALL
Adam McCabe was a long time employee and foreman
at Colonial Mechanical, a Virginia construction company. He had worked for
Colonial Mechanical for over 13 years and had started there as an apprentice
sheet metal mechanic. In May 2001, even though it may have been a weekday, Adam
was not working on a Colonial Mechanical job site.
| NEWS
FLASH! First Energy Corporation
unloads Colonial Mechanical and finances the purchase by
Webb Technologies. Credit report lists Colonial as "Higher Risk."
Details in Next Issue |
Instead, McCabe was lying in a hospital room, in a coma, breathing through a
ventilator. He had fallen from a 15-foot-high ledge while work ing on the
Colonial Mechanical Norfolk Airport job and been severely injured. A witness
reported McCabe could not stop his fall and "landed flat on his head," prompting
him to call 911. McCabe was transported by Norfolk emergency vehicles – clinging
tenuously to life.
The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry investigated Adam McCabe’s
fall. The on-site state safety inspector recommended that serious violation
notices and a $2,500 fine be issued against Colonial Mechanical for allowing
life threatening injures to occur at a work site. The violation notice stated:
Located at the Norfolk International Airport … an employee was working
outside the perimeter of the guardrail system on the outer edge of the … ledge,
without wearing his fall arrest system and therefore fell 15 feet to the floor
below, resulting in traumatic bodily injury.
The Virginia Occupational Safety and Health Administration met with Colonial
Mechanical a month later to discuss the accident and the resulting violation
notice and fine. Despite McCabe’s 13 years of experience with Colonial
Mechanical, the company maintained that the accident was McCabe’s fault.
Colonial Mechanical denied their responsibility to insure that its workers were
using fall protection equipment and contested the OSHA violation. Eventually,
Colonial Mechanical was able to plea-bargain the violation and fine to a reduced
charge and a $975 fine. Because of the severity of this accident, the
investigation wasn’t closed until July 2002, almost a year and a half later.
(Inspection #304137433) |
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COLONIAL MECHANICAL’S HISTORY OF FALL PROTECTION VIOLATIONS
PRIOR TO THE McCABE INJURIES
| The OSHA files on the McCabe accident also
contained materials showing there had been many violations of the fall
protection rules at Colonial Mechanical in the months preceding McCabe’s fall.
For instance, at the IDA Office job, Colonial Mechanical’s records show that
there were two fall protection safety violations because of unsafe ladders.
At the Richmond Convention Center there were four violations of
fall protection rules. Workers were also using extension cords that had severe
cuts, which allowed potential electrical problems. Colonial Mechanical also
noted two more fall protection violations during their work at the Dulles Town
Center job.
However, OSHA did not cite Colonial Mechanical Corporation for a "repeated"
violation, although a little more than one year earlier, Colonial Mechanical
Corporation received a similar serious citation for an identical problem.
The earlier citation was issued against Colonial Mechanical Corporation in
June 1999, at the Capital One job in Spotsylvania. The citation detailed a
failure to install an adequate guardrail system to protect their employees from
fall dangers from the open sides of stair platforms that rose four stories above
the ground. In this instance, OSHA proposed another serious violation against
Colonial Mechanical Corporation, and proposed a $1,625 fine. (Inspection
#301810305)
This latest breach of safety rules by Colonial Mechanical was only one of the
latest of over 100 citations — and over $34,000 in fines — issued against
Colonial Mechanical for safety violations.
Adam McCabe was not the only Colonial Mechanical employee injured at a
construction site. During the OSHA investigation, the agency’s researchers
uncovered a log of Colonial Mechanical’s accident history. The log revealed that
almost 150 accidents had occured to employees while on-the-job, including almost
one-third who had been injured badly enough to miss work.
In total, Colonial Mechanical’s own work site audit found over 160 violations
of safety rules at its job sites in a one year period. This included 45 cases of
workers who lacked required safety glasses. Those violations may explain the 13
eye injuries suffered by Colonial Mechanical workers during the same time
period. | | | | | |
