Feb 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Lynnette Luna

Over the past 10 years, a rapid build out of wireless infrastructure throughout the country has occurred, leading to scores of employees dying or being seriously injured from falls and other mishaps while working on telecom facilities. But 2004's lower fatality rates and progress toward industry education, coupled with greater federal and state scrutiny, reveal that the communications tower industry is finally making headway to reverse its reputation as one of the most dangerous in the nation.

However, while encouraging, it is difficult to determine at this point whether the progress is the start of a trend or an aberration.

“Just two short years ago, we identified 31 deaths of tower workers on the towers. In 2004, we have only identified six deaths. Is this progress? Is this just a lucky year? We hope the trend is ongoing,” said Winton W. Wilcox, Jr., president of ComTrain L.L.C., a company that operates an international tower-safety certification program.

The industry's safety record had become so bad by 2001 that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) issued an urgent alert. It read: “Warning! Workers involved in construction and maintenance of telecommunications towers are at high risk of fatal falls.”

However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said it investigated eight fatalities related to tower construction and maintenance nationwide in fiscal 2004, the industry's lowest rate yet. In 2003, OSHA recorded nine fatalities related to tower accidents; in contrast, 2002 saw 16 deaths, and 2001 recorded 14.

Following the rules — or not

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how many deaths are attributable to tower accidents partly because tower-construction workers fall into a variety of industries and categories, from steel-workers to painters. And officials may not count a death as one related to tower construction or maintenance if, for instance, a worker fell from a tower's platform and not the tower itself.

Still, even the most conservative estimates have far outpaced job-related deaths across U.S. industry as a whole. The most recent data from NIOSH estimated that the fatality rate for tower erectors — one of the smallest sectors of the construction industry — averages about 460 deaths per 100,000 employees, a startling rate compared with the five deaths per 100,000 employees for all construction industries cited by the U.S. Department of Labor. On average, accidents on towers and cranes have resulted in about 175 injuries and 25 deaths each year during the past decade.

However, Rob Medlock, area director of OSHA's Cleveland office, said tower construction sites across the country are becoming safer.

“I think there has been a tremendous education process, and fatalities in the past have received a high profile. That has brought awareness to the tower industry and where it needs improvements,” he said.

The worst accidents during the past few years were caused by companies that did not follow OSHA regulations' used improper equipment or hired untrained tower climbers, according to the National Association of Tower Erectors (NATE). For instance, 21-year-old Joe Allen Johnson of Pensacola, Fla., fell 290 feet to his death last year after unhooking his safety line to move around the tower and then losing his grip. Last February, one of two workers performing routine maintenance on a 200-foot mobile wireless tower fell to his death in Alpharetta, Ga. The worker slipped off one of the tower's beams, and his safety harness failed. He was attached to a rope that either broke or gave way because of a malfunction in the mechanism that held the rope to the pole, police said.

Within the 10 OSHA regions in the U.S., half the states follows federal guidelines while the other half follows state requirements, which leads to different approaches to tower safety, said Don Doty, vice chairman of NATE, who also is a member of NATE's OSHA Relations Committee and vice president of Doty Moore Tower Services. No federal standard specifically covers tower construction, but OSHA has fall-protection standards to which tower climbers must adhere.

As a result, OSHA and NATE have taken the initiative to improve tower safety through education and partnerships.

In April 2003, John Henshaw, OSHA's assistant secretary of labor, issued a letter to more than 50 tower owners soliciting voluntary help to enforce OSHA's safety standards. The agency finds it difficult to visit sites because they often are located in remote areas. Specifically, Henshaw suggested that tower owners contract only with tower-construction companies that have excellent safety and health records and that all contracts, including those with subcontractors, force compliance with all OSHA requirements. OSHA also asked that contracts incorporate strong language stressing the importance of good safety and health programs, employee training and education, and fall-prevention systems.

NATE, serving as a repository for safety materials and educational tools for tower contractors, teamed with OSHA in 2001 to form a pilot regional partnership in the Midwest that established tower-safety best practices, which included having a trained person on site at all times and requiring 10 hours of field training for each tower climber. OSHA agreed to tighter tower safety scrutiny on job sites.

In late 2003, OSHA and NATE expanded the tower-safety program to several Eastern states, offering partnerships to communications structure contractors and tower owners. Eligibility criteria required tower contractors to implement a number of safety policies, including OSHA training sessions and work-site evaluations. To date, OSHA and NATE have partnerships with 53 tower companies, which has resulted in a noteworthy reduction in the number of serious violations related to fall protection, Medlock said.

“Our compliance officers are getting more educated,” he said. “The OSHA training institute put on four specific courses on tower safety this year, and we were helped by our agreement with NATE.”

OSHA and NATE are now working to expand the regional partnerships nationwide to include contractors, tower owners and carriers — both commercial and public-safety operators.

“It isn't the answer to all the questions, but it now gives state plans and all federally run plans the opportunity to have a set of guidelines that cover a high percentage of the typical safety problems,” Doty said.

Medlock hopes to announce the national partnership during NATE 2005, the organization's annual trade show to be held Feb. 14 to 17 in Dallas.

Partnering for safety's sake

Whether commercial wireless carriers and public-safety agencies will want to be involved with the partnership is questionable. The mobile-phone industry has typically distanced itself from the safety issue since virtually every carrier has taken itself out of the capital-intensive tower-building industry by selling towers to owners such as Spectrasite or American Towers and then leasing space. Like the commercial real-estate business, most carriers are at least twice removed.

But Medlock said the incentive for carriers to join the program is a reduction in third-party liability because carriers would stipulate in contracts the requirement for work-site evaluations and proper training.

Still, NATE is pushing for a national tower-climber safety standard, as well as inspections that are based on the industry's best practices. Though it is possible that many tower companies might mandate in-house safety training, the concern is that uniform safety standards would be lacking.

With NATE's guidance, the Advisory Council on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH), a federally mandated construction advisory group that recommends potential safety and health standards to OSHA, overwhelmingly approved a set of proposed construction standards in October that specifically address the tower-construction industry. NATE is hopeful that OSHA will consider the guidelines as a starting point for rulemaking — or at least a best-practices guide.

“At this point, we're optimistic we'll be able to see OSHA initiate some rules promulgation,” said Doty. “Once OSHA accepts the premise that towers should have their own standards, we hope it will start in 2005.”

The recommendation is based on North Carolina's new proposed tower-construction rules — expected to pass this year in the state legislature — that specifically govern tower safety. Prompted by the astounding number of tower-related deaths in the state, North Carolina's lawmakers called in the tower erector industry to help them craft specific safety standards. The state registered eight tower-related fatalities from 1997 to 2000, including a triple fatality in which the workers fell 1200 feet.

Based on North Carolina's proposed legislation, ACCSH identified best practices for 11 job-related categories, including job-site documentation, personal protective equipment, hoist usage, rigging and training. The recommendations are based on feedback from a wide range of players in the tower industry, including tower owners, insurance companies, subcontractors and suppliers.

For instance, under North Carolina's proposed rules, workers who climb communications towers must be “tied off” to a safety system at all times with fall protection provided above 6 feet. And each employer must ensure that tower climbers have been trained by, or are under the supervision of, a qualified person.

The tower industry also has come into its own of sorts. Improved technology and fall protection gear have reduced the number of injuries and fatalities, said Medlock and others involved in the tower industry.

“We know in our classes that more and more students come in with some knowledge of fall protection, equipment and the need for safety,” said Comtrain's Wilcox, whose company has certified some 20,000 tower workers during the past 10 years. “The industry awareness has expanded exponentially, and the manufacturers are improving the quality of equipment that works in this unique world of towers.”

Competition's price tag

In previous years, the tower industry always used equipment designed for other construction industries but adapted them for the tower industry, said Doty. For example, harnesses are now designed to give tower climbers better mobility and flexibility to move around a tower and most life lines are now retractable. Before, many accidents have involved workers unhooking harnesses and safety lines to better maneuver around towers.

But with the plethora of safety efforts moving along, OSHA and NATE still continue to battle a nagging issue: competition. Pressure to undercut the competition with the lowest bid often leads contractors to bypass proper safety equipment and training altogether in an attempt to pare their costs.

“We are concerned that there are competitors that look to try and cut corners in some places that would exclude safety practices that sometimes can take more time and equates to cost,” said Doty.

Wilcox said the entry of large general contractors that help carriers finance their buildouts are having a negative influence. These major contractors typically take 25% to 30% off the top of the budget, leaving the subcontracting to the middleman, who in turn subcontracts to much smaller companies whose profit margins usually are badly eroded.

“Contract requirements for training and certification … are expensive for the small three-to-five-man crews at the bottom of the chain,” Wilcox said.

Another problem is that credentials demonstrating expertise in working on tower projects generally aren't required. This makes it possible for anyone with an interest and willingness to climb towers to start their own contracting company, Wilcox said. Most often, the founders of these companies don't have the business knowledge or resources to establish proper safety programs, purchase equipment and train their employees.

And Wilcox cited an additional pressure affecting tower safety: a shortage of experienced and trained tower technicians.

“Not only is the supply in terms of contractors sparse, but the supply of competent project managers, contract managers and field workers managing the subcontractors is poor,” he said.

According to Wilcox, the “client,” from the tower workers' perspective, “is the poorly trained, inexperienced and often inept project manager on the site pushing to ‘get it done.’ These pushers force long dangerous hours, days without time off and — both through ignorance and greed — overlook the safety issues on sites.”

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