The Construction Site Safety Committee represents CI on the A10 Accredited Standards Committee, Safety in Construction and Demolition Operations. CI has a voting membership on this committee. Each of the standards that fall under the responsibility of the A10 Committee has to be reviewed and balloted every five years, per American National Standards Institute (ANSI) procedure.
This A10 Committee maintains several different standards related to the construction industry. One standard that is under review at present is A10.6 Demolitions Operations Standard. This standard is being evaluated at the subcommittee level at this time. The subcommittee is specifically evaluating the following language from paragraph 4.1 of A10.6 Demolitions Operations Standard:
Prior to starting demolition operations, a written engineering survey of the structure shall be made by a qualified or competent person….
This is an age old argument: can a non-engineer do an “engineering survey”? OSHA 29 CFR 1926.850(a) Regulations refer to an engineering survey by a competent person. (See definition in regulations.) They do not even require a written engineering survey.
The ANSI A10 Accredited Standards Committee for Construction and Demolition Operations is finalizing ANSI A10.6 Demolition Operations Standard and will be sending the standard out for ballot to the full A10 Committee shortly. Before the balloting process, we would like to make this draft standard available for review by CI members and anticipate having a teleconference in which all CI members are invited to participate and provide their input on this standard.
For copies of the standard, email Matt Burkart, ASCE/CI Construction Site Safety Committee Chairman, at matt@safetyone.com. If you are interested in participating in the teleconference, please advise Matt of your interest and he will see that you are advised of the teleconference date, time, and access code.
Construction Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers