Beginning on January 1, 2009, all excavators must obtain a permit prior to the creation of a trench made for a construction-related purpose on public or private land or rights-of-way in accordance with Chapter 82A of the Massachusetts General Laws. All municipalities must also establish a local permitting authority for the purpose of issuing these permits, with the designation of the local permitting authority left to the discretion of the individual municipalities. Chapter 82A further directs the Department of Public Safety and the Division of Occupational Safety to jointly draft regulations relative to trench safety.  These regulations are codified in section 14.00 of title 520 of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations.

If you follow the link above, it will bring you to the full detailed regulation. However, I wanted to highlight a few things that jumped out at me in the regulation. The new trench permit requires information such as the name of the Competent Person, Excavator, Hoisting License Number and Expiration Date, the location of the Trench, a Certificate of Insurance and the Dig Safe Number.

This new regulation applies to all construction-related trenches on public ways, public property or private property. This means that anyone who is going to dig a trench has to pull a permit. They have also not modified the OSHA Excavation Standard, 29 CFR 1926, Subpart P, they have added this in as a City Regulation in addition to the OSHA Standard.

Permitting Authorities are not required to conduct inspections of trenches for which they have issued permits. However, a permitting authority notified of a potential violation is authorized to take action, including immediate shutdown, if violations of new regulations are identified.

So, if you know anyone who does trench work, please make sure they are aware of these new regulations. Please feel free to contact us about any of the OSHA Regulations if you have any questions.

With all the changes in the Regulatory Compliance World, it is quite easy to feel smothered by the burden of keeping up with it all. One of the changes is the promulgation of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS). In 1992, the United Nations (UN) issued an international mandate to implement a harmonized system for classifications and labeling of chemicals on a global level - this gave rise to the GHS. In 2003, the first edition of the GHS was approved and published by the UN and a second revision was published in 2007.

Japan, Korea, and New Zealand have already adopted GHS and are transitioning to the new classification and labeling methods now. The European Union (EU) adopted the proposed act that aligns the EU system with GHS in June of 2007. Once finalized, companies will be given 3 years to transition to the new system for pure substances, and another 5 years for mixtures.

In preparation for this domestically, OSHA has reviewed their current Hazard Communications Standard (HAZCOM) and as planning to adopt the New GHS Standard into it. The tentative time for the final rule will most likely come in 2009.

One of the major changes United States companies can anticipate has to do with Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS).  The MSDSs will under go an extensive change once the GHS is adopted.  There will also be modifications on labels, signal words, pictograms and hazard statements all designed to enhance communication for all that handle chemicals.

Finally, training must be modified - educating employees on the label and MSDS changes due to the updated product classifications, pictograms, signal words, and hazard and precautionary statements will represent the greatest training challenge. Delivering a consistent and timely training message to your employees that can be easily tracked will be critically important to the success of your GHS rollout.