4d (edited) • 🔎 Case Studies
How a Harness Mistake Cost a Company $194,000
This involves a mid-sized commercial contractor operating in the Texas market. They were a solid business: $2.8 million in annual revenue, 12 full-time employees, and a generally good reputation. They weren't "bad actors." They bought good equipment, they held weekly safety meetings (mostly verbal), and they cared about their crew.
The Incident:
An OSHA inspector was driving to another site when he noticed a crew working on a low-slope commercial roof. He pulled over for a "drive-by" inspection—which they are legally allowed to do if they spot a hazard from the public road.He walked onto the site and found three workers on the roof.
- Worker A was wearing a harness but wasn't clipped in.
- Worker B was clipped in, but his lanyard was attached to a PVC vent pipe (which is absolutely not a rated anchor point).
- The Foreman was on the ground. When asked, he couldn't produce a written fall protection plan for the site.
What Went Wrong:
The owner of this company fell into the classic trap: He thought "owning the gear" was compliance. He assumed that because he bought $300 harnesses, his guys were safe. He was wrong.
Issue 1: Lack of Competent Person Oversight - OSHA requires a "Competent Person" to identify hazards and have the authority to stop work. While the foreman was technically in charge, he hadn't been trained on how to calculate fall clearance or select anchor points. He let Worker B tie off to a PVC pipe because he didn't know better.
Issue 2: The "Culture of Optional" - Worker A wasn't clipped in because it was "just a quick job." The culture of the company allowed safety to be optional when it was inconvenient. There was no disciplinary program in place for unsafe behavior.
Root Cause 3: The Documentation Gap - If it’s not written down, it doesn't exist. The company had no written site-specific fall protection plan. This turned a "Serious" violation into a much harder conversation about negligence.
The Outcome:
Because the company owned the gear but failed to enforce its use, OSHA leaned hard on them. They cited Willful Violations—the most expensive category—arguing "plain indifference" to the law.
The Financial Breakdown:
- OSHA Penalties: The initial fines totaled $156,000. (Remember, willful violations are $165k max per instance).
- Legal & Consulting Fees: They spent $20,000 hiring a safety consultant and an attorney to negotiate the fines down and set up a compliant program.
- Workers Comp Impact: While no one was hurt this time, the "near miss" mentality pervaded their history. Their Experience Mod Rate (EMR) had been creeping up due to small claims. This public citation triggered a carrier review, and at renewal, they were dropped by their standard market carrier. They had to go to the assigned risk pool, costing them an extra $18,000 per year in premiums.
📉Total Estimated Cost: ~$194,000
That is nearly 7% of their total revenue gone. Vanished. Because they didn't enforce a rule they already knew.
The Lesson:
Equipment is only 10% of compliance. Behavior, Culture, and Documentation are the other 90%. You cannot outsource supervision to a piece of nylon webbing. If your foreman lets unsafe behavior slide, your bank account pays the bill.
Be honest with yourself. Give yourself 1 point for each "No":
- Do you have a written site-specific fall protection plan for every job?
- Have you documented training for every single worker exposed to fall hazards?
- Do you have a disciplinary policy for workers who fail to tie off—and do you use it?
- Does your Competent Person actually know how to identify a 5,000-lb anchor point?
Score 1-4: If you answered "No" to even one of these, you are vulnerable to the exact same citation as this contractor.
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How a Harness Mistake Cost a Company $194,000
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