The NRCA-OSHA partnership

Proving the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is committed to improving safety in the roofing industry, OSHA has awarded NRCA two educational grants for 2007.

The first grant is a $183,072 Susan Harwood Training Grant to develop a one-day training session addressing fall hazards, applicable regulations, hazard abatement and rescue techniques for roofing personnel. The class will be offered in English and Spanish in 10 locations throughout the U.S. and will be free of charge for participants.

The schedule, class dates and locations will be finalized by the end of the year. The class, Roofing Industry Fall Protection from A to Z, will be offered between February 2007 and May 2007 and will help increase workers' awareness of fall-protection hazards and teach them about specific equipment and work practices to avoid these hazards.

Roofing workers will learn OSHA fall-protection requirements and the components of fall-protection systems. The course also will feature equipment demonstrations for self-rescue and relief of suspension trauma.

In addition, NRCA received its seventh renewal of OSHA's Susan Harwood Institutional Competency Building Grant. The amount of this year's award is $136,660. Susan Harwood Institutional Competency Building Grants are used to help organizations develop their abilities to provide safety and health education to employees on an ongoing basis. Through this grant, originally received in 2000, NRCA developed its train-the-trainer class, the OSHA-sponsored Train-the-trainer Safety Program. So far, NRCA has conducted 57 train-the-trainer classes, producing 1,400 safety trainers.

This year, for the first time, the course also will be offered in Spanish. The training schedule is not yet finalized, but NRCA plans to offer the English version of the class in 15 cities and Spanish version concurrently in five of those cities. Classes will be offered between January 2007 and May 2007.

For more information about either course, contact Jeanne Schehl, NRCA's director of education programs development, at (800) 323-9545, Ext. 7566, or jeaschehl@nrca.net.

Ambika Puniani Bailey is editor of Professional Roofing magazine and NRCA's director of communications.