Early Start Avoids Heat, Annoys Neighbors

With Nevada construction crews now permitted to start work at 5 a.m., neighbors living near sites aren’t happy.
Local media are reporting on noise complaints around the earlier starts.
A recently passed measure allows construction work throughout the state to begin as early as 5 a.m., from April 1 to Sept. 30 each year, allowing workers to begin work before temperatures peak.Nevada OSHA also began to enforce new protections for workers during extreme heat in April of this year.
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News reports that the U.S. Department of Labor is aiming to rewrite or repeal more than “60 ‘obsolete’ workplace regulations” went viral this week, with searches on the topic spiking more than 100%, according to Google Trends.
Most versions of the story quote both Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s recent statement, which boasted the “most ambitious proposal to slash red tape of any department across the federal government.”
Many of those reports also quoted Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO union’s occupational safety and health director.
“People are at very great risk of dying on the job already,”Reindel said. “This is something that is only going to make the problem worse.”

With the administrative hearing process for OSHA’s proposed heat stress rule expected to conclude this month, Chris Nickels, a partner at Quarles & Brady, said the most contentious aspects of the rule are likely to be administrative elements.
Those include assigning dedicated staff for temperature monitoring and record-keeping, and the acclimation requirement.
While providing water and training are not seen as major issues, outdoor and transient agricultural workers, as well as manufacturers with unrecognized indoor heat hazards, are expected to face the most significant challenges, he said.
Nickels also said that a common employer oversight is underestimating how hot environments, especially indoors or in trailers, can become.
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AI could never replicate every variable that can cause hazards on a construction site, First Analytics VP Robert Stevens told a standing room-only crowd at this week’s American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) Safety Conference in Orlando, Florida.
“A bulldozer is over here, then it’s over there. There are some jobs that are so complex, with so many maneuvers, there are just too many variables. Things change so fast on sites. You can’t write code for everything,” Stevens said on July 22.
He cited a recent experience when he used generative AI to write a script for a short meeting on selecting hand protection.
“I saved a couple hours researching and writing it myself,” he said. How do you know the information is accurate? “You’ve got to read over it. I noticed I left out a few things. You have to have someone with knowledge, experience and judgment. It’s crazy when AI is let loose with no guardrails.”
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