Rank: New forum user 
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Hi, My employeer has opened up a small manufacturing base out in Arizona to help better supply one of our main customers. Currently there is only 4 of them but I have been asked to look into what they need to ensure compliance with OSHA regulations. The OSHA website seems to be a minfield and makes it very difficult to intepretate requirments. Does anyone have expronece of US H&S? I'm looking for the bare minimum to assist them whilst they get set up on their own. Thanks
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Rank: Super forum user
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Personally I think that if you are UK based you have no hope without engaging an Arizona based consultant. As well oas OSHA requirements, which are target based not risk based as in the UK, you may also find you have State requirements and even town/city ordinances. I used to work for a US based multi-mational and some of the stuff from the US sites was mind-bogglingly complex and often different between sites (emergency response being a notible example).
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 1 user thanked Holliday42333 for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Having dealt with US operations in Washington State, North Carolina, Ohio and New York State I fully concur with Holiday.
Whilst there are federal requirements you also have fifty individual legislatures to contend with and that is before dropping to county & city level.
Really is another great miss-nomer
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Rank: Super forum user
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Having dealt with US operations in Washington State, North Carolina, Ohio and New York State I fully concur with Holiday.
Whilst there are federal requirements you also have fifty individual legislatures to contend with and that is before dropping to county & city level.
Really is another great miss-nomer
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Rank: Super forum user
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Hi LaserSafetyGuy I am going to be a bit more optimistic! I used to work for a large UK based engineering consultancy until it got taken over by a US multinational. When the "integration team" strolled in, they started by thinking that their US standards would work in the UK and Europe. However, in the end all the global SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) were based on what would work in the UK, with tweaks to cover different geographies. So, my guess is that if you apply the same standards in Arizona as in the UK you will probably not go far wrong, even if you get to the solution via a different route than might be the norm in the US. [All assumes that what you do in the UK is OK!! Worth remembering that a small factory in the US is probably no more likely to usually have access to a competent OSH professional than a similar unit in the UK. However, I think you might benefit from doing an OSHA 30 course if only to get into the feel of how OSHA Regulations are set out and e.g. how safety signage looks rather different.
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1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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When I worked for Delco Electronics, a General Motors company, the insurance company, (USA) sent over an inspector every year to look into every nook and cranny looking mainly for our fire safety equipment, sprinklers and other fire safety equipment. They scruitinized everywhere they went. Perhaps look to see if your Arizona insurers can help.
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Rank: Super forum user
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I suspect that the insurance company was the same as we had at Kodak premises, just up the road from A C Delco. Yes they were very thorough in their inspections and the standards expected were very high BUT it was all aimed at property safety, and I can remember having a couple of arguments when we put staff safety first. In fact one of their training programmes involving a fire above a computer system responsible for the whole production actually told us that we were very succesful in putting out the fire and saving all staff from injury but we failed the exercise as we had ruined the computer system and stopped production for some months and this would result in the insurers having tp pay out for business interruption.
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2 users thanked John D C for this useful post.
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Rank: Super forum user
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IRI, Industrial Risk Insurers looked after Delco. The scenario you describe would not have occurred at Delco as we had belt and braces covering everything. Even wet pipe sprinklers backing up the Auto CO2 sysyems inside the electric sub stations, fire supression inside the computer rooms although the production lines were all manual labour.
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