OSHA has proposed $380,664 in penalties against Always Underground LLC, a Frankfort, Ill., utility construction company, after inspectors watched its employees work in an unprotected trench more than 8 feet deep. Three of the four OSHA trench citations are classified as repeat violations, and that classification is what drove the number this high.
The Labor Department announced the case in an Oct. 21 news release from its Chicago region. It’s short. It doesn’t say where the trench was, what the crew was installing, when the inspection happened or which earlier case made these repeats.
What the trenching citations cover
Inspectors opened the case under OSHA’s National Emphasis Program on trenching and excavation, which lets compliance officers start an inspection when they see an open trench. No complaint or injury is needed. That’s what happened here: the release says investigators witnessed the crew in the cut.
The three repeat items are basic ones. The company didn’t give workers a safe way out of the trench. Federal rules call for a ladder, stairway or ramp in any trench 4 feet deep or more, within 25 feet of lateral travel. It didn’t install a protective system against cave-ins, which the standard requires at 5 feet unless the excavation is entirely in stable rock. And it let excavated material or equipment sit within 2 feet of the trench edge, where spoil can roll back onto workers or load the wall.
The fourth citation, classified as serious, is for not providing hard hats to protect against falling objects.
Why repeat trench violations cost more
Under OSHA’s field operations manual, a repeat citation means the employer was cited for the same or a substantially similar hazard in the previous five years and that earlier citation became a final order. Repeat items carry the same penalty ceiling as willful ones, about ten times the cap on a serious violation. Three of them account for most of the $380,664.
These are proposed penalties, not final ones. Always Underground has 15 business days from receiving the citations to comply, ask for an informal conference with OSHA’s area director or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Contested cases often settle lower.
Trench enforcement keeps coming this fall
The Illinois case is the third excavation enforcement release from OSHA’s regional offices this month. On Oct. 7 the agency cited a Pennsylvania excavation employer after a fatal trench cave-in. A week later it proposed $648,094 against six contractors on a single Monroe, N.Y., excavation where the embankment stood nearly 75 feet high.
None of the hazards in the Frankfort case needs engineering judgment to spot. A trench box, sloping or shoring handles the cave-in risk. OSHA’s trenching guidance spells out the spoil setback and egress rules in a page or two. The cheapest fix on this citation list is a ladder.