In October 2021, an employee of a Texas metal fabricator suffered second-degree burns when oxygen leaked from a cutting-torch hose found to be in poor condition. Just a few months later, another employee of the company suffered an amputation injury caused by a lack of proper machine guarding. Overall, the company experienced 10 incidents in 5 yr., as described in a U.S. Department of Labor blog, meeting the criteria for the OSHA Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP).
Now OSHA has decided to make some important updates to the SVEP program. “Employers will be placed in the program if OSHA finds at least two willful or repeated violations or issues failure-to-abate notices based on the presence of high gravity serious violations,” writes Doug Parker, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, in a recent DoL blog. “Under the old criteria, the focus was on cases where a willful or repeated serious violation, or there was a hazard the employer failed to abate, that was directly related to either an employee death or an incident that caused three or more hospitalizations.”