Partners Publish Four-Part Series on Surviving an OSHA Inspection

Partners Travis Vance and Kevin Troutman are publishing a four-part series for Medical Journal Houston in which they cover the most important things employers can do when OSHA arrives at their facilities. These threshold steps will likely prevent citations, minimize the penalties issued, and narrow the scope of OSHA’s inspection.

And here are the tips, starting with most recently published:

The third (and most recently published) threshold tip: Limit the area seen by taking the OSHA inspector directly to and from the area at issue in the inspection. By doing this, employers are not trying to hide anything, but rather limiting the number of safety violations the OSHA inspector could ostensibly write up. (Click here to read the entirety of "part three.")

The second threshold tip: Don’t give federal OSHA any documents other than your OSHA 300 logs, 300A summaries, 301 forms, and relevant safety data sheets (SDS) on the first day of the inspection. These are some of the very few documents you must provide under applicable regulations. Providing additional documents on the day of the inspection could lead to significant concerns you can otherwise easily avoid. (Click here to read the entirety of "part two.") 

The first threshold tip: Don’t permit any manager or supervisor interviews by OSHA on the day the agency arrives. Without a warrant or subpoena, the agency cannot compel you to do anything. By preventing same-day interviews, the inspection can proceed based solely on your narrowly tailored consent, and OSHA has to conduct its inspection within the parameters of that consent. (Click here to read the entirety of “part one.”)

And stay tuned for the co-authors’ remaining tips as they publish in Medical Journal Houston.