Construction Safety Manager
Nevada Contractors Insurance Offers New Safety Certification

From The Construction Zone: July 2000

From spacious new offices, Nevada Contractors Insurance and Risk Services-Nevada announced a new 10 hour safety training certification.

The Construction Safety Manager certification is based on material developed by Risk Services-Nevada training safety directors and workers over the last five years. The new certification is geared for the professional safety director to learn the requirements for creating and implementing a sound safety program, and successful candidates take back to the field a better grasp of the vital importance of safety on construction sites.

"This is not going to be easy," Ron Landram, director of Risk Services-Nevada, said of the new certification. "But nothing worth doing is easy."

H.J. Shewmake, safety director for Nevada Contractors Insurance, said that the courses are designed specifically for working safety people. "We want to limit the Construction Safety Manager certification to those people who are safety directors and have safety responsibility," Shewmake said, "The owner, president or C.E.O. of the company will have to provide a statement that the candidate has those responsibilities."

The 10 hour course will feature mandatory completion of:

-Safety director 101;

-Fall protection;

-Electrical hazard awareness;

-Hazard communication standard;

-Accident investigation.

The candidate may choose to add any one of the following sections:

-SIA scaffold hazard awareness;

-Fork lift "train the trainer;"

-Elevating and articulating work platforms;

-NUCA competent person certification, excavation;

-OSHA regulatory events;

-Emergency action plans / fire protection and prevention.

When the classes are complete, the candidate must sit for two written, mutliple-choice exams of 50 questions each. The exams will administered privately and candidates must scroe 70 percent or more to pass.

A problem with some safety training, according to Landram, is a lack of skilled instructors and meaningful testing. "One problem with some of the people teaching some of the OSHA courses is that they don’t have any practical construction experience," Landram said. "Our staff has considerable field experience."

Safety people who have previously taken and passed courses offered by Risk Services-Nevada may use those "credits" to test for the new certification. Successful candidates must pay $25 and will receive a framed certificate documenting the completion of the courses.

"Normally, you would have to take off two to three days to complete an OSHA 10 hour course," Landram said. "This way, you can complete the requirements as you go."

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