WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) submitted comments on Jan. 28 to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regarding information collection requests (ICR) related to the agency’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard for the management of highly hazardous materials.

ABC commented that under OSHA’s PSM standard, the agency has not adequately accounted for the time and cost required for construction contractors to comply with the PSM standard’s information collection requests.

“ABC members engage in work on general industry sites at which OSHA’s Process Safety Management standards are applicable. OSHA has not provided any calculation on the time and costs related to information collection requests by construction contractors who work on such sites,” said Anita Drummond, ABC director of legal and regulatory affairs. “ABC supports effective guidelines for handling hazardous materials, but believes that the cost to contractors for compliance with information collection requirements must be considered in order to ensure a fair and effective application of the standard.”

Publication date: 02/17/2003