A construction site is organized by trades and by who controls each area
A construction project is a sequence of trades working in the same space under a schedule. Excavation, foundations, steel, concrete, framing, roofing, mechanical, electrical, and finishing crews arrive and leave as the work moves, each employed by a different company, each responsible for its own work and its own people, and each depending on the companies before and around it to leave the area in a safe condition. The general contractor, sometimes called the prime contractor or construction manager, holds the contract with the owner and coordinates the trades. The subcontractors hold contracts with the general contractor for defined scopes of work.
That structure is why a construction injury is reviewed through the project rather than through the injured worker’s employer alone. A fall through an unprotected floor opening, a trench wall that gave way, a load that dropped from a crane, a scaffold that shifted, or a contact with an energized line each happened in an area that some company controlled and in a task that some company planned. We identify those companies and seek the records that show what each one controlled. Whether a company stands inside the workers’ compensation relationship, as the employer, as a general contractor with a written coverage agreement, or as a staffing client, or outside it as a third party, is a question of workplace injury coverage and third-party workplace claims, and it is asked for every company on the project.
The general contractor, the subcontractors, and the owner
The general contractor’s responsibilities are written into its contract with the owner and into its site-specific safety plan, which typically designates who inspects the site, who has authority to stop work, and how the trades hand areas to one another.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s enforcement policy for sites with more than one employer describes four roles a company can occupy:
- A creating employer caused the hazard.
- An exposing employer’s own workers were exposed to it.
- A correcting employer was responsible for fixing it.
- A controlling employer had general supervisory authority over the site, including the power to correct hazards or require others to correct them, whether by contract or by the control it exercised in practice.
The policy is how OSHA decides whom to cite; it is not a rule of civil liability. The same facts about control are what a civil review examines.
Two Texas rules shape the analysis for the general contractor and the owner: the written coverage agreement that can make a general contractor the employer of a subcontractor’s workers for compensation purposes, and the limit on a property owner’s responsibility to a contractor’s employees. The project records show where those arrangements were made. A general contractor that signs a coverage agreement files a copy with its own carrier, and the documents that show whether either rule applies are the subcontract, the coverage agreement and its carrier filing, and the enrollment records of any wrap-up insurance program.
A wrap-up program, often called an owner-controlled or contractor-controlled insurance program, is one insurance program bought by the owner or general contractor to cover every enrolled contractor on a project; whether a particular company was enrolled, and for which coverages, is a document question that changes the analysis for that company.
Staffing agencies occupy a further position. OSHA treats a staffing agency and the host contractor that directs the work as joint employers for safety purposes. Which one is the employer for compensation purposes, and whether one company’s coverage extends to the other, depends on the placement contract and the coverage documents.
Falls, struck-by, caught-in-between, and electrical hazards
Construction work has its own body of federal safety standards, separate from the general industry standards that apply to most other workplaces. OSHA groups the hazards it emphasizes in construction training into four categories it calls the Focus Four: falls, struck-by incidents, caught-in or caught-between incidents, and electrocution. Each category points to specific standards and to the records those standards generate.
Falls are the clearest example. The construction standards generally require that a worker on a walking or working surface with an unprotected side or edge six feet or more above a lower level be protected by a guardrail system, a safety net, or a personal fall arrest system, with the same trigger for holes, leading edges, and hoist areas. On a scaffold the trigger is ten feet, and a competent person must inspect the scaffold for visible defects before each work shift. Where conventional fall protection is infeasible on a leading edge, the employer must have a written fall protection plan. A competent person, in the standards’ own definition, is someone capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards and authorized to take prompt corrective measures, and the employer must designate one for frequent and regular inspections of the job site.
Excavations of five feet or more generally require a protective system such as sloping, shoring, or a trench box, unless the excavation is entirely in stable rock, and a competent person must inspect the excavation daily, before work starts, as needed during the shift, and after every rainstorm. For struck-by hazards the standards require head protection where falling or flying objects are possible and a reverse signal alarm or an observer for vehicles with an obstructed view to the rear. For electrical contact the rule is that no worker may be permitted to work close enough to an energized circuit to contact it unless the circuit is de-energized and grounded or effectively guarded. A standard that was or was not followed is evidence counsel weighs.
Cranes, scaffolds, trenches, and the equipment records behind them
Equipment on a construction site is often owned by a company other than the one using it. Cranes are covered by their own construction standard, which requires the employer to determine before work whether the equipment or its load could come within twenty feet of a power line and to take listed precautions if so, requires a competent person to begin a visual inspection before each shift along with monthly and annual inspections, and requires operators to be trained, certified or licensed, and evaluated. Those requirements generate inspection records, operator certifications, load charts, lift plans, and power-line planning documents held by the crane owner, the rental company, or the contractor using it.
Scaffold components, aerial lifts, harnesses and lanyards, trench boxes, and shoring systems carry their own inspection tags, manufacturer instructions, tabulated data, and rental agreements. When a component failed rather than a person, the physical item is evidence that cannot be recreated after it is repaired, returned, or scrapped, and the firm asks the company holding it to preserve it before any question of design or manufacture is examined.
Project documents that show who controlled what
The records that answer the control question are organized by who holds them, and the firm asks each company by name.
- The owner or developer holds the prime contract, its representative’s reports, site rules, and any provisions reserving control over the work.
- The general contractor holds the site-specific safety plan, daily logs, competent-person designations, site inspections, toolbox talks, the subcontracts, any coverage agreements and their carrier filings, wrap-up enrollment records, incident reports, injury logs, lift plans, excavation inspection records, and any site camera footage.
- Each subcontractor holds its job hazard analyses, pre-task plans, training records for the recognition of unsafe conditions, fall protection plans, scaffold inspection records, equipment inspections, and operator certifications.
- The staffing agency holds the placement contract, training records, and assignment records.
- Crane, lift, scaffold, and rental companies hold inspection, certification, maintenance, and delivery records, manuals, and tabulated data.
- The electric utility holds de-energizing and grounding confirmations and locate requests.
- Engineers and designers hold drawings and the designs of shoring and protective systems.
- Emergency responders and medical providers hold run reports and treatment records.
A construction site changes quickly. Openings are covered, trenches are backfilled, scaffolds come down, and the next trade’s work covers the condition that caused the injury. Photographs taken the same day, the names on hard hats, trucks, and gate signs, and the names of witnesses from other trades often become the record of a condition that no longer exists.
OSHA’s inspection file and how it is obtained
When OSHA inspects a construction site, the inspection file becomes a record source. Its narrative, worksheets, photographs, and any citations can be requested from the agency under the Freedom of Information Act, and a summary of each inspection appears in OSHA’s public establishment search once the record is entered. An inspection’s weight in a civil matter, and the reporting duties an employer owes after a fatality or hospitalization, are the same on any worksite; on a construction site the file may address several employers at once, because OSHA’s policy allows more than one company to be cited for the same hazard.
Houston projects and layered contracting
Houston-area construction ranges from residential subdivisions and commercial buildings to highway and drainage projects and the industrial construction that serves the region’s refineries, chemical plants, and ports. Across all of them the contracting structure is layered in the same way, with an owner, a general contractor, trade subcontractors, staffing companies, and equipment lessors on a single site. On industrial projects the site is often inside or beside an operating facility, so the owner’s own permit and access rules apply alongside the general contractor’s safety plan. Where construction trades work inside an operating process unit, the facility’s permit and process-safety records are those of a refinery accident; the trade activity also needs its own investigation. Where the project is the preparation of a new wellsite, a lease road, or a production facility, the operator and service companies are those of an oilfield accident, and the construction work also needs its own investigation.
Other pages for coverage, collisions, explosions, exposures, burns, and deaths
- The coverage status of each company, the non-subscriber track, and the Texas rules for statutory employers and property owners are common to every workplace injury.
- Pursuing a company other than the employer, wherever the site was, is a third-party workplace claim.
- A collision with a passing vehicle in a highway work zone is reviewed as a car accident or a truck accident.
- An explosion or flash fire on a site, whether from a gas line strike, a propane cylinder, or hot work, is reviewed for its mechanism as an explosion, and a silica, solvent, or confined-space atmosphere exposure as a chemical exposure injury.
- Burn injuries and other catastrophic injuries are reviewed for their medical course.
- A death on a project brings in the family and estate questions of a wrongful death claim.
Talking with the firm about a construction injury
The facts that let the firm begin are the project’s name and location, the owner or developer, the general contractor, the injured worker’s employer, the other trades working in the area, the equipment involved and who owned it, and the medical care so far. From them the firm identifies every company on the project, asks each to preserve what it holds, and works out, company by company, how coverage status and control affect the analysis. Leatherwood & Schindler reviews construction matters from its one Houston office, and a consultation begins with the project rather than with a conclusion about any company on it.