The Georgia Tech Research Institute’s OSHA 21D Consultation Program provides a free, confidential, on-site consulting service for small Georgia companies with fewer than 500 employees that need assistance in occupational safety and health. Employers may choose several types of assistance.

Limited assistance is offered to help companies comply with OSHA's rules and regulations for specific processes or areas of concern.

Georgia Tech’s consultation program identifies physical hazards, such as machine guarding or chemical exposures, and evaluates technical programs, such as lockout/tagout or hazard communication, within the scope requested by your company. If you know the hazards, Georgia Tech can provide technical assistance on how to correct them and develop the necessary programs.

Limited service assistance can be provided in:

• Safety including fire protection, emergency response, electrical safety, machine guarding, and other areas;
• Health including exposure to chemicals, noise, or bloodborne pathogens, and other areas;
• Program management including management leadership, employee involvement, hazard identification and control, and safety and health training; or
• Ergonomics assistance to reduce exposure to musculoskeletal disorders.

Full-service assistance is for companies that want help in meeting OSHA's requirements for its entire facility. Georgia Tech’s consultation program will:
1) Identify physical hazards throughout the facility;
2) Evaluate all technical programs; and
3) Review the safety and health program management.

Recommendations will encompass how to correct physical hazards and improve the technical programs and the safety and health management system.

For all types of assistance, your Georgia Tech consultant must use the same identification and classification procedures as an OSHA compliance officer would. The employer must agree beforehand to correct all hazards identified by the consultant and provide written verification of the actions taken to correct serious hazards within a reasonable time frame, usually four to six weeks.

For program participants, Georgia Tech typically provides the following services:

• Walk-Through Surveys to assist businesses in achieving "in-compliance" status with federal regulations and standards;
• Surveys of Work Practices to pinpoint causes of injuries or illness;
• Noise Measurements to evaluate noise exposure and assist with hearing conservation programs;
• Air Sampling and Analysis to measure contaminants such as dusts, fumes, gases, and vapors;
• Evaluations of Technical Programs such as Lockout/Tagout, Confined Space Entry, Hazard Communication, Respiratory Protection, and others; and
• Safety and Health Management Systems development assistance.

Benefits to Georgia

In a typical year, Georgia Tech's Safety and Health Consultation Program helps Georgia’s employers and workers by:

• Providing assistance to 364 small businesses
• Identifying 2,484 conditions that could cause serious physical harm
• Protecting more than 50,000 workers exposed to these conditions
• Saving companies more than $2.5 million in potential fines—a payback of 2.5 times the funding level
• Training more than 1,400 private-sector employers and workers.

Types of Surveys Performed

	Hazard Survey	Training	Followups	Total
Safety	157	39	22	218
Health	124	10	12	146
Total	281	49	34	364

Savings to Industry

	Serious	Other	Regulatory	Total
Hazards Identified	2,484	1,585	73	4,142
Employees Affected	54,186	47,348	2,187	103,721
Average OSHA Citation Fee	$986	$38	$38	---------
Savings to Business	$2,449,224	$60,230	$2,774	$2,512,228

Five-Year Strategic Plan

Georgia Tech’s Safety and Health Consultation Program has developed a five-year strategic plan to help the Occupational Safety and Health Administration achieve its goals for reducing injuries and illnesses by 15 percent in five industries and reducing three of the most significant types of workplace injuries and illnesses by the same percentage across several industries.

We are focusing on the construction, food processing, nursing homes, and logging industries in addition to emphasizing these injuries and illness categories silica, amputations, and lead. Types of assistance available to target industry groups include:

• Construction: Get help in preventing injuries from falls, electrocutions, struck-by and against heavy equipment, as well as reducing exposure to silica and lead. Questions? Contact silica exposure specialist Art Wickman, CIH, and Thomas Dean, CSPand construction safety specialist.
• Food Processing: Protect against a variety of safety and health threats, ranging from machine hazards and amputations to ergonomics and cumulative trauma disorders. Since most Georgia companies operate outside OSHA’s small business requirements of the OSHA consultation program, contact Georgia Tech's Agriculture Technology and Research Program, which provides technical assistance to medium and large corporations on request. If you are a small processor, contact Dan Ortiz.
• Nursing Homes: Nursing homes face a number of issues from bloodborne pathogens to back injuries. Resident handling is closely associated with back injuries in this workplace. For information, contact Dan Ortiz.
• Logging: We are offering service to the logging industry. For information, contact Dan Ortiz.
• Silicosis Prevention: This illness is a disabling, nonreversible, and sometimes fatal lung disease caused by overexposure to respirable crystalline silica. More than one million U.S. workers are exposed to crystalline silica, and each year more than 250 workers die from silicosis. Contact Art Wickman, CIH, for information or technical assistance.

The consultation program offers free seminars, tech guides, and other information to assist companies in reducing workplace injuries and illnesses.

Requesting Assistance

If you are a small company with fewer than 250 employees within the four industry sectors or have exposure to silica/lead/and amputations, Georgia Tech can help you reduce your injury and illnesses through the OSHA consultation program. To receive assistance, complete a request form, then return it us by fax at 404-407-8275 or by mail at:
OSHA 21D Consultation Program
430 10th St.
Georgia Tech
GTRI/HESL
Atlanta, GA 30332-0837