Chris Trahan Cain, CIH, Executive Director
Spencer Schwegler, Director, OSHA and Disaster Response Training
Gary Gustafson, Director, Environmental Hazards Training
Steve Surtees, Director, Environmental Career Worker Training Program
NABTU and its affiliated unions created CPWR – the Center for Construction Research and Training, and we strive to create high-quality occupational safety and health training materials for our industry (See CPWR Resources for Construction Safety Trainers, below). Early this year CPWR surveyed safety and health trainers from across your trades to learn more about you and your needs. I’d like to share some of what we found.
We found, of course, that health and safety trainers working in union apprenticeship and training centers are dedicated to their mission, working hard to deliver critical information to their brothers and sisters that can help protect them on the job. You bring a wealth of experience to the subject matter: 87% of you have more than 15 years of experience in the trade. In the past five years, 85% of you have taught the OSHA 10-hour outreach course, and 80% of you have taught the 30-hour. Other popular courses include Hazard Communication (84%), Scaffold User (83%), and Confined Space (66%). Your favorite instructional method is small-group exercises, followed by PowerPoint presentations.
We were happy to learn that those of you who use CPWR materials and participate in CPWR courses, webinars and training enhancements give them excellent marks. We are proud to hear that 42% of you supplement your curriculum with CPWR Toolbox Talks, and 30% with CPWR Hazard Alerts. In follow-up interviews, trainers who contacted CPWR for assistance were uniformly positive about the experience, telling us that they “Always get a quick response from CPWR” and that CPWR staff “treated me like I was the number 1 priority and help me work through my issues.”
If there was one area where some of you thought there was room for improvement, it was communication. Several of you told us that CPWR produces so many new, top-quality training materials addressing construction safety and health hazards – course curricula, new modules, videos, online tools, apps, webinars, hazard alerts, toolbox talks and more – that it was hard to keep up!
We hear you, and we will aim to do a better job keeping you posted as new tools and materials are made available. Meanwhile, I hope you will keep a close eye on your CPWR UPDATE e-Newsletter. The monthly UPDATE includes a dedicated feature, Tools for Safety and Health, spotlighting a CPWR product or publication – new offerings often appear here first. CPWR also hosts a monthly webinar where our researchers share their latest research findings and field questions – if you want to know what’s going on at the cutting edge of the field, these webinars are for you. The monthly topic, along with registration information, also appears in every UPDATE.
Thank you for your participation in the survey – and for all you do to keep our nation’s construction workers safe on the job!
Posted 2018
CPWR Resources for Construction Safety Trainers
Training Programs and Curricula
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Construction Safety Tools and Resources
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