WASHINGTON — Associated Builders and Contractors responded to the proposed rule of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings.

“ABC continues to believe employers should equip their employees and leadership teams to develop their safety plans, unique to their jobsites, and we strongly encourage review of all applicable OSHA rules and guidelines,” said Greg Sizemore, ABC vice president of health, safety, environment and workforce development. “We also provide tools to employers so that they can equip and empower supervisors to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat illness and provide necessary rest, water, and shade that is dependent on local conditions. Based on CDC recommendations, our members work to ensure that job sites are safe and implement the most appropriate practices for working in extreme heat conditions that focus on the individual worker.

“However, those protections must be flexible in response to the fluid nature of the construction environment, and unfortunately some of the unworkable provisions in the proposed rule could weaken contractor efforts to prevent heat stress for workers,” said Sizemore.

ABC will continue to review and analyze the more than one-thousand pages of the proposed rule.

“Employers play a key role in providing education on heat illness prevention, and ABC provides its members with a wide range of guidance and resources to ensure they understand the appropriate measures to protect employees during harsh weather conditions,” said Sizemore. “For example, planning for severe weather conditions is an integral part of the pre-planning stages of a construction project, as evidenced in ABC’s Safety Performance Report, an annual study on health and safety measures that help save lives and prevent injury and illness.”


In December 2023, ABC submitted comments as a steering committee member of the Construction Industry Safety Coalition and the Coalition for Workplace Safety in response to OSHA’s potential standard for Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings following its review of the Small Business Advocacy Review Panel materials and the SBAR Panel’s final report.

To start, the proposed rule is a standard that requires employers to create a heat injury and illness prevention plan to evaluate and control heat hazards in their workplace. It establishes requirements for identifying heat hazards, implementing engineering and work practice control measures at or above two heat trigger levels (i.e., an initial heat trigger and a high heat trigger), developing and implementing a heat illness and emergency response plan, providing training to employees and supervisors, and retaining records. The proposed rule would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in all general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors, with some exceptions. Throughout this document, OSHA sought input on alternatives and potential exclusions. 

On page ten, the document states: "Many of the provisions of the proposed standard provide flexibility for affected employers to choose the control measures most suited to their workplace. The flexible nature of the proposed rule may be particularly beneficial to small organizations with limited resources"

Many small entity representatives (SERs) in the small business review panel were concerned that OSHA would attempt to make a one-size-fits-all standard that is difficult for regulated entities to comply with. SERs agreed that an OSHA standard should be flexible with an approach that allows employers to tailor their program to their workplace. SERs thought this flexibility was necessary for employers to prevent heat-related injuries and illnesses in their workplaces most effectively. 

As stated in the proposed rule, an employer may have already developed and implemented a Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Plan (HIIPP). Existing plans may fulfill some of the requirements in this proposed rule. It is not OSHA's intent for employers to duplicate current effective HIIPPs, but each employer with a current HIIPP would have to evaluate that plan for completeness to ensure it satisfies all the requirements of this section. Employers with existing plans would be required to modify and/or update their current HIIPP plans to incorporate any missing required elements and provide training on these new updates or modifications to all employees.

Another key concern among SERs was the implementation of work practice control measures at or above two heat trigger levels.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) uses the Wet-Bulb-Globe Temperature (WBGT) to determine Recommended Alert Limits (RALs) and Recommended Exposure Limits (RELs) for workers in hot environments:

RALs: For unacclimatized workers
RELs: For acclimatized worker

According to the proposed rule, OSHA preliminarily finds that evidence supports that heat index triggers of 80°F and 90°F are highly sensitive and therefore highly protective of workers. These triggers are also generally in line with current and proposed triggers in state heat-specific standards. Therefore, OSHA is proposing an initial heat trigger of a heat index of 80°F and a high heat trigger of a heat index of 90°F. OSHA is also proposing to permit employers to use the WBGT-based NIOSH RAL and REL, which are supported by empirical evidence and have been found to be highly sensitive in capturing unsustainable heat exposure.

OSHA and NIOSH co-developed a Heat Safety Tool smartphone app for both Android and iPhone devices (see www.osha.gov/heat/heatapp). The app provides outdoor, location-specific temperature, humidity, and heat index (HI) readings.

As of April 2024, five states had heat injury and illness prevention standards, reflecting a recognition by these states that certain measures can reduce heat-related risks posed to workers. These standards have many of the same types of controls OSHA is proposing (e.g., a written heat safety plan, emergency response protocols, rest breaks, and training on HRI recognition and prevention).