Daphne Boston
Greetings, all. And welcome to this week's lecture on preventing injuries in trenching and excavation work. We have our special guests back with us this week, Justin Molocznik from JTM Construction that is based in Seattle, Washington. Justin is the safety director there at JTM. And today, he's going to be talking with us about his thoughts and experiences with keeping employees safe during trenching and excavation work.
Welcome back, Justin. We appreciate you taking time to visit with us again today.
Justin Molocznik
Absolutely, my pleasure.
Daphne Boston
Okay. So first, Justin, one of the chapters in our learning materials for this week covers working safely during trenching and excavation work. So would you please, Number 1, tell us about a few of the projects that your company is currently doing or just recently completed that involve trenching and excavation work. And then 2, also talk to us about what kinds of procedures and training courses your company has in place to protect your employees while they are doing this kind of work.
And then Number 3, who is authorized and or qualified to actually do trenching and excavation work at your company?
Justin Molocznik
Definitely. So at JTM Construction, we primarily do vertical construction. So we're building high-rise buildings. And that's where the main scope of work is. And when you're doing a high-rise building, you have to anchor it to something. And so before, you know, steel columns, and you start pouring concrete footings and those things, you have to have a map excavation that happens. And so if you're -- if you happen to be a student who lives in a major metropolitan area, you see construction going on on a large high-rise, you'll see that before it goes up, there's a big pit there.
And those -- we call those mass excavations. And there's a number of different ways that they get down into there. But the big thing is it's a lot of work that has to happen. And the excavation is really an agreement and an understanding between an engineer and a health and safety professional. A lot of times, when you hear about injury that happens, fatalities, unfortunately, when it comes to excavation, it's usually not these massive mass excavations.
Usually, what they're talking about is trenches when you're putting in electrical wire, or they're doing some kind of plumbing system. And they're not as massive, you know. Early part of my career, I spent time working in a pipeline, the pipeline industry. And we just worked with massive trenches. And they were, you know, anywhere from 10 to 15 feet deep. And, you know, there was a lot of opportunity for bad things to happen if we didn't make sure we had our employees trained well.
And we put the proper procedures in place. So I did also want to highlight, too, as far as excavations go, because this is kind of cool, in my career, they're just finishing up now. It is the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington. And the arena is actually underground. And so the excavation, this is the biggest one I've ever been a part of, was just massive, 500,000 cubic yards of fill that came out of it. It was a seven-month process.
And, you know, the existing structure that was there had to be put up on stilts. We just dug out this giant hole. So again, that was on the extreme side. And we had lots of engineers involved with the shoring systems and the excavation process. A lot of planning and therefore a lot of eyes and a lot of involvement ensuring that it was safe. So again, I want to go back to that. When we talk about excavation, in an industrial sense, the big ones, they're going to have a lot of engineers involved with them.
The little ones, those are the ones that we need to keep our eyes on. That's when we're doing some trenching. We're putting in some kind of mechanical system or something that's going to be coming into the building. And the big thing that we have to remember, the three protections that we can have when it comes to how we create or how we advise to create a trench or an excavation is slope or benching of the trench wall, some kind of shoring, shoring trench walls with supports or a trench box or shielding.
And that's -- again, that's the trench box piece of it where if you have somebody going down into that area, you actually have a mechanism -- an engineered mechanism that protects someone from caving in of the trench. When you talk about processes and procedures to train individuals, that's really what it comes down to. It's the training piece, you know. OSHA has a lot of information around this. A lot of companies develop their own training as well.
But as long as it's sitting on, you know, talking about soil classification, what kind of trench am I digging? What kind of excavation am I digging? What am I digging in? Is it sand? Is it clay? Is it rock? That's all going to depend on how you actually slope, shore, shield individuals when they get inside those trenches. And it's really important. You may have some training specific individuals who are going to access it.
But you definitely need to have training and people aware and competent, a competent individual to evaluate a trench or an excavation because if you're going to have people going down there, you want to make sure someone is evaluating that trench before anyone goes down there. So those are kind of the main points I wanted to hit on, especially that last piece, authorization and a competent person to evaluate that trench.
Daphne Boston
Right. Right. Most definitely. Yes. Thanks for that awesome insight. Yeah, this week's topics in our class are some of the most complex topics that we're going to cover this term. So thanks for sharing all that. That's really great perspective for the students to think about. So next, Justin, so as you know, we do what we do as safety professionals to protect employees and prevent injuries, illnesses and death in the workplace.
So would you talk to us about a serious trenching or excavation incident that took place in recent years either in the US or overseas that just kind of, like, stuck with you? Tell us what happened. And please also talk to us about any lessons learned that you personally took away from the incident itself or from the results of the incident investigation.
Justin Molocznik
Most definitely. And unfortunately, Center for Construction Research and Training, they do a lot of tracking on these things as well as OSHA does. And the understanding is trench collapses are very much preventable, but rarely survivable. And since 2014, exponentially, fatalities have gone up when it comes to trench work. And the one that sticks with me -- and a lot of times, you would think, well, maybe you're thinking of mining, when mines collapse and those kinds of things.
The one that actually stuck with me is a little different. And it's because of the penalties and the outcome that came from it. And for me, it actually -- you know, it's a very unfortunate incident that happened. But it's a tool for me in my communication with leadership around accountability. So the trends collapse that I want to kind of touch on, this happened -- and again, I'm in Seattle, Washington. This happened in West Seattle, which is part of Seattle.
It was a 36-year-old, unfortunately, was killed in a trench collapse. It was residential construction. But the individual got into a trench that had been cut and left open for 10 days. So it was just sitting there. No one was evaluating it, as we talked a little bit earlier. Someone should be evaluating a trench before someone gets in it. The soil classification wasn't had. They didn't know what the material is made out of.
And then in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to deal with a lot of moisture, a lot of precipitation. And that can impact a trench a lot. The trench was only about 12 feet deep. The employee was down inside the trench using a -- I'm not sure what the tool was. It was a tool that was using -- causing vibration. And basically, the trench caved in, buried the individual. And they lost their life. And the reason it stuck -- that it's kind of stuck with me, and this is just kind of recently news coming out, is not only were there violations written by the regulators as far as OSHA -- in our state of Washington, we have Labor and Industries as a state-run program.
But eventually, charges were given to the owner of the company. And the owner was actually charged with second degree manslaughter. So for the -- you know, they were holding -- basically, what this is telling us is that owners of companies, they're -- you know, they're accountable for health and safety of their employees. And in the event that someone loses their life, they're very accountable. They could go to jail for that.
So like I had referenced before, this is a really important conversation to have. At JTM, it's not a conversation I have to have because the leadership is definitely aware of their accountability and responsibility. But sometimes, in smaller organizations like this particular one, the owner of a company may not be aware that, hey, I am accountable for the wellness and health and safety of employees. And unfortunately, for the owner of this company, they're going to have to do some -- spend some time in prison.
Daphne Boston
Yeah. Yeah. Man, that's -- thank you for sharing that story. That's so sad to hear about that young man. And that's, you know, always the toughest part of our job. We share the burden of responsibility to a certain extent with company leaders when injuries do happen. And it's a heavy burden to bear, especially in that type of situation, what you described. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I want my students to make note of that.
It's very important information. So okay, Justin, in closing, one of the assignments that students have this week is on evaluating different kinds of shoring systems. And you mentioned the shoring systems a little bit earlier. So would you tell us about a shoring system that they could consider researching for their assignment this week?
Justin Molocznik
Yes, absolutely. So most times, you get onto a construction site, and they're -- maybe they're cutting into the ground to lay down some cables or some plumbing systems. You're going to have an excavator out there. Someone is going to say, okay, we're going to cut this back. And we're going to slope it out. That's kind of the general one that we go with. But the one that I see a lot when we have a real tight trench, and you have people getting down into that, would be a trench box.
And I think it would be a great advantage for your students to kind of look into engineered trench boxes. Sometimes, you'll see some people put some two-by-fours and some plywood up, and they call that a trench box. That's not really the idea behind it. Usually, it's an engineered system that's been designed to actually take the weight in the event that the trench collapse. So I would say spend the time as you're researching it to look into trench boxes because when you get into construction and get on the jobsite, you will be dealing with those without a doubt.
Daphne Boston
Okay. Awesome. Great. Great. Noted. Okay. So well, Justin, that's all the questions that we have for you today. As always, it's been a pleasure having you back to visit with us this week.
Justin Molocznik
Yeah, you bet. Thanks, Daphne.
Daphne Boston
Yeah. So okay, everyone, that does complete this week's lecture. And thank you for tuning in.