Bruce Magee is Region Product Development Manager for United Rentals. With 39 years in the rental industry and the last 25 years in Trench Safety, Bruce has delivered more than 380 Competent Person classes. He has presented on trench safety/confined space safety requirements at more than 100 engineering conferences and trained construction safety professionals and OSHA compliance officers across North America.
Confined spaces can present severe safety hazards to the people working in them. To address these risks, OSHA created standards to make sure workers can get in and out safely, and do their jobs without endangering their health.
In construction and industry, some potential hazards visibly manifest, such as the risk of falls from heights. Others are more hidden. A confined space may not look dangerous, but workers perish each year because someone assumed the air inside was safe to breathe when testing would have revealed that is wasn’t.
