Michael Ivanovich

Bloody Buildings
June 3, 2008

I’m sitting in my Las Vegas hotel room, with a window facing the MGM Mirage CityCenter construction site. A worker was killed there on Saturday. The sixth for this multi-billion dollar project that has been under construction for about six months. That’s a death rate of one per month.. The cabbie taking me from the airport to the hotel told me about the death. He said workers were upset. I said that another crane fell in New York. He said yeah, he knew. a few people were killed. 

I'm in Las Vegas to attend the NFPA World Safety Congress and Exposition.There is some irony here, but I know it's tangential. There are different kinds of safety. But still.

Construction is a dangerous job, and nationally, it’s not uncommon to read about a building, road, or bridge going up and something collapses, caves in, or blows up. But it’s not like safety isn’t something we’re just becoming aware of. How many deaths are acceptable for any construction project? Is there an index like “deaths per floor” or “deaths per sq ft” that insurance actuaries use to determine if a project is safe or not? After all, the City Center is an $8 billion dollar effort. Certainly, there was some statistical certainty that something bad would happen. But when and where, and to whom, no one could know. But six people in six months?

Looking at the site now, I see 20 or 21 cranes connected to the project.  And you know what? The cranes are still. On a sunny Tuesday morning, the cranes are still.

There are more than 6,000 workers on site, but they’re not working. The only thing moving at the construction site, from what I can see out my window, are workers on strike. I can’t read their signs from here, but they’re marching in protest of an unsafe work site, according to a news story that I read this morning. Drivers are honking their horns as they drive by. 

Here's a news story at a Las Vegas Web site.

The story warns about the strike and says what the workers want is a safety inspection, an on-site OSHA training course, and a full job site access to be granted to union officials and safety directors.

Who could say no?

The CityCenter is striving for a LEED Silver rating. There’s no prerequisite for a safe worksite in LEED 2.2. The words “safe” and “safety” are mentioned only once each, and that’s with respect to lighting level design. So a philosophical question: how many construction site deaths should there be to make a building “not green” regardless of the environmental benefits.

edited on June 4 to correct names/references.

Posted by Michael Ivanovich on June 3, 2008 | Comments (1)