Bituminous Insurance Companies

OSHA's Severe Violator Enforcement Directive

Release Date: June 28, 2010

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) created the Severe Violators Enforcement Program (SVEP) that went into effect June 18, 2010. The agency implemented this program, published in OSHA instruction CPL-02-00-149, to focus on employers who continually disregard their legal obligations to protect their workers; the SVEP replaces OSHA's Enhanced Enforcement Program (EEP).

OSHA's SVEP focuses enforcement efforts on employers who willfully and repeatedly endanger workers by exposing them to serious hazards. The instruction establishes procedures and enforcement actions for the SVEP, including increased inspections, such as mandatory follow-up inspections of a workplace found in violation and inspections of other worksites of the same company where similar hazards or deficiencies may be present.

The SVEP is intended to focus enforcement efforts on employers who have demonstrated recalcitrance or indifference to their OSH Act obligations by committing willful, repeated, or failure-to-abate violations in one or more of the following circumstances:

A fatality or catastrophe situation;
In industry operations or processes that expose workers to severe occupational hazards; and those identified as high emphasis (e.g., falls and hazards identified from the following National Emphasis Programs (NEPs): amputations, combustible dust, crystalline silica, excavation/trenching, lead, and ship-breaking.
Exposing workers to hazards related to the potential releases of highly hazardous chemicals; and
All egregious enforcement actions.

Enforcement actions for severe violator cases include mandatory follow-up inspections; increased company/corporate awareness of OSHA enforcement; corporate-wide agreements, where appropriate; enhanced settlement provisions; and federal court enforcement under Section 11(b) of the OSH Act.

States are required to either adopt this program or establish their own equivalent program. State policies and procedures must be adopted within six months of issuance of this instruction.

The Severe Violator Enforcement Program Instruction may be found at: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=4503.

The information contained in this publication was obtained from sources believed to be reliable. ISO Services Properties, Inc., its companies and employees make no guarantee of results and assume no liability in connection with either the information herein contained or the safety suggestions herein made. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that every acceptable safety procedure is contained herein or that abnormal or unusual circumstances may not warrant or require further or additional procedure.