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Safety Update – OSHA/SBA Announce SBREFA Panel on Federal Heat Illness Standard

OSHA has officially announced its intention to convene a Small Business Advocacy Review panel on its potential rulemaking covering heat illness and injury prevention in indoor and outdoor work settings, and has set a target date of around August 21st. The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy is looking for Small Entity Representatives (SER) from various impacted industries, including construction, to participate on the panel. Please Click here to learn more.

ASA Supports FY24 Transportation Infrastructure Funding

ASA, along with the Transportation Construction Coalition, sent support letters to the House and Senate Appropriation Committee Leadership urging the timely completion of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 transportation appropriations at levels authorized in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The second year of the IIJA is underway, and real-world improvements to safety, commute times, and freight movement are being seen nationwide. Over 35,000 road, bridge and safety projects have received IIJA support in the 18 months since the law’s enactment with much more to come. State departments of transportation and transit agencies depend on Congress appropriating to the levels authorized in the IIJA for core highway and public transit programs, providing the certainty the IIJA gives to advance long-term projects.

Additionally, we call on Congress to increase investment in aviation-related construction programs in any reauthorization of the federal aviation programs. We greatly appreciate the $25 billion in airport upgrades over five years included in IIJA. These resources will facilitate improvements for airport terminals and runways across the country. While helpful, more investment is needed to handle the expected increase in passenger levels from 800 million in 2023 to 1.4 billion by 2043. The Airports Council International-North America estimates airports will need $151 billion from 2023 to 2027.  We urge the House and Senate to raise or eliminate the cap on the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) and increase Airport Improvement Program (AIP) investment levels in any aviation program reauthorization legislation to help address the $30 billion in annual airport capital investment needs. These investments can help reduce congestion on the runway and ensure more on-time flights. The PFC has been capped at $4.50 per enplanement since 2000, and AIP investment capped at $3.35 billion per year since 2012. Smaller airports have been disproportionately impacted by this as they have fewer opportunities to raise revenue and as a result, rely heavily on AIP to fund important taxiway and runway projects. We urge Congress to uncap the PFC and increase AIP funding levels to modernize the nation’s airport infrastructure facilities.

Contract Documents Task Force

ASA has recently approved an updated round of contracts from the ConsensusDocs design-bid-build series. These are a series of ConsensusDocs most used prime and subcontract agreements and are being revised for publication as part of ConsensusDocs regular comprehensive revision cycle. This cycle occurs twice as frequently as the American Institute of Architects (AIA) standard contract documents. These include the ConsensusDocs prime 200, 205, and 230 prime agreements, as well as the 750 (long), and 751 (short) subcontracts.

The ConsensusDocs Content Advisory Council has been soliciting and reviewing industry feedback for years to keep the ConsensusDocs ahead of the curve in identifying and establishing industry best practices. In this revision cycle, the Council generally maintained the careful risk allocation balance that already exists in ConsensusDocs standard construction contract documents while making important revisions to help keep the best contract documents in the industry even better. Some highlights include:

• Articulates the exclusions to the limited waiver of consequential damages more precisely
• Eliminates “existing structures coverage” under property insurance
• Addresses delegated design and design coordination with more detailed procedures to submit, review, and respond when design is delegated
• Requires a submittal schedule within 30 days of commencing work
• Clarifies an owner’s options when responding to submittals
• Modifies a Constructor’s indemnity obligations under Constructor’s CGL policy
  

Florida Enacts Legislation Mandating E-Verify

On July 1, 2023, the provisions of Florida Senate Bill 1718 went into effect. The legislation makes sweeping changes to a number of Florida statutes that primarily deal with immigration status.

Of note, private employers with 25 or more employees are now required to use the E-Verify system for new employees and penalties for noncompliance have been increased. E-Verify is a web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. Use of E-Verify is not federally mandated for private companies, however, federal contractors and subcontractors are required to use the program. Several states already mandate the use of E-Verify for private companies while others require its use for contractors on public works projects. In Congress, legislation has been introduced in the House and the Senate to mandate use of the program nationwide.

Implementation of this law is also expected to have a direct impact on migrant labor availability. Reports have indicated that migrant workers have started to leave the state creating vacancies at job sites especially in the construction, waste management services, food services, and agriculture industries.