Spokane Home Builders Association

Language Barriers Could Contribute to Job Site Fatalities

Foreign-born workers accounted for 29% of the fatalities in the residential construction industry, according to “ Residential Construction Industry Fatalities 2003-2006 ,” a recently-released study commissioned by NAHB.

The study also found that workers of Hispanic origin accounted for 28% of the fatalities.

Foreign-born and Hispanic workers have significantly higher representation in the construction industry than in the population at large.

2006 Census Bureau figures show that 11% of people living in the U.S. were born in other countries, while Department of Labor figures indicate that 28% of construction workers are non-native. The proportion of Hispanic workers in the construction trades — 28% — is also higher than in the general U.S. population (14.8%).

“Without safety training, residential construction sites can be very dangerous for any worker, regardless of their language skills or assigned task,” said Buck Roberts, president of A.B. Roberts Construction Company in Anderson, S.C. and chairman of NAHB's Construction Safety and Health Committee .

“Since more than a quarter of the workers in our industry may not speak English as their first language, NAHB is creating many safety training resources in English-Spanish language formats for our members and their workers,” he said.

The safety study evaluated the 1,385 work-related deaths that were reported in residential construction from 2003 to 2006. Data was collected from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries as well as employment estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey and the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages .

The study also found that falls, which accounted for 45% of the industry's reported deaths, were the most common cause of home building fatalities.

Study Available Free From NAHB

The study, available free from NAHB, is the most comprehensive analysis of home building industry fatalities to date.

To download a free copy of the full study or its executive summary from the NAHB Web site, go to: www.nahb.org/fatalitystudy .

Spanish-Language Safety Resources Available From NAHB

NAHB offers its members and affiliated home builders associations Spanish-language resources in a variety of formats, including books, videos, onsite training programs and Sed de Saber™-Construction Edition , a learn-at-home program from the Home Builders Institute (HBI) that teaches English to Spanish-speaking adults in the construction industry. HBI is the workforce development arm of NAHB.

BuilderBooks.com offers several safety-oriented Spanish-language instructional books and videos, including “ Fall Protection Video, English-Spanish ,” which includes identical 30-minute training videos in each language. 

NAHB and the NAHB Research Center also conduct fall protection training seminars in locations around the country for builders, trade contractors, supervisors and workers. The seminars are offered in both English and Spanish.

To learn more about the fall protection training program, and to see a list of scheduled seminar locations for 2008, go to www.nahb.org/fallprotectiontraining .

To purchase safety publications, videos and other resources online from BuilderBooks.com , visit www.builderbooks.com/safety .

For more information on NAHB safety training programs, e-mail Lindsay Cather at NAHB, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8163.

Four Steps on How to Deal with an Abrasive Customer

Four Simple Steps on How to Deal With Abusive Customers
By Tracey Gundersen, CEO, Warranty Management Technologies

Abusive clients are, unfortunately, a part of the new home customer service process, a tiny part, but a part nonetheless.

Establishing a procedure on how personnel should deal with abusive clients nurtures better long-term customer relationships. Look at a situation involving an upset and enraged customer as a chance to improve your product and service.

A written procedure guides your staff, reduces stress and may keep you out of legal hot water. After all, one enraged customer can drag down your entire warranty service department. Left unchecked, an irate customer can turn vengeful and destroy a company. 

When encountering abusive clients, Carol Smith, author of numerous best-selling new-home customer service books including “ Meetings With Clients: A Self-Study Manual for a Builder's Frontline Personnel ,” recommends the following four steps in order to avoid stressful situations:

• Always conduct yourself in a business like manner.
  Instead of sarcasm, respond with healthy detachment. Avoid engaging in an argument and provide a realistic outlook. Don't yell, use self control.
  
• Establish boundaries and empathize with your client.
  Tell them in a normal tone of voice, “I understand that you're angry. I'm here to help. I do have limits on how we communicate. If you will stop (using that language, threatening me, intimidating, etc.), we can continue talking. Otherwise, I'll end this conversation and will call you tomorrow.”
  
• If the client continues, end the conversation by calmly leaving the meeting or gently hanging up the phone.
  
• Document the call on an incident report.
  Make sure to date and time the incident. Mark your calendar for a follow-up call.
  Defusing a potentially nasty situation allows everyone to get their emotions under control and think rationally. We're here to solve problems, not compound them.

Now, doesn't that feel better than a swollen vein on your head?

Tracey Gundersen is the founder and CEO of Warranty Management Technologies, LLC, of Burnsville, Minn. The firm provides warranty process management software, consulting services and fully-outsourced customer service to new home builders. For more information, e-mail  Gundersen , call her at 952-707-0725 or visit www.homsoft.com .

Cars are the Solution - Not the Problem

And more on this topic from the Washington Policy Center.

It looks like the City of Tacoma is also trying to limit CO2 emissions by setting targets to reduce per capita VMT by 2020.

As Todd Myers, director of WPC's Center for the Environment points out in his latest Environmental Watch , Europe has failed to meet similar targets under the Kyoto Protocol in the last ten years. And as our region continues to grow, the City of Tacoma and the State will also likely fail to limit how much its citizens drive.

But there is a better way.

Its a fact that every gallon of gasoline burned creates 20 lbs of CO2 .
By 2030, the State estimates Washingtonians will drive an average of 86.5 billion miles.

If the average fuel efficiency for all vehicles in Washington is 22 mpg, drivers will emit about 78.6 billion lbs of CO2. If the average fuel efficiency rises to about 30 mpg, drivers will emit about 57.6 billion lbs of CO2.

So improving the statewide average fuel efficiency by just 8 mpg will reduce vehicle CO2 emissions by 27%. The State's Climate Advisory Team's reduction target is about 18%.

Instead of forcing behavior changes by limiting mobility through social engineering, a more realistic way to reduce CO2 emissions is to remove barriers to technology that will improve emission standards and fuel efficiency. Cars are the solution, not the problem.

From the SR: Executive Sessions in Whoville

I got a kick out of reading this excellent post from Richard Roesler at the SR. It makes for some great end-of-day reading.

Executive sessions in Whoville...
From the Spokesman-Review "Eye on Olympia" Blog April 3rd, 2008
Written by Richard Roesler

"I can't find a video clip of this anywhere, but there's a great scene in the new movie "Horton Hears a Who" that perfectly sums up the concerns that open-government advocates have over executive sessions by elected officials.

In the Dr. Seuss-written tale (I have a 2 1/2-year old), a mayor learned of a disaster looming over blissful Whoville. But when he urged the city council meeting to cancel a big event in favor of rushing to the safety of underground storehouses, an appalled city councilman promptly reached for a switch.

A huge glass jar plopped down over the council and the mayor. The crowd of citizens could hear nothing.

Inside this cone of silence, though, they could see the enraged council yelling at the mayor, choking him, browbeating him for suggesting such a thing.

Then – zip! – up came the glass jar.

And the council was again all smiles, announcing that all was well and that the celebration would go as planned. The mayor was quietly shooed off, pursued by a Dr. Seuss-ish machine that kept kicking him in the rear end.

Washington state law says that most of what government does must be done in the open; groups of elected officials are only allowed to meet behind closed doors for a few narrow purposes.
But in the wake of a recent state auditor's report that found potential problems with hundreds of closed sessions, open government advocates pushed hard in Olympia this year for have cities, counties and other governing bodies record such meetings.

If someone made a credible challenge that officials were going behind closed doors merely to avoid embarrassment, say, or public conflict, then a judge could listen to the tape and decide if the meeting should have been public. (Here's a Washington Policy Center link to an Attorney General's memo on the issue.)

Not surprisingly, the groups that lobby for local governments pushed back. And many of the lawmakers in Olympia are former local officials themselves. The bill died.

A Further Reducation in Choice - How WA Plans to Force You to Drive Less

From the Washington Policy Center

In February, the Washington Climate Advisory Team (CAT), released their recommendations to accomplish three broad goals: reduce climate pollution, grow a clean energy economy and become energy independent.

Todd Myers, WPC's Environmental Director published an extensive review of the CAT's recommendations here .

One of the recommendations that caught my attention was proposed targets to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) across the state.

The state should adopt a schedule of statewide per capita VMT reduction targets, similar to the emissions reductions schedule in Executive Order 07-02. Compared to a business as usual baseline, the state would commit to a plan to reduce annual per capita VMT 18% by 2020, 30% by 2035, and 50% by 2050.

There were even two bills proposed this legislative session that would have implemented these targets: SB 6822 and HB 3154 .

If these bills would have passed and as the CAT recommends, the state would have been responsible to spend public money to restrict how much citizens drive.

Consider the following chart from the WSDOT that shows the VMT per licensed driver.

(Click for a larger image)

In 2004, each licensed driver in Washington, drove their car about 12,555 miles. In 2020, WSDOT projects each driver will drive about 13,500 miles. According to the CAT, a 18% reduction in VMT by 2020  means a Washingtonian could only drive 11,070 miles per year, or about the same level that person drove in 1985.

These targets rely heavily on spending billions of additional public money to increase the supply of public transit. But this strategy has been tried before. Despite huge spending increases in public transit over the last two decades, demand for transit has actually fallen from 7.5% in 1980 to 6.8% in 2000 and as we see from the WSDOT graph, VMT per driver has risen 16% over roughly the same period. 

Spending public money to limit how much the public can drive is the wrong approach. It will not work and will ironically make congestion and emissions/pollution worse.

Instead, the state should spend resources on reducing congestion and removing barriers to technology that will improve emission standards and fuel efficiency.

UPDATE : an astute reader pointed out that HB 2815 , which passed the legislature and was signed by the Governor on March 13, does set VMT reduction targets as recommended by the CAT. Among other things, the bill also exempts vehicles weighing more than 10,000 lbs from the targets, which makes the impact on personal passenger vehicles even greater. And it requires the Department of Ecology to report to the legislature by December 2008 on recommended tools it needs to meet the targets.

As I've blogged before , while the DOE figures out how big and pointy the government's stick needs to be, wave good bye to your freedom of mobility.

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From the WPC: We Must Do What's Good For Society... Once I Get What I Want"

The campaign between Senators Clinton and Obama has certainly been hard fought and increasingly appears that there is little love lost between them. The race highlights an interesting dichotomy.

Both advocate policies on a number of fronts, including climate change, that call for people to set aside their personal interests in favor of the good of society. They advocate a range of government regulations and programs to force Americans to adhere to their chosen path and lifestyle.

Senator Clinton, however, is very unlikely to receive enough delegates to win the nomination. The math is not insurmountable, but is pretty steep. Yet, she is not stepping aside in favor of the good of the party. This may even require the Democrats to spend money to re-run elections in Florida and Michigan.

If those who publicly advocate policies that require setting personal interests aside cannot do so for the good of their own party, how can they expect that a nationwide policy would be successful? Does it make more sense to advocate policies that require people to ignore their personal interests or ones that harness those personal interests to spur creativity, technology and economic growth?

Click here to view this and other intriguing commentary from the Washington Policy Center.

Crab Feast Photos Now Available!

Photos from the 2008 Bull and Crab Feast are now available for viewing. Just click on the "08 Bull and Crab Feast" image on the right side of this screen! Thank you to all the attendees who made this fun and memorable event another attendance record setter! And a special Thank You to PRO-Build and Evergreen Building Products for making the event possible.

From the Times: "Blame Me About Congestion Pricing"

This guest editorial from the Seattle Times made me laugh when I read it, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Paul Haase

Blame me if you're getting antsy about congestion pricing

By Paul Haase

Special to The Times

These days it's popular for government officials and celebrities to apologize in public. Now it's my turn.

I want to apologize to the citizens of the state of Washington, and indeed to everyone in the United States. Maybe everyone in the world.

I take responsibility for the recent popularity of congestion tolling for highways. I wish I could take it all back and leave the concept of congestion pricing as confusing as it had been since first conceived in the 1950s by Nobel Prize winner William Vickrey.

Here's my story. It begins with Washington's then-Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald.

MacDonald, like others of the transportation community, was stymied in efforts to help elected officials and the public understand how various innovative practices could inexpensively reduce traffic congestion.

Unlike many others, MacDonald did something about it: In 2006, he held an international competition to devise the best short explanation of the term "maximizing throughput" as it relates to highways. He put up $1,000 of his own money as the prize.

Well, I won.

I proposed a simple demonstration that used rice poured into funnels to show how pacing the flow of traffic can dramatically increase the number of vehicles carried by a roadway.

I am no traffic specialist but my idea beat out those of more than 200 traffic experts from around the world.

The demonstration clearly shows how measures that regulate the flow of traffic — such as congestion pricing — can increase the amount of cars able to use a roadway.

The rice idea caught on. MacDonald developed a very effective demonstration that proved among the most popular events of the National Academy of Sciences' Transportation Research Board meeting in 2007; it was still talked about at this year's meeting.

By now the rice demo has been done (sadly, not by me) for Congress, before state legislatures, before the Washington Transportation Commission (which sets tolls in our state), before public officials across the country, and, so far as I know, in other countries as well.

So far, so good. I might have liked more personal fame and fortune out of this success, but I was happy to pocket $1,000 and proud to play a small part in addressing traffic congestion. I even like to think it was my rice demonstration that changed King County Executive Ron Sims' mind and caused him to repudiate — and ultimately defeat — the Proposition 1 roads-and-transit boondoggle.

So I thought. But, in the months since, the new acceptability of congestion pricing spurred by my idea — now that legislators and public officials can understand it, they can vote for it — has been used to propose and legislate all kinds of things I never wanted:

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BIAW Offering $100,000 Reward in EcoTerrorist Attack

The Building Industry Association of Washington is offering a $100,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the eco-terrorists who set fire to five "Street of Dreams" homes near Woodinville, WA.  Indications on-site point to the involvement of the extremist group ELF - Earth Liberation Front - who have engaged in violent protests like this before.

BIAW President and SHBA member, Brad Spears, says, "While ELF used to spike trees and sabotage logging equipment, they're now burning down homes."

Spears says it is only a matter of time before someone is hurt or killed by ELF terrorists.

If you have information that could help law enforcement track down the perpetrators of this attack, please contact your local FBI office.