A new OSHA rule will take effect later this month authorizing OSHA regional administrators to issue new violation types as “instance-by-instance citations,” meaning the agency can issue multiple citations for specific violations where it would have in the past only issued one.
OSHA regional administrators and area office directors will have the authority to cite certain types of violations as instance-by-instance citations for cases where the agency identifies “high-gravity” serious violations of standards specific to certain conditions where the language of the rule supports a citation for each instance of non-compliance. The current policy has been in place since 1990, according to OSHA.
As a result, lawyers told Construction Dive that some initial citations may climb higher than in the past, costing as much as hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in some cases. The agency could feasibly issue one citation for each worker exposed to a hazard and for each day those workers were exposed.
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