Builders of Metro Rail Taking New Measures to Make Project Safer : Transit: The construction company says it will review the qualifications of all safety personnel.

Officials in charge of the Metro Rail subway construction said Tuesday they have ordered a review of all safety personnel on the project and are tightening the qualifications required of management in an effort to reduce worker injury rates, which are far above the national average.

“We are going to be pushing (safety) very heavily,” said Tom Tanke, executive vice president of the Rail Construction Corp., which recently took over building the 4.4-mile downtown segment of the transit system.

Some of the new safety measures already were being planned before a fire gutted a service tunnel under construction near Union Station on July 13, according to project executives. No one was injured in the blaze, which caused $2.2 million in damage and is still under investigation, but a section of the Hollywood Freeway through the downtown area had to be shut down for three days.

State and local officials had praised Metro Rail’s safety record on the day of the fire, but The Times disclosed this week that the worker injury rate on the project is running nearly 28% higher than the national norm for construction projects and 38.75% higher than the average for comparable projects. Since 1987, there have been 1,453 injuries that required a doctor’s treatment, although no one has been killed.

Tanke said he has ordered other reforms and directed that the resumes of all Metro Rail safety officials be delivered to his office by the end of this week to check their qualifications.

“I want to personally review (the resumes) to see how much experience they have and if any have deficiencies,” Tanke said. Under existing Metro Rail contracts, each contractor is required to hire a safety representative.

The minimum qualification for a tunnel safety representative is certification by Cal/OSHA, the state agency that enforces industrial safety laws and investigates accidents. To become certified, tunnel safety representatives are required to pass a written and an oral test. Cal/OSHA asks for, but does not require, at least two years’ experience in tunnel safety.

Metro Rail officials have said that even though they had the authority to insist on higher qualifications, they did not. Some of the safety representatives had less than two years’ experience or received their training solely on the Metro Rail project.

Since the fire, two safety representatives have quit and a third is being transferred to another post, officials said. They said there was no connection between safety records and the job changes.

Other changes being implemented by the Rail Construction Corp. include requiring once-a-week site inspections by its top executives. “These will be very senior people,” Tanke said. “We’re talking vice presidents and up.”

The corporation also plans to hire two full-time safety specialists in addition to safety executives already working on the subway; upgrade the safety credentials of key managers, including those employed by contractors; increase safety training and testing, and require corporation executives to attend monthly safety meetings held by contractors.