Metro Rail Safety Woes Cited in Report : Labor: Consultant finds workers are injured at rate three times national average. Investigation reveals substandard training and inadequate inspection.

Metro Rail construction workers are injured at a rate three times the national average, largely because of substandard safety training, inadequate inspection, slipshod reporting and a lack of post-accident investigations, an independent consultant has concluded.

The critical 43-page report by Fluor Daniel Inc. and the Kellogg Corp. also found that no one has prepared an injury and illness prevention program for the multibillion-dollar urban rail transit project, even though a state law requiring such comprehensive safety plans took effect more than a year ago.

The report, which affirms many whistle-blower complaints, comes as federal safety inspectors are conducting an investigation of the project. During the inquiry, a number of reluctant miners have been subpoenaed by federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials.

“There were a lot of problems,” Ed McSpedon, president of the Rail Construction Corp., a subsidiary of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, said Thursday.

Many problems, he said, go back six years, to the start of construction on the first leg of the Red Line subway--when work was being managed by the Southern California Rapid Transit District. But he acknowledged that many problems persisted after the RCC assumed control of the job in 1990.

The Fluor Daniel-Kellogg safety review team report released Thursday did not attempt to address whistle-blower allegations that construction has sometimes been slipshod, with steel reinforcements misplaced or missing. Those charges are being pursued by other consultants.

Although it found some effort to improve safety, the Fluor Daniel-Kellogg report catalogues problems throughout the accident prevention program--ranging from failure to properly indoctrinate new employees with safe work practices to inadequately investigating accidents.

“As evaluated through field audits and interviews,” the report concluded, “the safety review team’s opinion is that the overall level of safety compliance in the field ranged from adequate to poor.”

The safety team found that contractors do not adequately train new employees to spot general hazards on the project or dangerous conditions specific to their jobs. Also, there is no way for workers to report unsafe conditions that they recognize.

When accidents do occur--and critics assert that the incident rate hovers around 50 injuries per 100 workers a year, or 3.3 times the national average for heavy construction work--they often are not recorded by contractors, the report found. Statistics for small subcontractors were sometimes ignored.

And the RCC’s chief safety consultant, Metro Transit Insurance Administrators, apparently never checked any of the reports.

“A review of reports for 1991 disclosed numerous mathematical errors and statistical discrepancies,” the report said. “Contractors were not accurately reporting recordable injuries and illnesses (those requiring more than simple first aid), nor did the safety review team identify any attempt by the (insurance administrator and safety consultant) to validate the data being submitted.”

This underreporting, compounded by the fact that it sometimes was submitted as much as six months behind schedule, made it difficult to correct unsafe conditions or control skyrocketing workers’ compensation insurance claims.

After injury accidents occur, the safety experts discovered, no one investigates them to find ways to prevent mishaps. Even if someone did investigate, the report added, there is no effort to share safety tips among the contractors working on the massive project.

McSpedon laid much of the blame for the troubled safety program on Metro Transit Insurance Administrators, an insurance claim processor.

“The management information getting to me was not as good as it should have been,” he said. “You can only fix things if you know they’re broken. The numbers were not getting to me, so I could not take action to correct it.”

Metro Transit Insurance Administrators, a joint venture, was relieved of its duties at the end of June and replaced by a new insurance administrator, Willis Carwon.

However, McSpedon said he has asked Willis Carwon and the project’s primary insurance carrier, Argonaut Insurance, to stop taking an active role in on-site safety issues--a controversial move among some safety inspectors because insurance company representatives were among the loudest of the whistle-blowers who brought the situation to light.

In addition, a key employee of Metro Transit insurers, Dan Jackson, has moved over to Parsons Dillingham, the Red Line construction management team. In that job, he will again be in charge of monitoring safety and reporting accidents.

McSpedon said he has faith in Jackson, and will back that up by forming a four-person audit committee that will monitor accident and illness reports monthly. Jackson will be on that team, the RCC president said, as will two RCC employees and a representative of the new insurance administrator.

He said he also has demanded that Parsons Dillingham improve safety on the job.

“We have been very forthright and direct with PD, right up to the chairman, Ralph M. Parsons. On several occasions,” he said. “You can’t snap your fingers and change things overnight. But I think we are moving in the right direction.”

Some employees have been demoted or transferred because of the continuing safety problems, McSpedon said, but he declined to identify them. More demotions and transfers may follow, he added, but he said he is not planning wholesale housecleanings.

“Cleaning house may seem like a good, clean political answer, but it doesn’t always work,” McSpedon said. “It might not be the best way. But we’re making some personnel changes, and may make more. But you can’t just beat on people. You have to let them show whether they can change and do the work.”