Overview
The 110th Congress Biennial Inspection
The Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) requires the General Counsel of the Office of Compliance (OOC) to inspect legislative branch facilities for compliance with occupational safety and health standards at least once each Congress. Thereafter, the General Counsel is required to report the results to the Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate and employing offices responsible for correcting violations. CAA Section 215(e), 2 U.S.C. 1341(e). This Report provides an overview of our findings for the 110th Congress. Individual hazard findings for each facility are included in Appendix A; highlights for each facility appear in Appendix B.
During our inspection, we covered over 96% of the 17 million square feet of space occupied by Congress and other legislative branch facilities in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. The remaining areas were either not accessible to the OGC inspectors or undergoing renovation. Our inspection identified roughly 9,200 hazards – a reduction of over 30% compared to the previous Congress.1
We attribute this decline principally to an intensified emphasis on workplace safety in our covered community. For example, Senate and House Employment Counsel, along with representatives from the CAO and the AOC, instituted a new pre-inspection process in their jurisdictions. This approach included accompanying safety and health professionals on visits to offices in the Senate and House, notifying Congressional staff of hazards commonly found in such spaces, and encouraging staff to look for and correct hazardous conditions before the biennial inspection. These efforts paid off. During the 110th Congress, we found just half the number of hazards in Member and Committee offices as we had identified in the previous Congress. As discussed below, thirty-seven Members achieved hazard-free offices in the 110th, and were recognized for this accomplishment with the OGC‟s Safe Office Award in April 2008. The number of Safe Office Award recipients increased fivefold between the 109th and 110th Congresses – a real tribute to Members‟ attention to workplace safety.
