It was the end of the day on Meta's $10 billion data center job in Lebanon, Indiana, September 14. A Mortenson crew wrapped up and piled into a pickup. The driver thought everybody was in. One man wasn't.

According to the police report ENR covered, she told officers the sun made it hard to see and she didn't see anyone near the truck. She was creeping over a dip where the gravel turns to dirt, and she thought the bump was just rough ground. She was making a U-turn when a passenger in the back seat saw someone lying on the ground they'd just driven over. He was a civil operator, 33 years old, married, a father of two. He died at the scene. Mortenson stopped work on the site.

Read that again and you'll see that nobody did anything crazy. Slow truck, tired crew, low sun, a quick look around the cab. That's a normal end of shift on just about any job. That's why it scares me.

Three weeks later, on Meta's roughly $800 million job in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a worker for subcontractor VFC Lightning was on the ground as a spotter. His job was to watch for hazards. A co-worker told Cowboy State Daily that another lift bumped him, knocked him down, drove over him, then backed over him again. The lift sat only a couple of inches off the ground. He lived. The co-worker said he had broken vertebrae and ribs, an internal puncture and a broken ankle, and went into surgery in the days after. OSHA confirmed it investigated. The same co-worker said there were "a lot of companies involved," a sub working for a sub working for somebody else.

Here's what could have stopped both of them. In Lebanon it was a headcount by name before the truck rolled. Not "looks like everybody." Names, out loud. And a walk around the truck, because the ground right next to your door is the one place you can't see from the seat. In Cheyenne the spotter needed somebody watching him. A spotter belongs out of the travel path and where the operator can see him. If the operator loses sight of his spotter, he stops. And a machine sitting two inches off the dirt isn't safe to be near just because it's low. It means anybody who goes down goes under.

For the office. On a megasite with tiers of subs, one crew's lift is another crew's blind spot. Travel routes, walkways and radio channels have to be set at the site level, not crew by crew. Put end-of-shift vehicle moves in the plan like any other task. And watch who you make a spotter. Wisconsin Watch reported this week that data center grid work is driving demand for line workers. BLS projects 13,600 added line worker jobs from 2025 to 2035, up 10%. The tech college programs are small, one of them trains about 14 students a year, and a state system spokesperson said colleges may have trouble finding instructors because data center builders pay so well. The same story cites a USA Today analysis of 2020–2021 federal data that put line installers' fatal injury rate around 24 per 100,000. That means more green hands on your crews. Don't make the new guy the spotter on day one.

Houston, October 14. Three workers were on AT&T lines in the Acres Homes area of northwest Houston. The fire department says they were raising a bucket into trees, and the trees were hiding power lines. The bucket made contact. One worker died at the scene. Another went to the hospital.

Comm crews, tree crews and construction crews work under power lines every day and don't think of it as electrical work. It is. If you can't see the whole path the boom will take, you haven't checked it. Walk the span. Look up from more than one side. If the canopy hides what's in it, call the line owner before anything goes up. Federal rules treat every line as energized until it's been deenergized the proper way (29 CFR 1926.960(b)(2)). Treat it that way.

Storm call, rural Texas. After a late-night thunderstorm, a JW Powerline crew went out to find an outage at a drilling site. The foreman decided a downed line belonged to the customer. It belonged to the utility. It was dead only because a recloser about five miles away had tripped. While he was splicing it, the utility reset the recloser. The line came back, and he was electrocuted.

The October CICBCA Safety Watch column walks through what an administrative law judge found. The crew pulled fuses from a meter they wrongly thought fed the line. Nobody opened and locked out the real source. The line wasn't grounded. They didn't even have grounding chains on the truck. The job briefing and JSA didn't really happen. A superintendent asked if the JSA was done but never looked at it. The judge didn't fault the company's written rules. The problem was the field. About 120 field employees, late-night emergency work about once a week, and little sign that anyone was checking work in the field. All four serious citations were affirmed: line characteristics, job briefing, lockout/tagout and grounding.

What stops it: know whose line it is before you touch it. A dead reading right now doesn't mean dead in five minutes. Ground it. And supervisors, "Did you do the JSA?" isn't a review. Read it and stand in on the briefing.

Pennsylvania trench, $254,884 proposed. A worker putting in storm sewer died when part of a 12-foot trench wall gave way. OSHA opened its investigation April 2 and cited J.D. Wagoner Excavating. Per OH&S, that's willful for no cave-in protection and repeat for no competent person doing daily inspections. There are serious items too: training, no safe way out, and spoils closer than 2 feet to the edge and not kept from rolling in. The federal rules behind those are 1926.652(a)(1), 1926.651(k), 1926.651(c)(2) and 1926.651(j)(2). The penalties are proposed and can be contested. Your duct bank and ground grid ditches count as trenches.

California tunnel, $212,500. A collapse 200 feet inside an irrigation tunnel near Knights Ferry on April 14 killed a 35-year-old geologist and badly hurt another worker. Cal/OSHA cited the contractor, Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring ($95,000), and the design engineer, Provost & Pritchard ($117,500). Each got a willful-serious for tunnel support. Provost & Pritchard has appealed. If you control the work, you can own the citation even if you never picked up a shovel.

NFPA 70E 2027, reported changes. These come from Jim Phillips' ECM preview, written before the edition was published. Check them against the final book before you change your program. Electrically safe work conditions would apply wherever an electrical hazard exists, not only over 50 volts (110.2(B)). LOTO program audits would go to every 3 years, with procedure audits still yearly (110.3(L)(3)/(4)). If a voltage test alone doesn't prove a circuit dead, you'd use another method, like testing for absence of current (120.5(B)(6)). And a person can be qualified for some tasks and not others (110.4(A)(1)(b)).

Cal/OSHA heat, still a draft. A revised discussion draft of §3395 (outdoor) and §3396 (indoor) went up August 14, and comments closed September 21. Right now the 95°F high-heat procedures in §3395(e) apply only to the industries listed in §3395(a)(2), and construction is already on that list. Reported changes in the draft include dropping that industry limit and adding acclimatization rules for new and returning workers. It's not adopted. Read it at dir.ca.gov.

Cal/OSHA crane recertification, hearing Nov. 19. The Standards Board noticed a rulemaking on §§5006.1 and 5006.2 on October 2. The public hearing is November 19, 2026. If you run cranes in California, read the notice and comment.

About 5 minutes. Read it out loud as is or put it in your own words.

In September, on a data center job in Indiana, a crew finished their shift and climbed into a pickup. The driver thought everybody was in. One man was on the ground by the truck, and he was killed. In October, on a data center job in Wyoming, a guy working as a spotter got knocked down and run over by a lift. Then it backed over him. He made it, but he's busted up bad.

Neither crew was doing anything wild. These were normal moves at the end of the day or in the middle of a lift job. That's the point. This is our normal too.

So here's how we move on this job. Before any truck or machine moves after it's been parked, somebody walks all the way around it. Look under it and behind it. The ground next to your door is the one spot you can't see from the seat, and with the sun low you can't see much of anything.

Before a crew truck leaves, we count heads by name, out loud. The driver doesn't roll until the count is confirmed. "I think everybody's in" doesn't count.

If you're spotting, you stand out of the path of travel and never behind a backing machine. You stay where the operator can see you. You do one job. No phone, no side task. We agree on the STOP signal before the move. And operators, if you lose sight of your spotter, you stop. No exceptions.

If you're on foot, use the walkway, stay out of the swing, and get eye contact and a nod from the operator before you cross.

The rules back this up. A vehicle that can't see behind it can only back up with a working backup alarm you can hear over the noise, or with someone signaling it's clear (29 CFR 1926.601(b)(4)). Earthmoving equipment has the same rule (1926.602(a)(9)(ii)). Brakes, horn and steering get checked at the start of every shift (1926.601(b)(14)). If our site rules are stricter, we follow them.

Talk it over:

Bottom line: Walk it, count it, see your spotter. If one of those is missing, the wheels don't turn.

Sign-in

On commissioning and substation work, a CT secondary can read almost no voltage and still carry current that'll hurt you. The reported 2027 70E change at 120.5(B)(6) says that when a voltage test alone doesn't prove it dead, you use another method, like testing for absence of current. Before anybody opens a CT circuit, ask one question: "How do we know it's dead, besides the meter?" Check the final 2027 text when it's out.

Be careful out there, and forward this to a foreman who'll use it.

— Shaun

Site Safety Weekly is general safety information, not legal advice. It does not replace your company's safety program, a site-specific hazard assessment, or the judgment of your competent and qualified persons. Always check the current regulation text at osha.gov or dir.ca.gov.

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