Construction Standards-Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Parts 1911 and 1912</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OSHA-2025-0040]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD72</RIN> <SUBJECT>Construction Standards—Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule revokes 29 CFR 1911.10, which required the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health (Assistant Secretary), who heads OSHA, to consult with the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) in the formulation of rules to promulgate, modify, or revoke standards applicable to construction work, and 29 CFR 1912.3, the general OSHA regulations governing ACCSH. This final rule also makes corresponding changes to 29 CFR 1911.11, 29 CFR 1911.15, 29 CFR 1912.8, and 29 CFR 1912.9. OSHA is revoking 29 CFR 1911.10 and 29 CFR 1912.3 because these regulations impose requirements on the Assistant Secretary that are more burdensome than those mandated by statute, and compliance with these regulations would needlessly delay the Secretary of Labor's (Secretary) regulatory agenda. These changes will ensure that ACCSH is able to advise the Secretary on potential regulatory actions without adversely affecting the agency's regulatory timeline. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective July 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For press inquiries:</E> Contact Frank Meilinger, Director, OSHA Office of Communications, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1999; email: <E T="03">meilinger.francis2@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">General information and technical inquiries:</E> Contact Andrew Levinson, Director, OSHA Directorate of Standards and Guidance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1950; email: <E T="03">osha.dsg@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">Copies of this</E> <E T="7462">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">notice:</E> Electronic copies are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice, as well as news releases and other relevant information, also are available at OSHA's web page at <E T="03">https://www.osha.gov.</E> A “100-word summary” is also available on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Pertinent Legal Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Summary and Explanation of Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Additional Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Environmental Impacts/National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Other Statutory and Executive Order Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Authority and Signature</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> The intent of this final rule is to remove unnecessary procedural requirements that are contrary to the Secretary's interest in moving forward quickly with deregulatory actions in accordance with Executive Order (E.O.) 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” (90 FR 9065, Feb. 6, 2025) and which are not statutorily required. The final rule removes the procedural requirements at 29 CFR 1911.10 and 29 CFR 1912.3 and makes corresponding revisions to other provisions referencing 29 CFR 1911.10, 29 CFR 1912.3, and the Construction Safety Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Pertinent Legal Authority</HD> The Construction Safety Act (CSA), 40 U.S.C. 3704 (formerly 40 U.S.C. 333), created the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) to advise the Secretary on standard-setting and other matters. Section 3704(d)(4) provides that ACCSH “shall advise the Secretary (A) in formulating construction safety and health standards and other regulations; and (B) on policy matters arising in carrying out this section.” OSHA promulgated regulations implementing the CSA, including 29 CFR 1911.10 and 1912.3. However, these regulations include unnecessary requirements which unduly inhibit the Secretary from moving forward expeditiously with her priorities. Other parts of the rescinded provisions are simply duplicative of requirements contained within the CSA, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) (29 U.S.C. 651 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), or OSHA's other regulations. For example, 29 CFR 1911.10 contains specific rules of procedure for promulgating, modifying, or revoking construction-related occupational safety or health standards. These rules are in many ways duplicative of the general rulemaking procedures contained in 29 CFR 1911.11, which apply to the promulgation, modification, or revocation of standards applicable to employments other than those in construction work, and OSHA finds that the few requirements that are contained within 29 CFR 1911.10 that vary from those in 29 CFR 1911.11 are unnecessary. Consequently, OSHA is revoking 29 CFR 1911.10, and revising 29 CFR 1911.11 to apply the general rulemaking procedures described therein to the promulgation, modification, or revocation of standards applicable to construction work. Further, OSHA is making minor modifications to three other regulations which reference 29 CFR 1911.10, 29 CFR 1912.3, or the CSA: 29 CFR 1911.15; 29 CFR 1912.8; and 29 CFR 1912.9. Similarly, 29 CFR 1912.3 imposes additional requirements which are more burdensome than those mandated by the CSA. For example, 29 CFR 1912.3(b) expanded the committee's membership from the nine members required by the CSA to fifteen members. Per section 1912.3(c)(2), OSHA expanded the committee because “[g]reater membership and greater representation serve the public interest and avoid[ ] possible injustice by permitting for the most part the use of one advisory committee . . . in situations where both the [CSA] and [the OSH Act] may be expected to apply to construction activity. . . .” That same provision also indicated that the expanded membership serves the public interest and avoids possible injustice “by affording a greater opportunity for representation on the Advisory Committee within the construction industry.” However, as to the use of a single committee, this regulation is unnecessary because although the Secretary is only required to consult with ACCSH in formulating standards under the CSA, the Committee's role in advising the Secretary is not limited to standards formulated under the CSA. 40 U.S.C. 3704(a)(2), (d)(4). Specifically, per 40 U.S.C. 3704(d)(4), ACCSH was created to advise the Secretary “in formulating construction safety and health standards and other regulations,” not just those standards formulated under the CSA. ACCSH is also tasked with advising the Secretary on policy matters arising in carrying out the CSA. 40 U.S.C. 3704(d)(4)(B). One such policy matter is the need for consistency between construction standards promulgated pursuant to the CSA and those promulgated pursuant to the OSH Act. Thus, if OSHA wished to consult the committee, ACCSH would have the authority to advise on construction standards promulgated under the OSH Act, as well as those under the CSA. As to affording a greater opportunity for representation, in the decades since the promulgation of this regulation, OSHA has noted that stakeholders in the construction industry (including stakeholders in all of the membership categories created by 29 CFR 1912.3(b)(1)-(4)) have robustly participated in OSHA rulemakings, not only through serving on ACCSH but also through, among other things, submitting comments on Requests for Information and Notices of Proposed Rulemaking and testifying at OSHA's informal rulemaking hearings. Given that, OSHA finds that the nine-member committee contemplated by Congress provides sufficient committee representation to stakeholders in this important industry. Further, OSHA finds that this change is in line with the administration's policy of reducing the size of the American government while increasing accountability to the American people. See E.O. 14217, “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy” (Feb. 19, 2025). The other provisions contained in 29 CFR 1912.3, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> those establishing membership terms, cover topics that are within the Secretary's discretion and are already covered in the Committee's current charter or can be covered in future revisions of that charter. This final rule constitutes a rule of agency organization, practice, or procedure. Hence, notice-and-comment procedures are not required. 5 U.S.C. 553(b). These amendments are to take effect immediately. Given the technical and procedural nature of these amendments, and the Secretary's interest in moving quickly to implement E.O. 14192, the agency finds that it is unnecessary to provide 30 days before this rule takes effect and hence has good cause for making the effective date immediate pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(3). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Summary and Explanation of Requirements</HD> The Assistant Secretary is revoking 29 CFR 1911.10 and 29 CFR 1912.3 in their entirety and making corresponding changes to 29 CFR 1911.11 to enable her to implement E.O. 14192 as expeditiously as possible, while still complying with the CSA's consultation requirements. Revoking 29 CFR 1911.10 and 29 CFR 1912.3 is necessary because these regulations unnecessarily limit the Secretary from moving forward expeditiously with her deregulatory agenda. The Assistant Secretary is revoking 29 CFR 1911.10 in its entirety, which includes revoking general procedures ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━