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D. Trenching & Excavation Safety Rules forAll Employees The core work of our company depends on our ability to get piping where it needs to go safely and in compliance with all local, state and federal laws. To that end, there are a great many regulations that we must abide by in performing our work. As a new hire, you are not expected to know every rule and regulation related to trenching and excavation safety, but what you do need to know are the basic rules that will keep you and your co-workers safe. There are, in essence, three different types, or "classifications" of soil in OSHA regulations, type A, B and C. Of these, type A soil is a very cohesive mixture of clay and rich brown dirt, which will stand up to 1.5 tons of compressive force before failing. In Florida, the majority of the work we do is in type C soil. This soil will fail at %z ton of compressive force or less and is the least stable of all the soil classifications. You may think that this constitutes a great danger to our work, and it would if we had no way to protect our workforce. But since we work in the least stable classification, we do not need to attempt upgrading the classification to a type where regulations become a bit trickier. Instead, we know what we have to deal with and have spent many years developing methods to comply with the regulations keeping our people safe. t; Also helpful is the realization that there really is no such thing as type "A" soil in the vast majority of the North American continent. If this is the case, we are left with distinguishing between types "B" & "C" soil. In the last paragraph, this distinction was made. While working for Johnson— Davis Incorporated, all soils shall be considered type C unless, in the opinion of a trenching and excavation Competent Person, type B soil exists. Let's go over a few definitions and explain how they affect what we do. The first of these definitions is: " Competent Person for Excavations — "Someone who is capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards in the surroundings, or working conditions which are unsanitary, hazardous, or dangerous to employees, and who has authorization to take prompt corrective measures to eliminate them." This person will almost always be designated as the job site Foreman. There will only be one person on the site/crew at any time with this responsibility. When an agency like OSHA comes to one of our sites to perform an inspection, they will always ask who the Competent Person is. To the untrained person this may sound like a demeaning statement. If you react to this question as though you have no idea what they are asking for, it sets a poor tone for the rest of 11.