OSH Health Compliance Officer I Trainee

State of North Carolina

11d•$58,613 - $62,500

About The Position

This posting will close at 11:59 p.m. the night before the end date. This position may be filled as Health Compliance Officer (HCO) Trainee if there are no fully qualified HCO I candidates in the applicant pool. The hiring salary for an HCO Trainee is $58,613. The hiring salary for a fully qualified HCO I is $62,500. The Occupational Safety and Health Division (OSH Division or OSHNC) of the Department of Labor, under the direction of the North Carolina Deputy Commissioner of Labor, is the lead state agency with the responsibility of fostering safe and healthy workplaces for more than four million employees and migrant workers in more than two hundred seventy-five thousand workplaces in North Carolina by educating, developing, and enforcing compliance to safety, health, and agriculture laws, rules, regulations, and standards. OSH Compliance, comprised of the East and West Bureaus, conducts inspections to identify safety and health hazards that are in violation of OSHA standards, documents those violations, and then issues the appropriate citations and penalties per established procedures. The Compliance inspectors identify corrective measures for each hazard and work closely with the employer to ensure implementation of those measures. They investigate safety & health complaints filedby employees as well as accidents, fatalities, and catastrophic events in the workplace, and assist with training &outreach activities statewide. The Health Compliance Officer (HCO) conducts inspections of industrial workplaces to detect occupational health hazards which are in violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The HCO inspects and makes written reports of employee exposures to potentially toxic substances and hazardous working conditions throughout the state. Position recommends issuance of citations when justified by the occupational safety and health laws of the state of North Carolina. The HCO plans the inspection schedules and performs them independently, seeking advice from supervisor when working with unusual hazards. Types of inspections conducted are complaints, referrals, follow-ups, accidents, fatalities, and general schedule assignments. The acceptable (and fully qualified) candidate must be able to operate and calibrate sound level meters, audio dosimeters, air sampling pumps, combustible gas indicators, and other testing and sampling equipment to measure potential health hazards of specific substances or in specific industries or processes related to occupational health hazards. Applicant must have no more than a 50-mile commute to the Raleigh OSHA Field Office or relocate within 30 days of job acceptance. If there are no qualified candidates remaining in the applicant pool who meet the minimum Education and Experience or Knowledge, Skills and Abilities required for the position, the agency may consider for this position a trainee who does not meet the minimum requirements. Salary for a trainee may be set at a lower level than the classification salary range and recruitment range that is listed in the posting with the salary being adjusted up accordingly when the trainee has obtained the necessary additional minimum education and experience to fully meet the minimum qualifications as outlined in the classification specification. For applicants that earned a foreign degree: foreign degrees require an official evaluation for U.S. equivalency and must be submitted to Human Resources for verification. This documentation should be attached to your application to receive credit for your degree. There are several organizations that perform this specialized service. Applicants can use any service of their choosing. The National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES) has several options on their website that can provide credential verification: https://www.naces.org/members.

Requirements

The HCO must have the ability to apply inspection and compliance procedures with consistency and to write detailed reports to document inspection results, and apply principles associated with public health and safety incorporated in the federal and state occupation safety and health standards.
Contacts and interviews employees and places personal monitoring equipment on such; observes employee work practices and ensures proper operation of monitoring equipment.
The HCO must have excellent verbal and written communication skills and have the ability to work with individuals at all levels of any organization and must be proficient in keyboarding using word processing programs, i.e. Microsoft Word and Excel.
The HCO will be required to evaluate and make recommendations on unusual problems.
Valid Driver's License is required.
For fully qualified HCOI: Master's degree in industrial hygiene with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, or a closely related curriculum from an appropriately accredited institution; or bachelor's degree in chemistry, physics, industrial hygiene, mechanical engineering, or a closely related curriculum from an appropriately accredited institution and one year of experience in industrial hygiene inspections; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
For HCO Trainee: Bachelor's degree in chemistry, physics, industrial hygiene, mechanical engineering, or a closely related curriculum from an appropriately accredited institution or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Nice To Haves

The ability to speak and understand Spanish is an asset but not required for the position.

Responsibilities

Research the employer to be inspected to become familiar with the operation(s) involved, the substances used in the operation(s), and the potential exposures and hazards associated with the operation(s)
Communicate with the complainant(s), when appropriate
Coordinate a simultaneous site visit with a Safety Compliance Officer, when appropriate
Calibrate and maintain all sampling equipment that might be required in making the inspection
Obtain necessary sampling equipment and media (e.g. filters, tubes, etc.) that might be required in making the inspection.
During any inspection, the HCO I conducts an opening conference with the top management official at the employer’s establishment.
After the opening conference, the HCO I conducts the walk-around portion of the inspection, taking photos, taking measurements, and documenting findings.
The HCO I must be able to obtain the cooperation of employer management personnel and employees when conducting an inspection.
The HCO I usually works alone when conducting an inspection and fully and thoroughly documents all inspection activities.
The HCO I must be technically capable of recognizing and evaluating potentially hazardous exposures and conditions in all types of workplaces.
This capability includes, but is not limited to, selection of the proper sampling technique, application of this technique, calculation of the inspection sampling results, and interpretation of sampling results.
The HCO I must have a thorough knowledge of occupational health hazards and have the ability to recognize occupational safety hazards to either achieve abatement or to refer the safety hazards to a Compliance District Supervisor to assign for a safety inspection.
Thorough interviews are conducted with employer representatives and employees to augment the inspection results and observations.
At the conclusion of sampling, the HCO I must ensure the integrity of all samples.
Samples must be properly identified, labeled, protected from tampering, decay or loss, and submitted for laboratory analysis in a timely manner.
The HCO I conducts a closing conference with the appropriate management and employee representatives to delineate inspection results and explain their rights and responsibilities.
A written report of each inspection is submitted to the Compliance District Supervisor for review.
Reports must be of such clarity and detail that they are legally correct, so they are a strong basis for any legal action between the Department of Labor and the employer.
An inspection report must clearly describe the events of an inspection in terms that are easily understood as well as defensible in a court of law to resolve any legal action taken by the Department of Labor or the employer.
Calculations of exposure concentrations must be documented in all inspection reports.
Reports must identify the source of all hazards, employee exposure, employer knowledge of the hazardous condition, and specific recommendations for the implementation of corrective action.
Reports are prepared in accordance with the FIS in OSHA Express (OE).
As part of the reporting process the HCO I will recommend citations, gravity-based penalties, warranted reductions of the gravity-based penalties, violations of particular standards.
The report must support all these recommendations.
When an inspection results in citation(s) that are contested by the employer, a hearing is scheduled before a member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Board.
The HCO I who conducted the inspection will be required to testify at the hearing, using their inspection report.
The HCO I will coordinate pre-hearing conferences with the attorney responsible for the contestment and will provide additional documentation requested by the attorney or the Compliance District Supervisor.
the HCO I is expected to use professional judgment in implementing the instructions in the FIS.
The HCO I assists in the training of compliance officers and performs other job-related duties as assigned by the Compliance District Supervisor II.

Benefits

Eligible state employees are entitled to comprehensive benefits, including a variety of leave options, professional development opportunities, insurance, and more.

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