OSHA 21(d) Consultation Program

The OSHA Consultation Program provides no-cost and confidential occupational safety and health consultation services to small and medium-sized businesses in Georgia. Through the 21(d) program, the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES) team at Georgia Tech provides to companies with less than 250 people at a single site and less than 500 people corporate-wide to:

• Identify workplace hazards, reducing injuries and illnesses
• Provide guidance to comply with OSHA standards
• Establish new and improve existing safety and health programs within the company

The consultation is confidential and will not be reported to the OSHA inspection staff. No citations or penalties will be issued, but participating businesses must agree to correct all serious hazards identified.

The 21(d) program is part of a national program offered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration out of the United States Department of Labor. If you are outside of Georgia, click here to contact the local office in your state.

The Georgia Tech SHES group supports companies in reducing their workplace injuries and illnesses through different levels of service, offered through both on-site and limited virtual assistance. Services include:

• Focus-Based Assistance: With this service, the SHES group meets you where you are. You define the concerns you have in one or more areas around safety, health, management systems, and ergonomics. From there, a member of the SHES team will meet with you and your team, evaluate the situation, provide an assessment, and a recommended course of action.
• Comprehensive Assistance: If your company needs assistance in meeting OSHA’s requirements for your entire facility, the SHES team will come to your facility to:
  • • Identify and make recommendations on how to correct physical hazards throughout your plant
    • Evaluate and suggest improvements for all your technical programs
    • Review and provide action items to evolve your safety and health program management system
• OSHA-Mandated Program Gap Analysis: As part of either a focused-based or comprehensive assistance visit, a SHES team member can evaluate the OSHA-mandated programs that are of concern, creating a list of the parts that are compliant and where there are gaps, and providing recommendations to close those gaps. The team can also assist in helping you create a program if one does not currently exist. Examples of OSHA-mandated programs include, but are not limited to lockout/tagout, hazard communication, hearing conservation, emergency action plan, confined space entry, respiratory protection, and more.

The SHES group has been assisting Georgia-based companies since 1978. Our team of dedicated safety and health experts help companies across the state:

• Gain a better understanding of their current compliance status and provide opportunities to improve the compliance status
• Comprehend the details within their safety and health management systems and identify ways to improve their system that will benefit the short and long-term goals of their company
• Mitigate risk that in turn helps companies’ lower worker compensation costs, create better process controls, increase employee morale, and decrease turnover

Want to be the best of the best? By becoming a SHARP-recognized facility, your company will join an elite group of small businesses that maintain an exemplary safety and health program, allowing you to be exempt from OSHA programmed inspections for up to two years and subsequent renewal for up to three years. Learn more.