OSHA appoints new director for its construction directorate

Construction industry veteran Dean McKenzie has been appointed as the new director of OSHA’s Directorate of Construction.

McKenzie was director of OSHA’s Office of Construction Services from 2012-2013, then became the deputy director in 2013, and has been the acting director since January 2016. McKenzie began his career in the steel mills of Gary, Ind., as a journeyman millwright in the mid-1970s. He has worked in construction, particularly in the industrial market, in Indiana, Florida, Colorado, and the Caribbean.

He has been a licensed general contractor, business owner, and project and operations manager. While working for OSHA, he has addressed fatalities in the communication tower industry, built a strong relationship with the Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, and taken a lead role in the Stand Down to Prevent Falls in Construction campaign.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.