The company that employed a 30-year-old roofer who fell to his death Thursday on a job site on Munjoy Hill in Portland has been fined repeatedly by federal safety authorities in recent years.
Since 2012, Purvis Home Improvements of Saco has been ordered to pay more than $44,000 in fines for failing to meet fall-protection safety standards.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Friday confirmed it was conducting an inspection of the roofing and window installation company following the fatality.
Meanwhile, the man who died has still not been publicly identified.
Portland police said the man fell from the third-story roof about 11:30 a.m. Thursday and was pronounced dead at Maine Medical Center a short time later.
The company’s owner, who is listed as Shawn D. Purvis in records kept with the Maine Secretary of State’s Office, did not return messages left on two phone numbers Friday evening, but the company appeared to be back at work at 157 Congress St., a three-family home that was the site of the fatality.
Purvis, which has a slogan of “Don’t be nervous, call Purvis,” has an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau, and has been accredited by the agency since 2003. Its website says that the owner is on site at every roofing job, and that the business is fully insured.
The company was incorporated in 2005, but its website says Purvis has 22 years of experience in the roofing business.
According to public safety records available online, OSHA cited and fined Purvis during two inspections in 2012, one inspection in 2015, and a fourth inspection earlier this year.
The most recent inspection – in February 2018 – recommended the largest monetary sanction of $24,390, but that case remains open and OSHA is awaiting payment of the fine, according to federal records.
The first fine came in April 2012, when inspectors found the company failed to provide fall prevention systems for workers on low-sloped roofs, and fined the company $2,000. That case is now closed.
Then in November of 2012, OSHA again performed an inspection and found a different violation related to fall protection. The company was found to have failed to provide guardrails, personal fall-arresting systems or safety nets for employees working on steep roofs. That violation came with a $5,600 fine, and the case is now closed.
The third violation came three years later, in 2015, when once again, OSHA found Purvis to be out of compliance with fall-safety standards for workers on residential projects who are more than 6 feet off the ground, costing the company $10,000.
That regulation requires the company to either provide fall protection, or in cases where it is not feasible to provide systems such as guardrails, safety harnesses or netting, the company must have a plan in place to mitigate fall risk, according to OSHA’s standards.
Purvis was also found during that inspection to have violated a second standard that requires ladders to extend at least 3 feet about the upper landing surface they connect to, or be secured in place if they do not meet that requirement. That violation cost Purvis $2,200. According to the OSHA database, now the $12,200 debt has been forwarded to collections.
In the latest inspection, from February 2018, Purvis was found in violation for the third time of fall-protection standards for workers on residential projects more than 6 feet off the ground, and was fined $21,341, according to federal records. An additional $3,049 fine was for Purvis’ failure to require a worker on an elevated boom or basket to wear a safety belt that is then attached via a lanyard to the basket to prevent catastrophic injury in the event of a fall.
Between January 2017 and March 2018, eight people have died in workplace-related incidents in Maine. Only one was for a fall from a roof. In that case, in October 2017, a worker collapsed on a roof and then fell to the ground, suffering a fatal neck injury.
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