Specialized Safety Training and Tracking for KYTC Construction and Maintenance Personnel

High-quality safety training is critical for educating employees in the highway construction and maintenance industry about workplace hazards and giving them tools to remove and/or minimize associated risks. But researchers and state transportation agencies have not committed enough resources to develop safety trainings that address the unique needs of this sector. This report fills in this gap for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) by cataloguing safety training resources available through other state and federal transportation agencies, documenting trainings available to Cabinet staff, identifying and prioritizing training gaps, and critically evaluating the content, quality, and duration of training resources. A web-based tool developed as part of this effort can be used by KYTC employees to quickly identify training resources by topic and view evaluations. In collaboration with the Kentucky Transportation Center’s Technology Transfer Program, researchers propose recommendations for safety trainings that can address needs beyond the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 10-hour course Cabinet employees take. Future efforts should work to integrate these training modules into KYTC’s recently acquired comprehensive safety management system