The Occupational Safety & Health Administration is investigating a July 11 fatality at a highway interchange project near the $3.7 billion ThyssenKrupp steel mill jobsite in Calvert, Ala.

Matthew Ericson, the project’s construction engineer with the Alabama Department of Transportation, says a bulldozer operator with Racon Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., was killed when his bulldozer backed over him.

“The operator got out of his cab to signal a dump truck and stepped onto the bulldozer’s track while it was in reverse,” Ericson says. “It then threw him behind the dozer.”

Investigators from OSHA’s Mobile office visited the site on Saturday.

Racon is the general contractor on a $15.7 million US Hwy. 43 interchange project for the Alabama Dept. of Transportation. Alabama agreed to build the interchange to attract the German-based steel company to build in the state.

“The federally funded project will allow for free flow from the ThyssenKrupp plant to US 43,” Ericson says. ALDOT has already completed the widening and resurfacing of nearby Paul Bayou Road, which runs from US 43 to the plant’s rear entrance.

Ericson says the interchange is scheduled for completion in September 2009, three months prior to the startup of the steel plant.

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