June 2025 has been declared Trench Safety Month by the National Utility Contractors Association, further highlighting the association's innovative educational and safety program, the annual Trench Safety Stand Down Week slated for June 16-20.
For the past nine years in June, NUCA has held the innovative Trench Safety Stand Down Week for the utility construction industry. This year’s event — sponsored by NUCA national partners National Trench Safety, Sunstate Equipment Co./Trench Safety Rentals, and United Rentals — will occur at hundreds of job sites across the nation, reaching tens of thousands of employees.
TSSD Week is a series of organized events held by NUCA and industry professionals — both member and nonmember organizations — to emphasize the message of safety around job site trenches and excavations. The event week is strongly supported by OSHA and the Trenching and Excavation Safety Taskforce. TSSD Week is used by industry safety professionals to hold safety training, educational seminars, live demonstrations of trench rescues and other activities to reinforce the message of trench safety.
The association devotes the entire month of June to outreach to the public and non-NUCA industry companies about the importance of employee safety when working underground or in and around trenches.
To grow this strong message of safety, the national association will leverage the safety messages of TSSD through NUCA’s social media channels, internal publications and the construction trade press to emphasize several key safety ideas well-known through our TSSD materials.
This June, NUCA also partners with TEST to share information about staying safe in and around excavations. The partnership will promote awareness of trench safety, the many training programs offered to industry members, and to help ensure employees stay safe while building our nation’s vital core infrastructure projects.
Selecting June as Trench Safety Month is a natural tie-in to the lessons and demonstrations being completed at thousands of NUCA member job sites during TSSD Week. In 2024, 24,198 employees participated in a stand-down training event held by 507 companies on 2,143 job sites. At these events, our industry’s employees learned the importance of being safe around job site excavations and trenches from peers and experts alike.
Recent national statistics on trench injuries and deaths show an increase in fatalities, with OSHA reporting 39 trench collapse deaths in 2022, up from 15 fatalities in 2021. These accidents can be avoided with thorough training in excavation safety procedures and techniques.
Participation in Trench Safety Month and TSSD has become more important in recent years, as the industry begins gearing up for more water, wastewater, broadband, electric and highway projects financed by the federal 2021 infrastructure law. The industry is seeking tens of thousands of new employees to work on these projects, and every one of them will need safety training.
Time and time again, evidence shows that the key to significantly reducing the risks associated with our industry is employee training and reinforcement through safety events such as the TSSD Week. The social media hashtag is #TrenchSafetyMonth.
