Fall Protection Kits

Fall Protection Kits (Managing Work At Height)

This subject can be frightening, gargantuan and has potential to create problems on an epic scale that would scare even the most stalwart manager. It is a subject that affects everyone from the MD's down to front your front line operatives who get their hands dirty.

The aim of this paper is to give you some practical ideas that should make it easier for you to discharge your legal and moral responsibilities in regard to managing work at height. By the time you finish reading this we should have arrived in a working at height utopia.

Whether you are writing your HSG65 policy, planning your method statements and risk assessments there are aspects that everyone at every level of management has to consider. It would very easy for me to quote parts of legislation that have a direct (W@H Regs '05 & 07) or indirect (PPE@W Regs '92 & '02) bearing on any work at height; however you would probably slide into a coma before you read much further.

The instant health and safety is mentioned eyes roll skywards, heart rate quickens and moisture dampens the palms. However there are some wonderfully simple tools available, to you, which, with a proactive and positive attitude towards work at height will make your job easier.

You have identified the need to carry out a task that might involve your operatives working at height. How do you know what "height" is? The Regulations state that,

"A place is at height if a person can be injured falling from it, even if it is at or below ground level."

Nobody in their right mind would want to put an operative in a position where they could be injured from falling. So the first thing to decide is there a way of carry out this task without working at height? If you have read this far then the answer should be "no." After all why else would an article about managing work at height be of use to you!

The next step is to decide whether we can perform that task at height AND prevent anyone from falling? With the technology, equipment and training available today there are plenty of options to prevent a fall. Do some research, would a "hop-up" be safer that a step ladder? You need to consider all the options that are classed as "collective measures," first of all.

These are safety measures that are designed to protect the maximum number of people. Health and safety professionals say that resorting to personal measures, i.e. harnesses should only be considered as a last resort, and basically something has gone wrong at the planning stage if you have to buy harnesses. Personally, I agree with this, to a degree, however, there are many industries, jobs and tasks that by their very nature require harnesses to be worn.

So by saying you have done something wrong at the planning stage doesn't really help you solve the problem. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to say "you have chosen harnesses for this task but what if we use this other method instead," or "did you know you can do that task by using this (collective) piece of equipment?"

We are now preventing a fall where do we go to find that kind of equipment, the most obvious place is the internet see what "fall arrest products" brings up and take it from there.