Safety Tidbit #2.6 – Fall Protection - Construction
I recently visited a job site of a roofer and as I pulled up one of the workers was sitting, working on the edge of the roof with on leg draped over the edge (25 feet) and the other leg straight out in front of him. Before I introduced myself, I asked the company owner (who was standing right there) what the worker was doing and to please get him down. Luckily the worker successfully stood back up (at the very edge of the roof) with his back to the ground and walked towards the peak of the roof. They both looked at me like I was crazy. This cavalier attitude amongst roofers must stop!
Thirty-five percent of the more than 800 fatalities that occurred on construction sites in 2013 were due to falls. The thing to remember is that all of these deaths are avoidable. OSHA’s mantra, with which I completely agree, is just three words: Plan – Provide – Train.
Plan – When bidding a job look at the hazards that are involved, specifically falls and PLAN a method to protect your workers from the hazards. OSHA’s Fall Prevention Campaign talks about ladders and Personal Fall Arrest Systems (PFAS) as means to protect your workers. I say ladders are inherently dangerous (remember Safety Tidbit #5?). If you are working with your hands from a ladder how do you keep three points of contact with the ladder? Furthermore, PFASs are just personal protective equipment. Therefore, they are only as good as how well they are being used by the worker. If the harness is on but not secured is it doing any good? Or, if the harness is on but the anchorage point is faulty? Same result – Injury or death. We need to plan to provide safety measures that reduce the hazard and reduce the use of PPE (and ladders).
Provide – OSHA says on construction sites above six feet and you have a hazardous condition. Six feet is a political number. How many of you have heard of or investigated injuries and/or deaths after falls from much lower heights? It’s a political number because the typical scaffold is how tall, 5 feet? In other words, just below the magical 6 feet number. Now OSHA’s web page does say for the employer to provide the right equipment, ladders, scaffolds, and “safety gear.” I assume they mean PFASs as safety gear. But yes, once you decide on how to protect your workers from fall hazards ensure they have the right equipment which is in good repair.
Train – This is the mortar which holds the planning, equipment, and the usage together. Train you workers on the proper care and usage of the equipment (ladders, lifts, scaffolds, PFASs, etc.). OSHA’s Fall Prevention Campaign website makes a brief entry about training on hazard recognition. But the way they wrote the paragraph it comes across as ensuring the workers know how to recognize when safety equipment is not properly installed or used. I push back a bit further and say let’s ensure the workers can recognize the fall hazard, to begin with. Remember my opening scenario, neither the worker nor the owner recognized the fall hazard of a worker at the edge of the roof with one leg dangling over.
Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits ~ Bryan
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