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What if work at height can’t be avoided?
By Brian McLean, Roof Edge, General Manager
The work at height hierarchy states that work at height should be avoided wherever possible.
Working at height can be deemed a high risk activity and could potentially subject workers and employees to serious risks to their health, and the health of others around them. Unfortunately, there can be times when work at height simply cannot be avoided.
Over the years progress has been made in reducing the number of fatalities and injuries from working at height, however falls from height still account for a third of all workplace fatalities.
Whilst everyone involved in the work has a responsibility to ensure it proceeds safely, if you are a property owner, facilities manager or anyone else in control of the work, you can be held responsible if an accident occurs.
If you are a facility manager you have a legal duty to ensure that all your fall protection systems are properly certified by a competent person. This certification should be done at least once a year and for certain tasks/environment’s, equipment and PPE should be inspected by a competent person more frequently.
If your fall protection equipment or fall arrest or restraint systems are found to be faulty and an incident occurs, you are open to the possibility of prosecution.
You are also required to take responsibility for certain duties of care under the Work at Height Regulations 2005; this means you must ensure that all your workers are competent and trained in the use of all systems and PPE.
Whether the work is a regular occurrence, or happens rarely, it is your responsibility to ensure that your workers and employees are safe.
Not only does Roof Edge offer inspection and recertification of work at height systems - a vital part of keeping your workers safe - we also offer many work at height solutions to ensure your employees can carry out unavoidable work with confidence.
