height safety

Height Safety Wearing a Full Body Harness

There is so much more to wearing a full body harness to work than simply throwing it on and hoping for the best. Every type of full body harness has to be worn in the same way, whether it is standard polyester non elasticised webbing, or elasticised harnesses. There are a number of points on the harness you need to be aware of.

On the rear of the harness is the Dorsal Plate, this could be rubber, plastic or form part of the harness webbing pattern. This piece is extremely important as it prevents the “D” ring from slamming into the back of your head in fall and converting the harness in a noose. The “D” ring connects your harness to the anchorage point via intermediate attachments. Some harness have an adjustment for height via buckles on shoulder straps, the simplest rule for this type of harness is that you should not be able to touch the Dorsal Plate by reaching from behind your head or by reaching up from the lumber or lower back region. Modern harness design has taken this feature out of the system to reduce miss-use of the harness, this type of harness may be elasticised to encourage correct fitting and for the users comfort.

On the front of the harness should be a chest strap, some harnesses have a metal buckle and possibly a “D” ring on the front. This is to provide the user with a way of attaching to an anchor or safe system of work, for example ladder systems. The important thing to note with type of attachment that unless the harness is worn correctly; there is a risk the “D” ring and buckle can strike the user in the neck and under the chin if you are involved in a fall. Some harness designs have replaced this with soft loops as a front connection as this feature makes the harness safer for the user.

The chest strap, without a front attachment is much smaller and made of softer webbing, the chest strap is there to stop the shoulder straps from parting and allowing the user to fall out the front of their harness. However in both cases it is important to take care when attaching your safety equipment in relation to the “D” ring. If the anchorage point is behind you then use the rear “D” ring and vice versa if the anchor point is in front of you.

Once you have put the harness on, like a jacket, and adjusted the chest strap to so it is tight but comfortable, we need address the leg straps, buckles and sliders, there is more to it than just stepping into harness. Stepping into a commercial full body harness is considered to be extremely bad practice. Not only does it increase the risk of slips trips and falls; if the harness is placed on the ground it could pick up all kinds of dirt and contamination. There is also a risk of complacency setting in; where the user steps into the harness in a rush and fails to adjust it appropriately. In a fall a slack harness can lead to death or worse, extreme testicular trauma and severe rectal damage.

The easiest way to gage the correct tension of the leg straps is to tighten it until you can just about get 2 fingers between the webbing and your leg. Two finger tension means placing the middle and index finger perpendicular to the webbing around the front area of the leg.

The final thing and probably the most important thing is to lock your harness, every harness with a buckle used for adjustment should have at least one slider to lock it. If the harness is not locked and you are involved in a fall the movment of the webbing through the buckle can cause the bar tack to shock load against it. The bar tack is rolled over and lightly stitched it is only there to keep the sliders and buckles on the harness. The energy, in a fall, may exceed the strength of this stitching and it will rip apart allowing the bar tack to unroll and pass through the buckle. The end result is that you will fall through the bottom of the harness.

It doesn’t matter if you are wearing the harness correctly, if it’s damaged it’s useless and will offer you no protection what so ever. Harnesses need to be inspected on a regular basis to establish they are safe to use.

Leading Edge Safety currently have more than 5,000 people every single year go through height safety training to not only gain the certification they need but also the confidence and competence to work safely at height . working at height working at height training height safety training

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Author: Drew Beardmore Leading Edge Safety height safety training courses and equipment are specifically designed for anyone whose job requires them to work at height and involves using the necessary safety equipment required to do this. For more information visit www.leadingedgesafety.co.uk

New Range of Height Safety Lanyards

Leading Edge rope shock absorbing lanyards are uniquely developed to be tough enough and optimised for high impact edge abrasion, found today in harsh, abrasive environments.

Drew Beardmore Leading Edge managing director said “we are continuing our lanyard ongoing battle within the industry for higher quality lanyards products at a more affordable prices.

excellent high quality materials and design, insuring the very best in safety considerations.

We are constantly developing new lanyards, height safety products and services that exceed expectations and maintain low prices. Our lanyard range is getting bigger everyday so take advantage of some of our great new lanyard offers and see for yourself how you can get your hands on real quality safety lanyards at competitive prices.

with harsh environments is the multibraid rope used. Its fibrous inner core provides the strength and flexibility whilst maintaining it lightweight and flexible characteristic. A tight woven outer jacket protects the inner core from abrasion and the ingress of dirt, creating a tough, lightweight lanyard which remains supple for freedom of movement.

through material behaviour and design, creating a shock absorber that has both smoother impact dissipation, greatly reducing the overall impact of forces, making the arrest process less aggressive.

The new design also allows for it to be much smaller pack, making it lighter and nicer to carry around when attach to the wearers harness. The new design is up to 50% small than classic designs.

All leading lanyards are supplied with a maillon connector at the harness anchorage end. We do this to stop the potential hazard of connector failure at this point in the system.

Our in-house testing has proven to us that when a person falls the impact normally happens at this point (Dee ring to connector area) by using a normal traditional karabiner, the wearer is exposed to the karabiner failing through minor axis loading i.e. the connector is loading incorrectly across the weakest point during impact on the edge. By using a maillon this is significantly reduced, as the integral design is not subject to the same minor axis failure issues, making it ideal as a connector used in this application of connecting lanyard to harness.

For more information on this subject, Drew Beardmore MD of Leading Edge has published a technical guidance booklet (currently 4th revision) on this subject and is available free from Leading Edge Safety.

These new lanyard products will be available online over the next few weeks in there own section category at http://www.leadingedgesafety.co.uk/lanyard.php Posts of new product willl be released on our Twitter, Dig and blog feeds.

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Lanyards

Drew Beardmore -Leading Edge Safety Falls from height are one of the leading causes of death and serious injury in the work place, with a high personal cost to families and the subsequent financial cost to businesses. With more than 50 years of experience in technical height safety training and products, we have determined not only to provide the best fall protection and height safety products and training possible, but to also continuously develop new ideas, further our technological expertise, understand and implement new techniques and to repeatedly set higher standards of safe working at height.

UK Height Safety Instructor Wanted

Height Safety Instructor

We require a highly professional dynamic person to join our team as a ‘Height Safety Instructor’ training our clients at locations throughout the UK and overseas.

You will be intelligent and quick thinking, as the right person will have confidence in their ability to both think and talk on their feet with integrity and passion, whilst being comfortable with working at height.

Ideally your background has meant you have gone through some form of instructional techniques and presention training, leading to you becoming a confident, articulate, a well spoken presenter, as such you enjoy being in front of groups making presontations.

Height safety experience is not critical, as you will go through our full in-house training program lasting 12 weeks. After successfully completing this process and passing the formal assessment, meaning you have achieved our grade as a instructor, you are released as a full chargeable instructor delivering basic training, over the next 12 months through ongoing continual development hopefully leading to achieving a senior instructor status.

We pride ourselves on having and making the very best instructors in the industry, as our courses are of the highest level, resulting 2 out of 7 instructors going through our 12 week process don’t make it and fail leaving the program.

So it is imperative you are honest about your competence and are excited about the challenge in becoming a Leading Edge instructor, recognised as the best of the very best in the industry.

You need to be located in Hampshire, as the majority of our training is in around Greater London and the south, with our office being located in Gosport, Hampshire.

Starting salary - £30,000 (During your 12wk training period)
Full Instructor salary - £35,000 (After successful passing training)

Senior instructor salary -£ TBA (After successful 1st year appraisal and status)

Status - Full time (Permanent) Monday to Friday
Holidays - 24 days annually plus Bank Holidays and Christmas factory shutdown
Package - Company vehicle, laptop, mobile, mobile broadband, clothing etc
Start date - Immediately

To apply please email your CV’s to: shirley@leadingedgesafety.co.uk

height safety

Falls from height are one of the leading causes of death and serious injury in the work place, with a high personal cost to families and the subsequent financial cost to businesses. With more than 50 years of experience in technical height safety training and products, we have determined not only to provide the bestleadingedgesafety.co.uk” >fall protection and height safety training possible, but to also continuously develop new ideas, further our technological expertise, understand and implement new techniques and to repeatedly set higher standards of safe working at height.

Height Safety How to Develop a Rescue Plan

Working at height - How to Develop a Rescue Plan

Rescue plans don’t have to be complex.

Employers should implement a rescue plan that includes procedures for:

· Preventing prolonged suspension · Performing rescue and treatment as quickly as possible · Identifying orthostatic intolerance signs and symptoms

Management’s reasonability for safety needs to give careful consideration to the methodology of rescuing a fallen operative. Such considerations might include:

Dialing 999 - Often we think of the word ‘rescue’ as calling 999, but calling the local fire brigade does not constitute an effective rescue plan. Response times can be too slow, and not all fire brigades have the capability to rescue from height.

Crane Man Basket - This option has severe limitations, the main one being time. Target time from ‘Man Down’ to being recovered needs to be no more than five minutes. Other restrictions and shortcomings that make this a less than ideal solution are: (a) the crane is out of action for some reason, e.g. it may be ‘winded-off’; (b) the driver may be away from the crane (c) rescue by crane is limited to building façades and often is not able to provide access and rescue internal to the structure; (d) the crane man basket may be in the wrong location.

MEWPs - This option for rescue can have its limitations such as available access and height restriction as the casualty may be at a height greater than the reach of the MEWP.

Rope Access Rescue - Rope rescue requires a technical competency which demands a high level of training and re-training to acquire and retain this skill set. Given the limited time to complete a rescue, trained rope rescue personnel would need to be on stand-by and within close proximity to any incident. Donning the necessary kit to carry out a rope rescue can also be time consuming given that every minute the casualty is hanging is critical. Perhaps the greatest restriction is that it is a skill to which only a few would, or could, be trained.

Third Party Rescue Systems - There are a number of considerations to take into account when considering third part rescue systems. In every consideration TIME is the critical factor. The speed with which the system can be deployed and the rescue carried out is vitally important, as is the SIMPLICITY and EASE of use so that a typical operative can deploy and carry out a rescue after being trained.

Remember: whichever methodology you choose, the target time should be to rescue the casualty in under ten minutes.

Planning for Fall Protection must include Rescue

Having a rescue plan is just as important as having a fall protection plan. No site should have one without the other. Just putting together a fall protection program without rescue is only doing half the job. The onus is on the employer to ensure that the suspended operative is rescued quickly. That means ensuring that for anyone who works at height, there’s a rescue plan. Fall protection must include an emergency rescue plan.

How will you rescue an operative who has fallen and is suspended in a fall-arrest system? Answering some basic questions can help in developing a rescue plan.

Developing a Rescue Plan

Rescue plan requires answers to the following questions

If an operative’s fall is arrested can they be rescued in under five minutes?

How will you know that someone has fallen?

· Will someone see it happen? · Co-workers · Other trades · Plant personnel · Members of the public

What communication systems will be used between the suspended operative and the rescue team?

· How will the operative call for help? · Voice · Whistle · Mobile Phone

Who will the Co-worker call?

· Nearest co-workers · Supervisor · Site Management · 999 Fire /ambulance where available

Is information available? Who and how will it be communicated?

· Emergency phone numbers · Site address · Directions and access for ambulance/fire vehicle or other emergency services · Which floor/how high up · Operative’s condition after fall

How will the safety of the rescuers be assured, as well as that of the suspended operative?

· Are operatives trained and competent in the use of rescue equipment? · Is there sufficient number of trained personnel onsite? · Are rescue-training records kept up-to-date including any re-assessments? · Is the rescue equipment selected appropriate for the nature of the work? · What obstructions are in the way reaching the suspended operative? · Have assessments been made of anchor points? · Has consideration been given to the method of attaching to the casualty?

How will rescue workers get to the casualty?

· Rescue Ladder System · Rescue Haul System · Keys to building and roof · Elevator · Pull casualty in through window or balcony · Pull casualty up to floor/slab/roof · Climb/abseil down the building/structure · Aerial equipment from ground · Suspended access equipment · Crane Man Basket

How will rescue be assured within five minutes of the occurrence of a fall to minimize the risk of further injury or death due to suspension trauma? And, what rescue equipment is needed?

· Rescue Ladder · Rescue Haul System · Toxic shock strap · Suspended access equipment · Ropes · Aerial ladder truck · MEWPS or scissor lift · Climbing/rope rescue equipment · Crane Man Basket · First aid kit · Stretcher available should casualty be seriously injured

What if the operative is injured?

· Can the casualty still be rescued within five minutes? · Is there a qualified first-aider who understands suspension trauma and knows how to treat it? · Who and how will the emergency services and hospital be alerted?

How will the public be protected?

· Assign someone to direct traffic · Set up barriers

How will the accident scene be protected?

· Prevent further injury or damage · Set up barriers · Preserve wreckage · Aid investigation later

Are there other considerations?

· Working alone · Language barrier · Unusual features of building/structure · Wind · Other hazards · No emergency services nearby · Distance from rescue teams

WARNING! An operative who has suffered a fall and is suspended in his harness is a true medical emergency. Just because they are hanging in a harness doesn’t mean you have all day to perform the rescue. Rescue has to be planned, practiced and performed quickly and effectively or the victim may very well die before the rescue finally occurs.

“If you’re not going to give your employees the skills to perform rescue, then you might as well not even put them in the harness at all.”

Practice can save lives

Perhaps just as important as having a rescue plan in place is practicing the plan before a real-life fall occurs.

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