Book extract
Principles of health and safety at work - 8th
edition
by Allan St John Holt and edited by Jim
Allen
£30 softback 356
pages
ISBN 978 0 90135743 4
Introduction
Many home and work injuries involve falls from
heights. The human body is not designed to resist impacts well, and
the resulting injuries are unpredictable in their extent. This is
where luck has a place in safety – the outcome of fall injuries is
mostly dictated by chance. People have failed to survive a fall
from as little as a metre; others have survived unbroken falls from
10m. Because the outcome in any individual case cannot be known in
advance, the only course to follow must be one of prevention.
Readers are referred to the Work at Height
Regulations 2005 (see Part 4 Section 23), which have incorporated
the principles and much of what follows in this Section into law.
Table 1 will assist in interpreting the Regulations.
Fall prevention and
protection
An understanding of the difference between
these two concepts is essential. Fall prevention aims to remove the
need for people to work exposed to falls. This is done by design
and planning work. Fall protection is the use of techniques to
protect those who are necessarily exposed to fall hazards so as to
minimise the risks.
Changing luminaires in very high ceilings can
be done from access equipment, but a safer solution is to design a
fixed way of access above the ceiling space. Programming the early
erection of fixed and final stairways during a building’s
construction removes the need for temporary access up ladders and
also the need to protect an open stairwell. These solutions need to
be considered before other access choices. The safety precedence
sequence, mentioned in Part 1, shows why this is so (Table 1).
Several of these controls may be used in combination to increase
effectiveness.
For temporary access to heights, as in
construction work, the principle is to provide protected access for
every person likely to be at risk in preference to provision of
personal protection. Thus, the use of a working platform with edge
protection is always preferred to methods which do not prevent
falls but provide protection when falls occur.
Access equipment
Each task should be assessed and a suitable
means of access chosen based on an evaluation of the work to be
done, the duration of the task, the working environment (and its
constraints), and the capability of the person or people carrying
out the task.
There are many different types of access
equipment. This Section covers general principles, and the
following:
- ladders, stepladders and trestles
- general access scaffolds
- scaffold towers
- suspended cradles
- mast-elevated work platforms
- power-operated work platforms
- personal suspension equipment (abseiling equipment and
boatswain's chairs)
Other, highly specialised, equipment is
available and the general principles will apply to their use.
Usually, they have been specially designed for particular tasks and
manufacturers’ information should be used in operator training.
General principles
Accidents using access equipment occur because
one or more of the following common problems have not been
controlled in advance, or was thought to be an acceptable risk
under the circumstances:
- faulty design of the access structure itself
- inappropriate selection where safer alternatives could have
been used
- subsidence or failure of base support
- structural failure of suspension system
- structural failure of components
- structural failure through overloading
- structural failure through poor erection, inspection or
maintenance
- structural failure through overbalancing
- instability through misuse or misunderstanding
- overreaching and overbalancing
- climbing while carrying loads
- slippery footing - wrong footwear, failure to clean
- falls from working platforms and in transit
- unauthorised alterations and use
- contact with obstructions and structural elements
- electrical and hydraulic equipment failures
- trapping by moving parts.
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