It's time to up the ante of fall protection.
When working on a temporary platform, it’s easy to take shortcuts; not bothering to connect a safety harness because it’s ‘not that high’… ‘no one’s looking’… and even forgetting to tether a tool. But these simple behaviours can have terrible, and often fatal, consequences.
Working at height is a major safety hazard. Safe Work Australia’s 2021 Safety Report noted that in 2020, falls from height were responsible for 11% and being hit by a falling object for 9% of workplace fatalities. That’s 39 lives lost to preventable accidents in one year alone and 122 lives over the last five years.
While the Hierarchy of Controls and appropriate equipment, processes and training are there to be used when working at heights, they’re only effective to a point. In order to save lives, we need to look at the ‘culture of safety’ in the workplace.
Instilling a habit of safety from the top down and making this company ethos and policy, is essential to ingraining a safety-oriented company culture. But simply dictating down won’t get workers onsite to comply with procedures. They need to be included in the conversation about safety policy from the start and contribute from firsthand experience. This will make them more likely to follow these procedures and encourage others to do so, on the job.
Ricky Gleis, National Fall Protection Specialist from Honeywell, understands the importance of business-wide cultural change. “Changing the culture around working safely at heights cannot happen in a simple training session. It takes clear business processes, to firstly acknowledging existing behaviours around complacency, then subsequently use ‘influencers’ in the business to continually encourage, promote, and sustain a change in safety culture. It’s also about involving those who have skin in the game, such as workers themselves. This will support company-wide behavioural change.”
Once the core value of safety is established in a company’s culture, safety equipment and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), are more likely to be used at all times and in the correct way.
From an Engineering Controls standpoint, there are many safety measures that can be taken to minimise fall risks. Examples are fall prevention devices like scaffolds, perimeter guard rails and safety mesh, as well as fall arrest systems like catch platforms and safety nets.
From a Personal Protective Equipment standpoint, there’s Fall Protection, such as harnesses and fall arrestors to keep the worker tethered to an anchor point, and tool lanyards to keep tools and equipment tethered to the person.
If a worker misses a step, slips on a wet surface, or in the case of being lowered into confined spaces, loses consciousness due to lack of oxygen or noxious gas inhalation, the Fall Protection equipment is the piece of PPE standing between them and loss of life or serious injury. And in a confined space situation, this is also a main piece of the rescue procedure.
“Choosing the correct harness for the task is essential, but equally important is the selection of supporting equipment, anchorage points and a rescue procedure. For tasks involving confined spaces the pre-work assessment process takes on even more critical importance. Reference should always be made to ensure compliance with Standards and Regulations, as well as the relevant Codes of Practice, to assist in performing the work at the highest level of safety,” says Nick Stinziani from MSA.
On the other hand, lanyards for tools protect the other workers on site. A tool falling from a height can have dire, if not fatal, consequences on the unlucky person below. The use of these type of PPE is not only about keeping the wearer safe but their teammates safe as well.
In support of fall protection systems, a Drops Free Zone must be created. It’s not just about the cleared space below the work area, it’s how your tools are managed whilst in operation. As indicated by Safe Work Australia, any at height operations above two metres, requires proper tools tethering. Approved systems are invaluable and do save lives,” says Brad Houlihan, Sales Director from Pryme.
Pilots, when they experience an emergency in the air, have an Emergency and Abnormal Checklist. The co-pilot will pull out the book and go step-by-step through each action the pilot must take to handle the crisis. This may seem a clunky way to do it, but what it does is eliminate human error brought on by panic, fear, exhaustion, and bad decision-making.
So too, in industry, there should be fail-safes against human error, and these are visible safety procedures, Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS), and ongoing training on how to use them until a pattern of safety behaviour becomes established, second nature and muscle memory.
“With all specialised operations, competent training must be conducted on the correct use of a safety harness,” says Johnn Panlilio from 3M. “No two are the same as there are specific harnesses for working at heights and confined space applications.
Ricky went on to say… “Good product training can only support positive cultural change in any business.”
Earning money to support yourself and your family should not come at the cost of your life. Business owners, managers, safety officers and workers themselves all have a duty of care to ensure everyone clocks off safely at the end of the day. And where human error fails, safety procedures, training, equipment, and PPE need to have your back.
This article first appeared in the latest edition of Safety Spotlight. For more safety articles like this one, click below to checkout the online version of the magazine.
