For several years now the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has run the New Inventors. This show displays new Australian inventions which increasingly is showing innovations in workplace safety. In the past many award winning hazard solutions have first come to the attention of the marketplace and OHS regulators through the program.
On 17 June 2009, the show included an innovative scaffold fall protection barrier, HeightGuard. For a limited time only, the video of the invention is available online. The product should be seen to be best understood.
A media release on HeightGuard is also available in support of the inventors’ appearance at the Queensland Safety Show.
can anyone give me purchase details for this Heightguard invention
On 24 June 2009, The New Inventors announced that HeightGuard won the weekly prize AND the People\’s Choice Award. More information on this is available at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2598744.htm
Marian
I support your thoughts. Someone else has mentioned that the invention may not meet the Australian Standards. I could go on about allocating Australian Standards more credibility than they deserve.
As I said above, most inventions on the program are works-in-progress and need to be seen as such.
Also, and I am as big as culprit in this as anyone else, we need to be supportive of innovation and not keep providing negatives that may have already been addressed.
Fall protection and any other safety device needs to be challenged so that important improvements result. I know that unless safety is achieved with the minimum of fuss and disruption, it will be ignored.
I think your previous guest has overlooked the fact that the HeightGuard adds protection where there was none before.
It\’s a bit tricky to visualise but, as scaffolding is being erected, there is no guardrail available at a certain point. This literally fills that gap. See what I mean at their website (www.heightguard.com.au) which has a video of scaffolding being put up with and without the HeightGuard.
On another forum where this invention is being discussed one participant said this:
\”I would be very wary of using this product as it does not give full protection to the whole of the platform whilst the upper level is being erected. In addition the gap looks too large to meet the requirements of the code of practice or the best practice guidelines. Also, I wonder if the system has been tested to meet 70kg vertical force of loading?\”
The New Inventors is a show about invention and not competed products. Many of the inventions presented on the show over the years have required considerable development before being ready for the market. I suspect that HeightGuard is one such item.
We\’ll monitor its progress