In early September 2013 I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on the issue of working at heights. The “crisis summit” was reported on recently by Marian Macdonald. The videos of this panel are now available through the WAHA YouTube channel and all the separate videos are worth viewing. The video in which I first advocate for a focus on safety is embedded below.
The questions from the floor are included in the last video of the panel discussion. If the issue of working at heights seems dry it is worth looking at the video from the 4.30 minute mark. Several members of the audience take the Workcover NSW representative to task.
The article below has been written by Marian Macdonald and is about an event that I recently attended in Sydney about fall protection.
When a plumber perched on the rooftop of a skyscraper clips a safety harness onto the point that anchors him to the building, there’s a one-in-three chance the anchor itself is unsafe. Remarkably, the installers being held to blame are pleading for greater scrutiny of their work from the regulator.
On September 3 2013 I will be on a panel in Sydney discussing issues associated with working at heights. Below is a media release (not yet available online) about the panel and some recent data on working at heights risks. The quotes are mine.
Inaction by policy makers is putting lives at risk and now, says a peak safety industry body, there are the numbers to prove it.
The Working At Heights Association (WAHA) will host a crisis summit on Tuesday at The Safety Show Sydney, where it will reveal that one in three roof anchors are unfit for use. Of the 3245 anchors audited by association members over the last three months, 2260 were deemed unusable.
Part of the problem, says WAHA secretary Gordon Cadzow, has been the lack of awareness of the number of inadequate safety systems on Australia’s rooftops.
It is rare to see any major innovation in in the area of working at heights, particularly in relation to fall protection harnesses. Yet coming soon to the Australian and New Zealand markets, via the Galahad Group, is the ZT Safety Harness, a fall arrest harness without a groin strap.
The ZT Safety Harness has been designed to eliminate the potential for suspension trauma which can result from being suspended for some time in a traditional harnesses. A video is perhaps the best way to understand this harness which, in the absence of the groin strap, is integrated into a pair of work trousers or coveralls with webbing extending down the leg of the trousers to gaiters on the lower calf. This configuration provides for a suspended worker to be in a seated position with the shock from the fall being distributed more evenly along the body.
Below is a guest post from long time SafetyAtWorkBlog reader, Marian Macdonald.
Workplace Access & Safety height safety consultant Aaron Carratello on a walkway built for access to HVAC equipment at Mt Eliza Business School
It was when Simon Murray put himself in the witness box and imagined what a judge would say that investing in walkways and guardrails became a ‘no brainer’.
The property and facility manager of the Melbourne Business School was faced with an important decision: whether to install extra roof anchors and static lines or shift towards more passive forms of fall prevention.
Roof anchors were cheaper initially, while the walkways and guardrails offered a far lower lifetime cost but, in the end, price was not the issue.
Below is a guest post from long time SafetyAtWorkBlog reader, Marian Macdonald.
“If you need to use that, you’ll almost certainly die,” says fall prevention expert Carl Sachs, pointing to a guardrail on the rooftop of a multi-storey Melbourne office block.
Fixed to flimsy aluminium flashing, the guardrail flies in the face of several mandatory and voluntary standards but Sachs says non-compliances are more the norm than the exception on Australia’s rooftops. The problem, he says, is that height safety equipment installers need no training or qualifications and nobody is checking that their work really is capable of saving lives.
“Australians wouldn’t accept unqualified electricians wiring our houses but, as it stands, all you need is a ute, a credit card and a cordless drill to install the safety gear that stops us falling off skyscrapers,” he says.
It’s a concern echoed by, plumbers, building surveyors, facility managers and builders.
“Whilst due diligence principles can be applied and all care taken to ensure that height safety systems are adequate, without some form of regulation or certification, workers are placed at risk of serious injury everyday due to a lack of knowledge and regulation specific to fall prevention,” Mr Naylor says.
Across the street from an office in Melbourne, a pub is installing a roof area for entertaining. The work has gone smoothly as far as one can see but the position of the platform ladder in the corner of the roof was curious. If someone was working from the ladder and wobbled, it would be possible to not only fall a couple of metres to the roof but perhaps over the roof’s edge to the pavement two storeys below.
The worker in the front of this picture was moving to erect another platform ladder towards the front of the roof.
The second picture shows the worker on that platform ladder. Similar risks of wobbling and falling over the roof’s edge.
How safe is unsafe? There is the potential for the worker to fall from the ladder to the street some distance below but he didn’t. So was his positioning of the ladder and work undertaken safe?
The 
