Elevated Work & Fall Protection: Top 5 Problems & Solutions #58

What are we doing today ?

Let's do elevated work stuff .

Okay , I truly don't know what he's going to cover , so but buckle in , I guess .

Elevated work . All right , all right , welcome back to the episode . We've been doing these for a while now . We're trying , we're trying people , yeah .

So if you , I , if this is a good episode , can't say for sure , because I don't know what he's going to cover , but if it is , please share . That really does help us . Share these with anybody who could benefit , because we are doing these for free and they do take a lot of time , so that would be amazing .

All right , elevated work , tie-off points that's problems . So this is all elevated work problems .

Okay , first one is tie-off points .

Yep .

Okay , I'm with you .

Where are they ?

Nowhere generally . They're not you go in plants .

you look up , you're like I don't see any , but we can switch to our harness .

Yeah , I agree . So the other caveat to that if you're thinking along these lines , if you're like , well , why wouldn't you just use the I-beams ? Well , you go to the shop . There's no beam wraps there , Right ?

So there's that , and you've still got to find a way to get to them .

That also , yep , yep .

Saying maybe your boom lift or your scissor lift or anything doesn't work , your ladder's not tall enough , whatever . Yeah , all the point is that that's why it's first . I agree , because that was when I first became a safety manager , years and years ago . That was one of the first projects I had to do , and I still .

Eliminated work assessment is what we call it .

It was very difficult to figure that out Of all the places we need to wear a harness , where can we tie off ?

Well , it's not just that Because . Well , it's not just that , because you've got to remember , this isn't production . Eight to five , right , this is periodic maintenance work . That's routine , but kind of not , but kind of is . This is because of the industry we were in cattle and meat production . This is sanitation . So this is sanitation daily .

Yeah , how , though ? All right , there will be some solutions towards the end .

Yeah , yep . So hang in there . Solutions are at the end .

Okay .

Scaffolds Well hang , well hang on , because I got another one that goes with tie-off points sure um , they're behind me and not rated there you go there's some kind of rail system let's just weld something we're good yeah , all right .

So here we go , scaffolds . It's super dark in room , as in a few days ago I was like , hey , is there somebody ?

in here .

Hello , I was like yes I'm like , but he's up four stories in a scaffold . I was like alone .

We need some lighting .

Maybe we need a spotter , maybe we need a way for him to get down quickly .

Can we let people know that there's somebody working in there ? Because had you closed all that up . You would have been like , hey , I'm still in here . So scaffolding , the inspections of it we have trouble , we have competent people trained . I'm like , can I ?

see the document . We of it , we have trouble .

We have competent people trained .

Can I see the document ?

We don't have it here , Okay well then , how do I know ? Right , yeah , so this is contractors and location stuff so we're supposed to be doing periodic inspections on our scaffold to make sure it's still good to go right . Can we have the competent person , have the tag or the training documentation ? We need documents , like we need documents .

Sometimes you need a cable tie off for work , because sometimes the scaffold won't work . You can't get to it . Sometimes the boom lift can't go , sometimes the ladder won't get to it .

Well , here's the other thing you've got to consider what are we really trying to reach ?

so here's another one got the the pallet . I'm 40 feet up in the air , got a big opening inside the building . The lift's bringing up the pallet . They bring it to me . I walk over to get stuff off the pallet . I got to be tied off . It's all a bit of work .

Yeah , like a mezzanine type situation . Yeah , we bring the forklifts , the spice areas second floor of everything .

I'm just telling you day in and day out the we gotta figure out some kind of concept . Yeah , how are we going to get to that ?

It's a leading edge because it has to be open for the forklift but a person still has to come on the other side with some kind of unit and move it . So , whether that's themselves a pallet jack , a forklift something , but we still have to have a system to manage that person being Okay , tell me about that .

Because now I'm on the second , third level . I got to open this overhead door . The chain is at the door , so it forces me to stand at the opening and I have to keep running the chain until the door gets all the way up , which means I'm at the opening the entire time the door is going up .

Yeah , I'm right next to it . We're right there , right there on the edge . Yeah .

Warehouses , mills to do that . But the point of it is that's the scariest part . It's not the palette , it's .

I gotta get the door open yeah , yeah , because you have to stand there and use force to open something right next to a leading edge .

Yeah , I get that another one is um , I'm doing elevated work but got rails . But really do I climb over the rail to get in the mixer blender ? Do I climb over the ?

rail to get the access point .

Yeah I climb over the rail to do a , but there's no other way to do it because there's no tiles .

Yeah , I mean , I get that we have a railing for production .

And fall protection during the day .

Yeah , during the day . But we have to get on the other side of that Work on it , you have to do any kind of work , and so how do we get over into that ? It's either stepping off a ladder or it's climbing over something , correct ?

in a lot of rails . Yeah , so it was never made for that oh , I could say daffs , yeah absolutely gut bins anything like that , mixer blenders like you said . Yeah , yeah all right here's another one elevator work something kind of weird . Um , I inspect my harness during the day , but not the rest of the day .

Okay , so tell me about that . So I'm doing a project .

You give me the harness , I wear it , I inspect it . 630 in the morning . Really , I should be inspecting it all day , but I don't . I take it off , I throw it to the right , I throw it to the left , I put it back on home . It's hot , it's wild how we'll find harnesses damaged during the day and they'll say we inspect them all , they're fine .

yeah , so what I think that the thing is is that we had some kind of failure on the harness absolutely , but we didn't catch it and we didn't notice when it happened no , we missed , because we expected it to swarm .

We missed it .

So something slipped , it tore cut up my webbing , some of the grommets popped out .

Absolutely . Maybe I was , maybe the belt loop didn't go through all the way On the D-ring .

I was going into a vertical space and it just so happened , that's when the back fall indicator popped . I didn't fall though , but it still popped Correct , like maybe the , the hooks readjusted because they'll do that . You know they something gets caught up and it slides real quick and we didn't realize it popped .

It's wild how that'll go during the whole day and you'll walk with somebody , be like hey , your harness has been activated they're like what are you talking about ?

I inspected it and maybe they really did . They just didn't see that it got . But so , yeah , part of that , I think , is help your friends out , if you see they got something weird going on , let them know them know .

Somebody has an elevated work assessment form . Okay , that's great . I love filling those out in the morning . The only problem is if you go up in the scissor lift and the elevated work form says you have to tie up before you get out of the lift .

Okay .

And I go initially to get out of the lift to weld the eye bolt so I can hook into , to get out of the lift . Okay , how do I do the first ?

one . How do you do the first part ? That's the problem , Thinking through that concept .

So yes , you've done the elevator work permit . Yes , you did , maybe , a project analysis . Yes , you just said yes , you did the pre-check for the boom . But at the end of the day , before you climb out to a line break or welding , before you climb out of that unit , you have to be hooked to something , and that is where all the crazy is .

Is that moment right there ?

Yeah , so I spent a lot of time on that .

Yeah .

Every last few weeks I've been doing that . How do we get from where we're at , elevated , to the part we're supposed to be tied up and there's nothing to off to get . Yeah , we haven't gotten it installed yet , right , yeah , but the person got to be tied off to install it . Yeah , he's got .

But he's got to be out of the unit to weld it , to install it . Yeah , you're almost in steel protocol .

Yeah , it's , it's it's , that's your evaluation , so don't get caught up . And when they're doing projects or daytime , or nighttime , to get caught up , and well , who's going to be the first initial ?

yeah , yes , we have to do this and we all agree that's the thing to do , but how are we going to do the first part of it ? Correct , yeah , got it .

Another one is so . I'm standing on a high pressure vessel . Okay , yep got it , which in my world it means no , but people do . So let's start with that , because what we do for like we manage leaks and we combine spaces , so both of them make me nervous .

Some tanks are flat on top and they have a place to stand and some are rounded on top .

I've got to stand on a high pressure vessel this round , Okay , and that's we need . We need a whole bunch of stuff to do that , and my deal is cause we had an example a few months ago .

Yeah . So in my world you could do things like a positioning belt Correct that prevent you from going beyond a certain point Right Now .

If you want to build catwalks , then go over that , but don't touch the vessel , Because I've seen people do that .

Well , we don't want to damage the integrity of the unit , that's correct I integrity of the unit . That's correct , I mean . So there's that piece of it too .

So now I don't have a vessel , maybe I have a piece of equipment that rotates horizontally . Okay , if that piece of equipment rotates horizontally .

Like a tumbler or something like that .

Yeah , or like any kind of long piece of equipment that rotates Well to work on those . You don't work on them on the side , you don't work them underneath , you work them on the top . So as you do those tasks , you may have to stand on that , but your footing is never going to be stable .

I'm thinking of rendering right now , when you're talking about slick and dirty . You're talking about slick and dirty . Yeah , nowhere to really stand .

So you're doing elevated work . But your elevated work the pressure you got to put on a grinder or a task you got to do is not enough with your footing , so you got to get creative . How are you going to do that now ?

Yeah , I mean , the pressure has to be a certain way with some of those .

Yeah , you're not going to hold the grinder and just hope it does its job .

Some of the saws and some of the grinders require sometimes two hands . You've got to also consider fatigue . Doing stuff with one hand , that's different . Trying to exert that force , it's about body positioning and ergonomics , depending on how long they're going to do it to you .

you know then my last one is for all my food plants is sampling , whatever it is yeah , yeah over the edge yeah tool , reaching through the thing there's so many times see people stand up on a mid-rail to get above it , to get the sample because they engineered the safety side for you to stay away .

But you've got to get to the product inside and take a sample of it , and it's way down there , right , it's way down there .

So you see people leaning over to get that sample .

Yeah , so there's the catwalk , and then there's the mid-rail and they're like leaning on the floor down below , which is weird also that they're a food safety person , maybe leaning on the floor .

The top of the rails on the rails to get . Or now you say I took the sample , now sanitation's got to clean it and they've got to get that spot .

That's back here yeah , so I gotta . How do we do that ?

I gotta take the curves underneath me and I gotta clean this back in here because food safety says I gotta do that . How am I gonna do that ?

yeah , so for I going to do that . Yeah , so for situations kind of like that , I found tools are really really helpful . There's ways , there's different kinds of nozzles available and different attachments that we can use for things like that . There's different tools that we can use to get our samples , so that we're not having to lean through over on .

You can also build another rail system in just that part for helping with sanitation or helping with sampling or helping for elevated work . If it's a reach , if it's a place someone has to reach over and grease like bearings , you can put another piece of pipe there , basically .

So it keeps you from laying it over . I see railings that you can actually take off , I mean they're add on take off . Now back to your mezzanine thing . There are different gate systems that I've seen in use . That rotate One is rotating .

So what I want you to do if you're watching this is don't get caught up in an elevated work scenario permit system evaluation . What you want to do is you want to say , okay , here's 42 jobs that we're doing . How do I not go out and be risky ?

Whatever that is , Can I avoid doing this in some way ? Do I have to put them in this position ? Is there a tool I can use , an engineering way that I can use ? Is there a place I can ?

open a hole and take a sample that's a ground level Instead of way up top . I have to climb on top of it . Can I clean it from ground level . Yeah , I do that a lot . I'll tell people clean ground level because , then you're not climbing on top of stuff yep .

Is there a place that I can engineer to stand can ? I use a different tool . I mean we've used drones in some capacities to do different things . If we need photos , I mean there's all different kinds of things that we can use to try and avoid going at elevation .

Then let's find a permanent way to not tie off .

Yeah , let's figure out how we just get out of that completely , altogether , absolutely .

So that's our elevated work random stuff you don't think about .

Yeah , yeah . And in terms of the elevated work assessment , if you've got some of these risks going on and you want to start working on that list of how to navigate through that , we do have an entire module elevated work , fall arrest , fall protection , all of that good stuff on allensafetycoachingcom . Otherwise , we can work with you on fall assessments .

All of these are our opinion . Yeah , so that's the other thing .

It's our opinion . Take it how you want . You really have to do a case-by-case basis analysis when it comes to false stuff because it is so unique and it is very dynamic in terms of the subject . But you can always reach out to us If you hop on the coaching site .

So if you have specific . We do a lot of FaceTime solutions . Yeah , lots of .

FaceTime and photo solutions , lots of email solutions , things like that . So that is an option for you if you don't want to bring us on site and do something like that . If you are struggling with this subject or have more questions , that's a great option for you .

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