Hello, Iím Michael Alvarez, regional manager for CAL/OSHA consultation; lets talk about
scaffold safety. It is estimated that 2.3 million American construction workers work
on scaffolds, that is about 65 percent of the construction industry. Did you know that
4500 injuries and 50 deaths involve scaffold accidents each year? Most of these injuries
involved falls and struck-bys. Preventing is education, therefore you must learn how
to protect yourself through safety training. The training must include best practices and
equipment safety, who should inspect scaffolds, and what should you look for. This video is
not a comprehensive safety program; for clarification and specific information for your job site,
please consult with your supervisor. Thank you.
Scaffolding provides work areas large enough to hold workers, necessary supplies and equipment.
The purpose of this training is to discuss safe work behaviors on elevated work surfaces.
We will review some of the basic knowledge that you should have before working on scaffolds.
Inexperienced employees are often most vulnerable to developing risky behaviors using scaffolds
and need specific safety training at the beginning of their employment. This training DVD is
set up in chapters to allow quick access to specific subjects. You have the option to
include or exclude chapters as needed for customizing your training sessionís needs.
The chapters are; one, daily onsite inspection of scaffolding, two, fall hazards, three,
using designated access areas for egress onto and off scaffolding, four, rolling scaffolds,
five, personal protective equipment, six, conclusion.
Each individual worker needs to be aware of all safety requirements for their job. Scaffolds
should be inspected continuously by those using the scaffold. The industry best practice
is that scaffolds be inspected for safe condition before use or shift, and CAL/OSHA construction
safety order 1644C1 states that all manufacturersí instruction shall be followed. Scaffolding
erected on a construction site is used by many trades and subcontractors, this multi-user
process often leads to conditions of defective scaffolding, therefore the responsibility
for safety on the work-site is up to you.
Hi, Iím Tom Falkenstein, Iím with the CAL/OSHA consultation services office out of Oakland.
A lot of my clients are construction contractors, many of whom use scaffolding, so scaffolding
is something that I look at quite often on a construction worksite. Some of the first
things that I look for when I walk up to a scaffold is I look to see, is it plum and
square. The easiest way to check to see if itís plum, buildings are built straight up
and down, if the scaffold is not parallel to the building, itís a pretty good idea
that itís not plum; have the braces kept the scaffold square and the frame square to
each other, is it level, are the base plates and legs set in a manner to keep the scaffold
flat and level and the work platform level for the workers to be on. The
The next thing Iíll check is to see what kind of condition the scaffold frames are
actually in; are they cracked, are they dented, are they twisted, are they bent. If the scaffold
has any kind of damage to the frame you canít use it because it affects the integrity of
the structure itself and with a weakened structure it could collapse, and if people are on it
when it collapses, weíre going to have people hurt. The frames have also got to be assembled
properly; the pins need to hold the tubes and the frames in place, there need to be
pins between the tubes and the frames, and if thereís a potential for the scaffold to
be bumped or upset then those pins need to be actually connected to the legs
physically so that the scaffold canít be upset and collapse. The next thing to look
at are the cross bracings, are they properly attached, they need to be attached to the
pins in the scaffold frame panel and not simply wired to the scaffold frames themselves. Another
thing that must be installed on a scaffold are guardrails, the guardrails will be 42
to 45 inches above the work platform for the top rail with an intermediate railing, or
mid-rail, half way between the two. Planking is another element that you need to look at,
that is your work platform; if you have a plank that is broken, cracked, split or otherwise
damaged, that can be hazardous to work on. Do not use them for work platforms behind
you to do your jobs. The scaffold planking has got to be covering
the space between the uprights on the panels, there can be no more than one inch between
the scaffold planks themselves, and at the back of the scaffold it can be no more than
ten inches of gap between the last scaffold and the guardrail. If thereís room to put
a plank you should add another plank to the scaffold, all work platforms have got to be
at least 20 inches in width, but all scaffolds must be fully planked between the uprights.
Scaffold planking at the corners must also be properly installed; scaffold planking must
overlap the work platform that itís perpendicular to completely; the reason for this is, the
scaffold planking that itís overlapping will bear the full load of the crossing scaffold
planks instead of a single plank trying to bear the full load. This will affect the structure
and the safety for the individuals working on the platform. As an example of the
scaffold planking at the corners, you can see this is what it should look like. Once
the scaffoldís been erected and the planking and guardrail in place, never remove any of
the components of the scaffold. Scaffolds are designed and intended to support not only
themselves but four times the intended workload; any modifications to the scaffold structure
are going to weaken it, and as a result youíre going to end up with a potential collapse
and injured or killed employees. To climb onto a scaffold never use the diagonal
bracing or any of the support members of the frame panels; climbing on the frames is not
advised simply because its bad end holds and bad footholds. A ladder, a stairwell or stairway
or some of the trap door systems that they now have for scaffold access are the only
proper methods to be used to access your scaffold. Any time a scaffold has people working below
it or passing underneath the scaffold, toe boards are required be fitted at the work
platform in those areas; toe boards must be at least four inches in height and can be
no more than a quarter inch above the plank that theyíre resting on. The purpose of toe
boards is to keep debris, material, supplies and whatever from being kicked off of the
work platform onto employees working below. If youíre in a work situation where youíre
required to drop things from the scaffold planking or structure itself, you need to
barricade the area that youíll be dropping the material onto, post a spotter, put up
warning signs, otherwise take measures to keep people out of that area. Other measures
to prevent employees from being struck by falling objects, which are commonly referred
to as struck-bys would be to provide debris nets, mesh screens or covers that will go
between the guardrails and the toe board to keep debris from going over the side and materials
from falling over the side.
When working on scaffolds, preventing falls must always be on your mind. Donít use a
scaffold if itís wet or slippery, and never jump or run on a scaffold. Falls are by far
the most frequent cause of accidents while working on scaffolds; they also cause the
most severe injuries, and in many cases death. A body in freefall covers distance very quickly;
a person falls four feet in half a second, in one second 15 feet, in two seconds 64 feet.
The impact of even a four foot fall can cause serious injury. If your job site requires
the use of a personal fall arrest system, your supervisor will give you specific training
for the proper use of this equipment.
When we talk about fall protection and scaffolding, we always think of the acronym or the ABC
and D of fall protection, and if we can remember that weíre going to be a lot safer. A is
for the anchorage point, B is for the body harness, C is for the connectors and D is
for the de-accelerating devices, which is going to limit our impact. First thing weíre
going to talk about is A the anchorage point, and anchorage point is critical and generally
the anchorage point is listed as a five thousand pound anchorage point. If you have a scaffold
on a jobsite, sometimes we can anchor to a scaffold, but you need to check on your jobsite,
and thatís jobsite specific, to make sure that the anchorage point is approved by a
qualified person. For instance, we cannot anchorage to an aluminum rolling scaffold
at any place, but a lot of the steel jobsite scaffold that weíre on, weíre able to anchor
to. The body harness has to reduce the impact
load on the body, and we have to make sure that our body harnesses are appropriate for
the job weíre doing and that theyíve been properly inspected. We need to look at all
of those things before we ever put a harness on. Right hereís my cross-chest harness.
Basically the only place I can attach to this harness is the back D ring here on your back.
The item that goes to that would be your de-accelerating device, your lanyard, something like that.
Itís important that when you put your harness on itís property adjusted, it needs to fit
across ñ the sub-pelvic strap needs to fit across the bottom of the pelvis and the butt
here and it has to be on there nice and secure, we donít want this so tight that it cuts
off the blood flow, but we donít want it on so loose that itís going to create a hazard
to us when and if we fall. When you put your harness on itís absolutely
important that you inspect your harness every time, thatís not the safety officerís job,
thatís your job, and you put your body harness on, you need to inspect it. This is a pretty
good body harness but as I inspected my body harness I saw on the sub pelvic strap a cut
in that sub-pelvic strap, that was enough to take this body harness out of service.
But never ever put a body harness on again when you have things like this in your pocket;
keys, keys, knives, flashlights, those kinds of things in your pocket go exactly underneath
the leg strap of your body harness. If you are to fall and this key decides to puncture
your femoral artery, youíre going to be in big trouble. Itís very easy to clean your
pockets out, put them in the toolbox, put them somewhere, but get them out of your pockets
because thatís an accident waiting to happen. Next thing weíre going to go to is the third
or the C portion of personal fall arrest; we need a connector. Excuse me, the connector
is all often referred to a carabiner or a hook. These are all things that connect you
to an anchorage point. When youíre using connectors you have to have a double-locking
self-closing connector; why is a double-acting connector so critical, I took this off of
a job site, this is a six foot lanyard with a single acting hook on this; this is a problem
that we see and itís called rollout, and thatís how easily this can disconnect. We
use this or have it hooked up to a carabiner, this carabiner we can actually roll right
out of this device and it can come right apart, so itís absolutely critical that we have
a double-locking hook. The fourth part, or the D is the de-accelerating
device; the de-accelerating device is usually found in a six foot lanyard, something like
this, this lanyard could also be a four foot lanyard. Now what a de-accelerating device
does is it has a shock pack built in, whether itís enclosed with cloth, whether itís enclosed
with a shrink-wrapped pack, this package has 42 inches of material that, in a fall, will
slow your acceleration so that we donít have an impact force at the end of the fall, this
is why we call this a de-accelerating pack. This is the part that limits our impact load
now, according to OSHA, 18 hundred pounds. Anchorage points; body
harnesses, connectors and de-accelerating devices, critical things to remember; job
site specific on all of your equipment, make sure that theyíre always inspected before
you put them on. Make sure that a certified or a qualified individual approves the anchorage
point, if youíre not sure, make sure, ask somebody that can give you an affirmative
on a proper anchorage point. All of these things are critical and all of these are going
to help you get home to the family that you love and care about at the end of each day.