T&I Solutions are keen to simply the access industry and we believe that an often misunderstood area
of roof access is where fall arrest or fall restraint fall within the hierarchy
of control; simply put it falls very near the bottom. Any fall arrest or fall restraint equipment should be considered as PPE and as such should only be used
where a) the fall risk cannot be eliminated and b) there is not suitable
collective fall protection alternative. Already
the phrase collective or passive fall protection must be understood before the
concept of fall arrest or restraint can be fully appreciated. Simply put a
passive system will protect all users and required no user input in order to
function (i.e. a handrail system) whereas a fall arrest system requires additional
inspection and testing and all users to have the appropriate, training and inspected equipment. Should any of these not be in place then the operative will be in great danger should they be exposed to any fall risk.
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Taking the above into
account; before any fall arrest system can be used as a means of fall
protection the testing, maintenance and training of both the equipment and any
potential operatives must be implemented. When this is considered together with
the need to rule out any collective protection measure; the situations where
fall arrest is appropriate become very limited. A true fall arrest system so
has very specific requirements, for example consideration has to be given to the required distance for the system to fully arrest a fall, this can be up to 6.5m. In addition a system can impose considerable loads on the roof
structure. Again these requirements further limit the situations where a fallarrest system is the correct equipment.
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