What are the Major Hazards of Scaffolding Safety?

Scaffolding safety is a mixture of practices and safety measures that enforces appropriate and safe use of scaffoldings. It contains a set of pre-emptive actions in building, examining, using, and tagging scaffolds. Obedience with OHSA’s standard rules and necessities for working on scaffoldings can minimize or remove workers’ exposure to hazards such as falls, electrocutions, and falling objects. Scaffolding safety is significant because it can help stop workplace incidents from repeated. With baseline scaffold requirements to keep workers safe such as improved inspections, Scaffolding Safety Training, and controls, frontline teams can confirm scaffolding safety and be proactive about building a safety culture from the ground up.

To confirm scaffolding safety, the scaffold must be constructed under the supervision of a capable person; someone who has been systematically trained on safe work practices when working on scaffoldings. And workers must be trained by a capable person before they use the scaffold. The scaffold and its components should also be checked by a capable person and correctly marked before the start of the shift to ensure its integrity and safety. Workers injured in scaffold accidents accredited the accident either to the planking or to the employee slipping. Scaffolds are essential to the construction industry with around 65% of the workforce complex in work from scaffolds. When used appropriately, scaffolds can save important time and money. Though they are convenient and essential, there are major hazards associated with worker injuries that everyone wants to be aware for appropriate scaffold safety.

Major Hazards:

Falls: Falls are accredited to the lack of guardrails, inappropriate installation of guardrails and failure to use personal fall arrest systems when essential. The OHSA standard needs fall protection must be used when work heights. OHSA’s standards represent the least level of protection; many overall contractors require 100% fall protection when working on scaffolds. These services are growing safety margins by exceeding the smallest requirements of the OHSA standards. Absence of correct access to the scaffold work platform is an additional reason for falls from scaffolds. Access in the form of a protected ladder, stair tower, etc. is essential whenever there is 24" vertical change to an upper or lower level. The means of access must be determined before creation of the scaffold and employees are never allowable to climb on cross braces for either vertical or horizontal movement.

Scaffold collapse: The appropriate creation of a scaffold is important in stopping this specific hazard. Before creating the scaffold, a number of factors must be described for. The amount of weight the scaffold will be mandatory to hold with the weight of the scaffold itself, materials, and workers must be measured. Foundation stability, placement of scaffold planks, distance from the scaffold to the work external, and tie-in necessities are just a few of the other items that must be careful prior to building a scaffold. A knowledgeable separate who can perform preplanning will decrease the chances of damage and save money for any task. However, when building, moving, or disassembly a scaffold, an educated person, also known as the scaffold capable person, must be present. A competent person must also examine the scaffold daily to confirm the structure remains in a safe condition. Inappropriate construction can lead to a total ruin of the scaffold or falling components both, of which can be deadly.

Struck by falling materials: Workers on scaffolds are not the only ones bare to scaffold associated hazards. Many persons have been injured or killed due to being struck by tools that have dropped from scaffold platforms. These people must be endangered from falling objects. OHSA needs that this is done one of two ways. The first is to connect toe boards or netting on work platforms to stop these items from falling to the ground. The other decision is to straight barricades that physically prevent persons from walking under work platforms. Danger tape is often used in an effort to keep people away from above hazards but is often ignored or taken down creating possible struck by hazards. A stronger system such as plastic mesh or wooden barricades is usually more effective and much easier to maintain. When members of the public could possibly move close enough to be struck by falling objects, making barriers to stop them from entering the area where objects can fall is a recognized best practice. Irrespective of the type of falling object protection used, it is critical that other individuals on the work site are aware of the overhead work.

Electrocution: Look to preplanning and the capable person to assure that there are no electrical hazards present during scaffold use. A minimum of 10’ must be preserved between the scaffold and electrical hazards. If this distance cannot be preserved, then the hazard must be properly insulated by the power organization. Coordination between the power company and the organization using the scaffold cannot be over specified.