KNOWLEDGE BASE
In the UK, industry body National Access and Scaffolding Confederation (NASC) represents the scaffolding sector. Its members include over 200 companies, representing 15,000 workers and around 40% of the total UK scaffolders. It’s important to note that at the time of writing there have been no scaffolding fatalities across NASC members for seven years – part of which must be down to the membership criteria regarding training, regular auditing of member companies and production of industry guidance notes to make the job safer. They have also reduced recorded falls over a 10 year period from 93 to 20. Work carried out at Simian Risk Management shows that the people most at risk from working at height are construction and maintenance teams. However, problems often stem from the design phase, where an architect designs a building without explaining clearly enough how it is to be built in a way that minimises risk. The main contractor takes over the building from the design and commissions other trades to carry out various roles. With the pressure on to stick to tight budgets, main contractors are inclined to use the companies who tender work offering the cheapest price – the flip side of this being that modern safety methods can often end up an afterthought, leaving protection for work at height reliant on older methods such as ladders, harnesses, or in the worst cases, nothing. During this global recession prices are being squeezed on all projects and while clients are trying to work to gold standards, margins are so tight that it’s mostly health, safety and training that gets put on hold. Furthermore, in the UAE there are so many high buildings that cleaning windows and maintaining building facades is a fundamental issue under construction and design. Instead, we should be
looking at completely avoiding work at height altogether, using revolving windows or self cleaning glass to save having to use cradles and rope for access. It was only on 4th January when two operatives were killed in the UAE following a scaffold platform collapse, and, just last year a scaffolder in Dundee fell and died from a scaffold. In the UK, fatalities from falls from height have recently reduced, but this could well be because less work is being undertaken. Once out of our recession, figures are likely to creep up again and coupled with the cuts to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) personnel and proactive inspections, contractors will have less incentive to employ best practice techniques to improve safety in this area. The UK and UAE has excellent contractors, but in Simian’s experience, the larger the contractor, the more safety is taken seriously as a poor record seriously affects reputation. In the UAE, it appears that the larger contractors are more safety conscious. In working with Simian, we see scaffolders working on sites for major oil and gas companies such as Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd (GASCO) in full PPE and safety harnesses, all carried out under a permit system. There are others where people put up scaffolding by the side of the road wearing no PPE. Many large UK companies also enforce the highest standards, such as Shell, BP, National Grid, and British Gas/Centrica.
How can we improve? Our advice to our clients and main contracts is to assess the risk, plan correctly, have competent, trained staff on site to manage and carry out work at height. We advise our customers not to just jump to what they think is the easiest option – or attempt a task in a
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certain way just because that’s the way it’s always been done. We encourage people to think outside of the box.
Design Design is a major factor, as a key part of that role is asking how it can be designed in a way that is safe to build and safe to maintain when complete. The architect should be working to the hierarchy, which is always to try to eliminate it in the first instance, rather than build in a need to wear PPE. They should be trying to avoid the need for people to work at height, rather than going straight to the bottom and involving harnesses to enable maintenance work to go ahead. As stated above, the UAE is a world leader in the construction of high buildings and pushing the envelope in design – such as Al Dar HQ in Abu Dhabi, or the Burj Khalifa. Careful design isn’t just about buildings, but scaffolding and framework. We advise companies not just to design scaffolds, but design them in a way that is safer for people to use.
Planning The construction main contractor must make sure it has trained supervision and operatives in place to carry out work. We quite often get enquiries for one day scaffold courses to enable operatives to build tube and fitting scaffolding – in the UK it takes a minimum of 18 months, including 21 training days, to become a scaffolder. Not only that, we get companies from the developing world reporting that they are all scaffolders and have been trade tested in their country, yet on site they do not know how to distinguish between components. Trade testing in countries prior to exporting workers to the UAE should be standardised, with all companies carrying out the same standards of assessment before staff are brought in.
Winter 2019 | 61
