A Guide for Better Fall Protection

Fall are the most leading cause of hazards and major injuries at work places. Every Year, more than 200,000 people are injured and more than 11,000 people die by falls. This all happens due to lack of training and equipment among workers. As workers need to study fall protection guide and learn utilizing a fall harness for easily control work-site falls.

What is Fall Protection?

Fall Protection comes under the various equipment and safety procedures followed by a person to prevent fall hazards. More specifically, it includes the different methods prearranged for a construction site employee who could loose his/ her balance on heights, in order to eliminate hazard.

A Fall protection procedure is a step by step approach towards fall protection that covers all important guidelines needed to be considered that might help avoid such hazards.

Following are some important steps:

• Determine Safety Level of Fall Hazard Surfaces
• Elimination of Fall Hazards
• Prevention of falls by improving the workplace installing guardrails etc.
• Cross check or pre-inspection of fall harness
• Appropriate use of Fall Protection systems or equipment.

Types of Fall Protection System:

A fall protection system is an arrangement pre-designed to prevent injuries from falls. Previously, people used ropes and various knots to safely work against the gravity forces. But today, There have designed a variety of systems providing fall protection that are dispensed into two parts:

1.  Passive Fall Protection
2.  Active Fall Protection

Passive Fall Protection:

Passive Fall protection system is a non-dynamic/ stationary arrangement that does not move, adapt, or change when in or out of use. While using, there remains no need of active fall protection systems or equipment. These include:

Guard Rails | Nets | Covers | Aerial lifts | handrails | rooftop railing | temporary flooring etc.

Active Fall Protection:

Unlike passive fall protection, these systems are dynamic in nature and require the use of harness, equipment as well as worker's participation. These systems are basically designed to arrest while fall is in progress not to prevent falls.

These are very important when there is absence of passive fall protection system (guard rails, covers etc) and there's a need to prevent slam contact of worker and the lower levels of work-site. The Active fall protection equipment include:

Anchor Points | Full Body Harness | Lifelines | Safety Belts | Static Lines | Swing Falls etc.

OSSA Fall Protection Training and Certification:

In North America, Fall protection safety training and certification is compulsory to get a job in any work-site thus to reduce accidents, costs and prevent injuries from falls as by CSA(Canadian Standards Association) in Canada. 

This results reduction of hazards rate that also raises productivity of Canadian work places.

 

 

According to OSSA regulations, the eight hours fall protection training must deliver the following stuff:

•  Review of Legislation Compliant with OSSA Standards
•  Creation of Virtue Fall Protection Plan
•  Fall Hazard Identification
•  Fall elimination, Prevention and Control
•  Identifying the types of Anchor points and their Proper Set-Up
•  Select and Proper use of Fall Harness
•  Cross check and pre-inspections of Equipment
•  Fall Protection Monitoring

For further information about fall protection training or equipment, Devin Jollimore is HSE manager and training coordinator at Mission Safety Services in Red Deer, Edmonton. He can be contacted at 1.780.449.2700 or djollimore@missionsafety.com.

Do I have to take this course??

Erin Henderson

I have been asked this quite a few times lately so let’s get one things straight – there is a reason you take safety courses and a reason you recertify them every three years. You are not the exception.

Training is a great job. We get to work with people from a variety of different fields and spend our days in the classroom explaining something we’re passionate about. My training career started with first aid. I was trained and experienced in paramedics, but my school schedule didn’t allow me hours that emergency medicine could work within so teaching became my safe haven for output of ideas and skills. I do believe I’ve saved lives through all the people I certify. 

But every class I teach (especially with recertification) I get the same question. ‘Why do I need to do this class… again?’ And the answer is always the same, ‘to save a life.’ 

This is asked in every class – fall protection to fire watch. So many of our students come in wishing the class would be as short as possible or even ask to challenge the exam. 

But that’s not the point. Maybe you would know enough for a written test, maybe. But there are other factors that play a role in your training and it’s about time you them seriously.

Information change: Every few years there are changes made to the legislation which effects your training. Occupational Health and Safety is still a very young field and the kinks are still being worked out. It is also an industry driven field which means we are constantly amalgamating information from work sites in Alberta – YOUR worksites to make safer policies. The Red Cross changes every 5 years based on emerging research and every year we see more improvements.

Information loss: How much do you remember from high school? I am willing to bet there are some small concepts that haven’t been used in a while that would be hard to find. Your brain is miraculous, but not perfect. It lets unused information slide out and makes alterations to other bits of knowledge. Your training is here at missionsafety.com to provide you with the initial knowledge, but also to restate what you need to know every three years to keep it all fresh and available when needed.

Common sense: Let me tell you, common sense is surprisingly uncommon. Every aspect of life would comply with this but dealing with industries that have high injury rates to begin with, you see an incredible amount of bad ideas. We are saying every part of the outlined class schedule because on the off chance that you didn’t think of one small thing, you could cause major problems. And since I’m not allowed to yell, ‘Don’t be an idiot’ at my class and call it a day, just listen! We have enough stories of things going wrong, we really don’t want you to be one.

Stories and Sharing: Finally, there is a thing called class participation that no one seems to think exists outside of elementary school, but has a huge impactS on your life. As your trainer, I am certified and have endless streams of stories about workplace accidents or statistical facts, but the most important aspect of learning is becoming involved with the information. You are here to ground the concepts and make internalized changes in your behavior that will keep you safe. Taking part in the class makes the material specific to you and lets you conceptualize yourself using it – a big step towards what we want out of you

Your Trainer: And finally – you are dealing with another human being in their work. I don’t come onto your site and ask if I can just tape the pipe together and go. My co-workers and I are here to perform a task we are trained to do. We will be giving you all we can while you are our student and having some respect for that can go an awfully far way in making that class dry or engaging. If you can respect our work for the day you are in the classroom we will be much more enjoyable to have at the front of it.

So remember, next time you are taking safety training: There is a reason for you to be there, and take the time to learn everything you can. So enjoy having a day spent with likeminded people and with a trainer who is excited to offer you all the knowledge they have. Take this chance to grow as an employee and stop questioning the necessity. It is essential, and we look forward to your next recertification.