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.