There are many ways to prevent falls from a height. Each roof or height has its own specification. We can have a flat roof covered with a trapezoidal sheet, an inclined roof with a rafter and full boarding, grain tanks, etc. Apart from the differences in the materials, roofs differ in purpose and frequency of usage- we choose different protection for the place on the roof that people enter once a year, different for the place where people enter every week.
It should also be remembered that an appropriate set of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) must be used for each safety system.
Fall protection plan – preventing fall
These are all systems that block our access to the edge, preventing us from falling. They are usually collective protection systems at the same time- this means that a much larger number of people can work in a given place than in the case of individual protection. The most popular and universal of such systems is the guardrail system. We have fixed and free-standing roof railings. Thanks to the appropriate arrangement, we can make a safe zone from any given area, and the people working in it do not need to have PPE.
Advantages:
- There is no risk of falling
- We create a safe zone
- People working in secure places do not need to be trained and do not need PPE
- Work on the roof with railings is not considered as work at height (no medical examination required for work over 2m).
It happens that the customer needs to change the position and area of protection, then we recommend free-standing guardrails- they make it possible to easily rearrange the system and change the protected area.
Another system to prevent from falling are safety nets. They can be installed in places where the guardrails could not be used. They are very often also a temporary system, used for the duration of the construction. Easy and quick to assemble and disassemble, they often act as a system for catching things falling from the construction site.
Fall arrest system
As a rule, these are fall protection systems. The system allows you to fall, but it stops a person from hitting the ground, saving their health and life. These systems are used wherever it is not possible to use guardrails, or when they are more practical (e.g. on roofs where the system is to be used mainly for snow removal- fall protection is more appreciated by mountaineers who remove snow from the roof).
We can use fall protection systems almost anywhere, the range of possibilities is really wide- from single anchorage posts, through horizontal rope systems (e.g. on the roof), vertical (e.g. ladders) to suspended ones. It is also common to use fall protection systems as systems limiting the range of motion. If the posts are placed at an appropriate distance from the edge, you can use a rope with a right length that will prevent you from entering the fall zone (2m from the edge).
Characteristics:
- An economical solution
- Provides security
- Wide range of applications
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is required