SAFETY
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Falls from height kill around 35 people each year in the UK.
Tom Austin-Morgan looks at some of the products that should be installed
and the standards with which they must comply to protect workers
Falls from height remain,
statistically, amongst the
largest cause of occupational
fatalities within the workplace.
According to the Health and
Safety Executive (HSE), falls from height in
the 2014-2019 period accounted for 26%
of all fatal accident injuries (an average of
37 fatal injuries per year). Sixty percent
of deaths when working at height involve
falls from ladders, sca olds, working
“Wind speed is far more onerous then a
person falling against the guardrail and,
in fact, likely to be more frequent”
Graham Willmott
platforms and roof edges, and through
fragile roofs.
An important way to reduce these
fatalities is to ensure that safety systems
are used to protect against falls from
height, are inspected properly, are
in perfect working condition and are
recorded properly.
Among Kee Safety’s range of
protective equipment for people working
at height are counterweighted guardrail
systems, used where workers carry out
at roof refurbishments/repairs
at heights as de ned by the
Work at Height Regulations
2005. They feature a lifting
base foot at the bottom
of each vertical part of
the guardrail, which are
individually tted with a
cantilever tube/counterweight to secure
them in place. These products don’t
penetrate the roof membrane. In spring
2021 they were classi ed as a permanent
counterweighted guardrail system (PCGS)
when BSI published standard BS 13700.
BS 13700 is claimed to bring clarity
and consistency for the manufacturer,
designer, duty holder (owner of the
KeeGuard roof
edge protection
organisation) and recerti cation
technician (the inspector) with respect
to the design, installation, inspection and
maintenance of edge protection
systems. One of the most
important features of the
new standard is requiring
all guardrail installations
to be designed for speci c
wind speed calculation in
relation to the location,
height of building and
exposure level.
All manufacturers will
have to provide calculations or
software programs to comply with this
requirement. It also requires annual
recerti cation of counterbalanced
guardrails installed permanently and
requires a thorough examination scheme
to be documented as part of the technical
le for the project.
Kee Safety group risk management
and standards director Graham Willmott
says: “Wind speed is far more onerous
than a person falling against the guardrail
and, in fact, likely to be more frequent.”
24 www.operationsengineer.org.uk Winter 2021
/www.operationsengineer.org.uk