Its National Safe Work Month and we’re following Safe Work Australia in the quest for safer work practices. At Anchor Safe, we strongly believe every month is safe work month, however we always look forward to October and the hype around safety. We have recently released a series of Safe Work videos to help your business and employees improve workplace safety.
Our first episode illustrates the need for inspecting your PPE before each use. There’s nothing worse then a false sense of security and somebody who believes there equipment’s fit for use could end in disaster, could be as simple as a body harness that doesn’t fit properly, using incorrect rope lengths, having an unsecured guardrail. All these things only take a moment to inspect to determine if its safe to go ahead and work on the roof. Knowing how to inspect your equipment before use is extremely important. Watch Savvy Steve below go through the inspection steps.
Now that you know how to correctly inspect your PPE it’s now time to safely access the roof, this is when workers become complacent often too familiar with their tools and cut corners. SafeWork NSW have released 9 incident reports relating to a serious fall from height this year, In one particular incident, a worker lost his life after falling more than 2 meters through a fibro roof at Wollongong, while attempting to get onto a ladder to get off the roof. In fact, on average 4 – 5 Australians (mainly men) die each year after falling from a ladder and nearly 1 in 10 falls from a ladder result in brain injury. Don’t become part of the statistics, understand the ladder and how it is properly set up. Watch Savvy Steve below as he illustrates the benefits of having permeant controlled access and watch Perilous Pete illustrate the dangers of incorrectly using temporary ladders.
Hopefully we have learnt something from above and we are now safely on the roof, but the danger does not stop here. When it comes to working at heights safely, you can easily be caught out by hidden dangers. Environmental change can happen at any time which requires workers to be vigilant in looking for a change in risk profile. Dirt and algal growth can make it hard to notice plastic sheeting or skylights, especially if it has the same profile as the surrounding sheeting. It is often not easy to tell at a glance where they are located and if they are properly protected. Watch Savvy Steve mark out each skylight before accessing the roof, in contrast to Perilous Pete who skipped the planning stage and accessed the roof with no plan in place, consequently he fell through the skylight. Know the risk, manage the risk & monitor the risk today!
This October commit to improving health and safety in your workplace.
Get involved by:
– Visiting the National Safe Work Month website and accessing the resource kit
– Running a safety initiative in your workplace
– Sharing your safety initiative on social media & use the hashtag #safeworkmonth
– Arranging your PPE inspection by a qualified height safety equipment inspector
Keep Work health and safety a priority
Learn more about inspecting your harness equipment
View Anchor Safes range of Skylight protectors here
