Working at height safety measures should be taken seriously to avoid injury. Working at height is the top cause of injuries and death in the construction industry. Let us take a look at the hierarchy of control measures when working at heights.

Working at height safety measures should be taken seriously to avoid injury. Working at height is the top cause of injuries and death in the construction industry. Working at height refers to working in any workplace where someone could fall a distance that can cause injury if there were no precautions put in place. Let us take a look at the hierarchy of control measures when working at heights.

Avoid working at height

You should avoid working at height wherever possible. This means that you should do as much work on the ground as possible. You should lower something to the ground before repairing it and use extended tools instead of using a ladder. You should also avoid working on fragile surfaces. Some surfaces may be enclosed but liable to cause falls through them rather than causing falls off them.

Always try as much as you can to prevent falls

If you cannot avoid working at height, you can prevent falls rather than dealing with the consequences of falls. You should start by using a safe place to do your work. This can be somewhere you don’t need to use protective equipment to be protected because there is no risk of falling. This could be a parapet or a balcony. You could also work on machinery with fixed guard rails.

Use collective equipment to prevent falls

If you don’t have a safe place to work from, you should use collective equipment to prevent falls. This is the next level of working at heights safety in Australia and involves protecting people who are potentially at risk of using equipment such as collective protection units or external advance guardrails.

Use personal protective equipment to prevent falls

This is the final step of preventing falls. You should use personal protective equipment and this could include equipment such as belts which restrict the movement of the workers to the extent that a fall is not possible.

Use collective equipment to minimise the distance

The hierarchy of control measures when working at height now moves on to focus on mitigating. This states that those people with a duty of care should reduce the potential consequences of a fall by putting airbags or netting beneath the work area. They should then close it and reduce the distance the worker could fall.

Use PPE to mitigate the distance

It is crucial to wear personal protective equipment so that if a worker falls, the distance they fall will be shorter. In work areas that involve scaffolding, this can be done through the use of fall arrest harnesses. It is, however, important to note that these can still result in an injury if they are not effective at lower heights.

Use collective equipment to minimise consequences

This refers to the use of airbags or netting to soften the impact in case of a fall. This is one of the most important working at heights safety measures that every company should put in place. Such collective equipment should be placed at a lower level relative to the ground.