16.02.2010

Three ladders and two planks

A reader in the UK spotted two men working on a highly precarious and dangerous platform today, his attempts to warn them fell on deaf ears.

In his own words:

“As you can see from the photos taken close to where I live, these men were replacing guttering and soffit from an improvised platform that looked and was highly dangerous.
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Two men working on a two storey house without a care in the world

I personally spoke to the two lads working and made them aware of the obvious danger they are putting themselves in.

Their reply was unbelievable: - “We always do it like this and anyway a guardrail gives you a false sense of security.” One of the lads declared proudly that he had done a rope access course so knew all about safety.
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The platform was highly dangerous no guardrail and hardly solid looking

I pointed out that not only would they not get a penny, assuming they survived a fall, but also that their company would be shutdown. The reply to this was “Well they aren’t going to shut down xxxxxxxx are they.” I guessed from that that they are subcontracting to them.
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They then got ready to do the gable-end soffits at an even greater height - look at all the ladders

Considering how dangerous the platform was our man called the company mentioned and spoke to the groups Health & Safety manager who agreed to send a surveyor to the site to check on what was being used.

Vertikal Comment

Our reader has requested that we withhold the name of the contractor for obvious reasons. It is still amazing at how many small contractors there are all over Europe, as well as the USA who either still oblivious to safe and efficient methods of access to work at height, but as in this case who are even dismissive of it.

There is still a great deal to do, and yet there are a large number of people in the powered access industry who think that the market is now “saturated” or fully mature – Baloney! With low rental rates this is the ideal time to be working hard to bring more users into the market and clamp down on practices such as this.