13.11.2008

Death Wish 42

This is autumn in Northern Europe and in the UK November is the month when most trees dump their leaves in preparation for winter. The falling leaves end up clogging the rain gutters on many buildings, this has been particularly problematic this year given the high rainfall while the leaves are still falling.

So as an owner of a warehouse with gutters, some seven metres above the ground, clogged full of leaves, how do you reach them?
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Accessing the gutters is a challenge on such a high building

In remote parts of the third world where the availability of modern access equipment is in short supply, you might forgive an owner for using his ingenuity to rig up some form of access himself.

In the town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, in the UK – where EU work at height rules are taken very seriously – and where there are high penalties for breaking the rules, and when there are a number of companies offering all manner of sophisticated or even simple access equipment for rent by the day or even given the current environment, by the hour? Within minutes of your location, there seems to be little excuse to jerry-rig a make-do access solution.
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Ah a forklift ladder combo, we've all seen this before, but in Barnsley in 2008?

Yet this is what one company did yesterday after figuring out that putting a pallet on a forklift was not high enough, and the company ladders was at least three metres too short. The solution? Naturally lash the two together!

The ladder was thus somehow attached to the fork truck’s carriage and then hoisted to the point where the top of the ladder rested just below the gutter line.

Quite how the man then got up onto the ladder is a mystery, a step ladder?

Having climbed the ladder the man proceeds to clear the gutters. Given that he could only cover little more than a metre from the top of his ladder, one wonders how long the job took? Not to mention the disruption of moving all the vehicles parked below and all the climbing up and down from the forklift. Clearly there was little else to do yesterday?
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And there's our man checking out his gutters

Looking at this mans building, there are numerous items that need to be reached at a similar height, including CCTV cameras, lights security lights and antennae, is this the normal access equipment? Be interesting to see the risk assessment and method statement.

Once again our Death Wish series shows that there are still plenty of people and companies to convert to more modern access equipment. Maybe a special gutter cleaning promotion is required?