Working at height refers to workplace environments where the persons can potentially fall and get injured. Since working at height remains among the biggest causes of major workplace injuries and fatalities, it is essential to understand the common work at height hazards and precautions to address them.
1. Falls From Heights
Industries like construction sites pose a huge risk of falling from heights. Failing to include appropriate safety measures in working at height workplaces lead to serious consequences. Even a fall from lower elevations can also become a cause for severe injuries.
Precautions:-
To mitigate the risks associated with falls, proactive safety measures should be in place like implementing fall protection measures such as:
- Guardrails
- Safety nets
- Personal Fall Protection Equipment
- Safety training
- Restraint System
2. Falling objects
Falling objects can expose workers to serious hazards in diverse workplaces such as warehouses, retail stores, warehouses and many more. Any hand-held equipment such as saws or drills and materials such as wood pieces, nails, and debris can be significant and can be even fatal.
Precautions:-
Including proper measures such as secure storage of tools and materials, proper Personal Protective Equipment and performing regular safety risk assessments can prevent the dropping of objects.
3. Unstable Working Surfaces
Unstable work surfaces are the ones that probably can lead workers into dangerous situations due to their instability. These kinds of surfaces include wet floors, slippery surfaces, Stairs/level changes, and uneven terrain. All these unstable work surfaces pose threats and prevent workers from safely performing their work.
Precautions:-
- Keep work areas with adequate lighting
- Wherever applicable, use warning signs
- Regular cleaning prevents the accumulation of dirt, debris and other materials
- If poor weather conditions or unsafe scenarios are observed, postpone the work
- Safety training
- Wear appropriate safety footwear with non-slippery feature
4. Lack of safety equipment
Improper use or not using the right fall protection equipment more likely increases the risk of injury. This is applicable to not using the right safety equipment, using the equipment not designed for that specific task or not maintaining the equipment.
Precautions:-
- Using the right size and type of ladder, safety nets, crawl boards, lifts or scaffolds wherever required
- Giving appropriate training on choosing and effectively using the safety equipment
- Properly check and maintain all equipment at work at height workplaces
5. Poor edge protection
Insufficient edge protection while working at height intensifies the risk of falling and poses significant risks. Proper edge protection is important in work environments that involve edges of roofs, elevated work surfaces and platforms.
Precautions:-
- Perform risk assessment for proper protection of the edges of the work platforms/scaffolding
- Including safety measures such as fall arrest systems, safety nets, toe boards and guardrails
Improve your safety with Green World Group
Identifying the potential hazards while working at hazard and tackling them with the right control measures is a crucial step to reducing the risk on the job and ensuring the workers’ safety. There can be a number of risks related to work-at-height tasks. An effective solution is to train the employees with proper work at training.
Green World Group equips learners with in-depth and practical knowledge to work at heights in a safe manner. If you would like to discuss a customized learning solution, contact us today.
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Kindly call our Experts @ +91 8121563728 / +91 8015527650 or mail us @ kalyan.r@greenwgroup.com / indumanasa.m@greenwgroup.com
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