A harness stops the fall. It does not end the emergency. A worker hanging in a harness is on a clock, and the plan that decides the outcome is the one you wrote before the fall, not the phone call you make after it.
The law asks for a plan, in writing
Regulation 10 of the Construction Regulations, 2014 requires the contractor to designate a competent person to prepare a fall protection plan wherever people work in a fall risk position.
The regulation is specific about the contents. A risk assessment of all work carried out from a fall risk position, with the procedures and methods used to address every risk identified per location. The process for evaluating employees' medical fitness to work at height, and the records of it. A programme for training employees who work at a fall risk position, and the records of that training. The procedure for inspection, testing and maintenance of all fall protection equipment. And a rescue plan setting out the procedure, the personnel and the equipment needed to rescue somebody who has fallen.
Training and rescue are not additions to the plan. They are named components of it.
Why waiting is not a plan
Suspension trauma can become life threatening well before an outside rescue team can be called, briefed, admitted to site and brought to height. On a remote operation that sequence is measured in tens of minutes.
A plan that amounts to phoning the emergency services satisfies nobody, and it will not read well afterwards. The people who can actually reach a suspended worker quickly are the ones already on the structure.
What a workable plan looks like
Name the rescuers, by role and by shift, so the plan does not depend on one person being on site. List the equipment and say where it is kept, which has to be near the work rather than in a store across the yard. Write the procedure as steps somebody can follow under pressure, not as a paragraph of intent.
Then practise it. A rescue plan nobody has run is a document, not a capability, which is why we assess a rescue exercise as part of the practical rather than treating rescue as a discussion topic.
Sources
- Construction Regulations, 2014, Department of Employment and Labour
Legislation is summarised for orientation and is not legal advice. Always check the current text of the Act and its regulations, or take advice.
Written by
Ian van Eeden
Director, IMJ OHS Compliance Training (Pty) Ltd
Ian van Eeden is a director of IMJ OHS Compliance Training and the person behind the training content published on this site. He works with mining and heavy industry clients across South Africa, and IMJ delivers its programmes at the client operation rather than from a classroom.