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PRESIDENT’S REPORT | NASC YEARBOOK 2012


ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES


Safety and quality are what the NASC members bring to scaffold projects. For clients to accept anything else is to compromise on safety. This is the message new president, Rob Lynch, wants all members to promote


the fact that i am having to write this article is a telling indication of the challenges that are currently facing our industry. Many of you will realise that I have had to take over the presidency a year early as Gerry Cooper has had to stand down. Gerry has been a very valuable Officer and Council member for many years and it is a real shame his presidency has been cut short and that we will not be able to benefit from his knowledge and passion for scaffolding in the future. We are living in difficult times and our industry and trade is going to see casualties in the coming years; we have already lost some prominent members and more will follow.


Despite this we must remember that the


NASC represents high standards, and it would be wrong to compromise or retreat on the targets we have set at this stage, however hard things get. If the NASC lacks the teeth or courage to set and to enforce standards it could be painted as little more than a social club.


Standard bearer


What, then, should the NASC be doing? As president my first objective is to highlight to our customers that the NASC is the standard-setting and enforcing organisation; to make companies question why they would even consider using a non-member. Secondly we need to try and provide as much practical assistance as possible to all our


members and customers in the area of design and technical support. Everyone throughout the construction industry is under price pressure. In order to ensure the primacy of the NASC members we need to remind our customers of why they have scaffold in the first place and then highlight what using a NASC member will give them.


No compromise on safety Why do our clients use scaffold? Sounds like a simple question but it needs restating: it is to provide safe temporary access. Our job is to give them or their contractors somewhere safe to work so they can carry out their tasks without risk of falling or exposing others to risk. The brutal truth is that by compromising on the quality of their scaffold contractor clients are compromising on safety. It is my contention that using a non-NASC


“BAM’s decision to use NASC members is a significant backing for the industry’s commitment to spread best practice and change regarding safe erection of scaffolding. It will help scaffolding contractors to use collective protection and comply with the Work at Height Regulations. [This protects both themselves and those around them].” BAM Construct UK


member is a compromise. Since January 2009, 144 contractors have failed to achieve membership and six existing members have been expelled. The vast majority of applications fail because they cannot achieve the required proportion of trained scaffolders. The NASC sets a level of 90% trained scaffolders and in addition 90% employed staff. The NASC believes that safe temporary access can only be achieved day in day out by using trained and properly managed employees.


Clients raise the bar We must highlight what we bring and what we will not accept; differentiate ourselves from the non-members who lack the commitment to meet the benchmarks set. The requirements are high, but clients are demanding a raising of the bar, zero harm and incident and injury-free projects. We fully support this and have set standards which will help to achieve it. Why should our customers compromise? We have over 200 members covering the whole of the UK who are able to provide safe, cost effective scaffolding to every size of project.


Designs for life While the current commercial environment is, we hope, a temporary problem, the landscape for design and technical support appears to have changed permanently.


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