COVER STORY
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
The erection and dismantling of scaffolding are undoubtedly safety critical tasks however, contractors recognise this and take the relevant steps to adhere to legislation, industry best practice and guidance and to qualify its operatives via the Construction Industry Scaffolders Record Scheme (CISRS) to mitigate risk.
This has led to a decades-long trend of increasing on-site scaffolding safety standards and a directly proportionate decline in the number of accidents and incidents recorded.
The National Access & Scaffolding Confederation (NASC) are eager to learn from accident and incidents and openly publish their statistics. The most recent annual Safety Report shows NASC members recorded 113 accidents and injuries on site during 2018.
The 113 injuries recorded means that more than 99% of all NASC member operatives – a total of 16,645 employees – went through 2018 accident and injury- free. There were also no operative fatalities for the sixth consecutive year.
No other trade invites more scrutiny from third parties such as clients, site agents, engineers and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) than scaffolding, however the sector does not seem to get the credit it deserves.
In the last 40 years the sector has taken on the responsibility for greatly improving safe working practices, technical guidance, operative competency and regulation of its contractors, manufacturers and other associated companies.
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Scaffolding has for too long been considered by some to be a high risk, low skill trade. This could not be further from the truth, writes David Mosley, NASC Director for Training and CISRS Managing Director.
The NASC produces over 70 guidance notes providing pertinent up-to-date safety, technical, contractual and product purchasing information on a broad range of topics not only to its members but to all within the scaffolding fraternity and the industry in general.
The NASC committees and working parties who produce these documents are made up of representatives from 100+ member companies, including SMEs as well as very large contractors, manufacturers, training providers, designers, HSE, plus third-party co-opted industry experts.
A lot of very well qualified, skilled and widely experienced people are actively involved in producing the right guidance on behalf of their peers.
Guidance notes are updated at least every five years but sooner if changes to working practices or legislation require. Most of these documents can be downloaded for free from the NASC website.
TOP TRAINING The industry has a positive and proactive attitude
when it comes to qualifying its workforce, taking on around 400-500 apprentices annually for the last 20 years.
The standard CISRS training programmes also continue to thrive. 1,910 new entrant labourers, 2973 trainee scaffolders, 1,699 scaffolders and 529 advanced scaffolders registered and qualified with CISRS between January and November 2019.
www.tomorrowshs.com
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