Scaffolding Safety

Ok, what do I need to know as a small business? Great question let’s take a closer look.
Sourcing a contractor

• You will want to employ a scaffolding company who can prove that their scaffolders have the skills, knowledge, experience, and training, as such the company should have a recorded training process in place and be full members of NASC.
• They must have EL and PL insurance at £10m and £5m, respectively.
• Must prove CISRS/SSSTS/SMSTS competency of supervision and availability of supervisors for daily supervision of scaffolding works.
• Scaffolders that are provided must be competent to do the work and have completed a CISRS scaffolders course and have an in date CISRS Blue scaffolders card.
• The scaffolding company must also have access to a competent scaffold designer and the latest version of NASC technical guidance (TG:20).

Design or TG:20 Compliance Sheet
Simply put, a designed scaffold is one that is out of scope of TG:20 this may be for a bespoke purpose or where additional factors need to be considered such as cantilever, gantry, or buttress scaffolds. Whereas scaffolds built from compliance sheets should be fairly straightforward such as a small scaffold built for some minor façade works.
Scaffold Ties
In certain situations, there may be a requirement to tie the scaffold structure to the building, scaffold ties come in different types, key points to remember is that there should be a design showing the location of the ties in the structure and highlighting any structural ties, which should not be removed. In addition to this scaffold ties should be “pull tested” by a competent person with a pull test machine that is in date for calibration the results should then be compared to the design information to identify any discrepancies. Records of pull testing should be kept on site in the scaffolder’s records.
Scaffold Handovers/Inspection
Scaffolding handovers should be completed in accordance with NASC guidelines, once the scaffold is complete a competent scaffolder should inspect the scaffold for compliance with legislation and best practice guidance once inspected the scaffolder should then issue a handover certificate to the client. The scaffolding at this point will be put into use and the handover certificate to be considered as the first inspection in the 7-day statutory inspection regime.
The requirements for inspection of scaffolds are fairly straightforward and are conducted as follows:

• Every 7 days, starting at handover.
• If there has been any significant adaptions or alterations.
• If there has been any event likely to affect the stability of the scaffold i.e., an extreme weather event, being hit by vehicles/plant etc.

Scaffolds should only be inspected by competent persons who have attended the Construction Industry Scaffolders Recognition Scheme course for scaffold inspection training either basic or advanced course. Where a competent person has completed the scaffold inspection course and also holds training qualification, they could be seen as competent to conduct in house training on scaffold awareness/appreciation, with attendees issued an in-house certificate of attendance and only able to use the training received while at that relevant company.
There may be other more specific scaffolding requirements identified during your project planning these details should be discussed with your scaffolding contractor and your health & safety representative. All information contained in this article is only for information and not meant to be used to form any part of your company procedures or safe system of works. here to edit.

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