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The Prevention of Falls from Heights Unguarded OpeningsFive sites out of the eighteen prevented any unguarded openings from occurring. A further six sites had less than 15% of openings left unguarded. Two sites had all openings left unguarded. Table 10 shows these incidences and how they breakdown.
 Figure 1: Incidence of openings found unguarded Missing Guardrails and Edge Protection Two sites out of eighteen had complete edge protection and seven sites had less than 15% of requisite guard rails or edge protection missing. Eleven out of eighteen sites had more than 15% of the guardrails or edge protection missing.
Table 11: Incidence of sites with missing guardrails or edge protection  Figure 2: Incidence of guardrails or edge protection missing Short or Defective Ladders There were no instances of ladders being either to short for use or defective in any way. Ladders not tied Nine sites had ladders that were found to be incorrectly tied. Site 9, as a special case for comment, had one ladder alone on site, in use during the survey.
Table 12: Incidence of sites with incorrectly tied ladders  Figure 3: Incidence of ladders found incorrectly tied Safe use of ladders Three sites had incidences where operatives were observed using ladders in an unsafe manner. In all incidences this was the use of untied ladders. Scaffold / Ladder Misuse Three sites had incidences where operatives were observed misusing scaffolding. In all incidences this was not using ladders to access scaffolding lifts on different levels. Operatives misusing ladders or scaffold were observed on six sites. However this figure must be treated with caution due to the survey duration and the limitations of the researcher in continuously observing all operatives. Prevention of Falls Performance by site For the prevention of falls from height, those items in the compliance measure related to the category were averaged, and mean and standard deviations of noncompliance performance per site were calculated. This measure of falls performance can be used to rank the sites against each other (see table 13). As can be deducted from the ranking of sites in terms of falls performance and the site characteristics, the location size or stage of construction do not show any apparent pattern with regard to ranking (an so to compliance with falls prevention).
Table 13: Ranking of sites by prevention of falls performance Tables 14 and 15 break down the incidence of unguarded openings and missing handrails/edge protection for general contractor and house builders. Overall, both missing handrails and missing edge protection were higher on house building sites.
Table 14: Unguarded openings and missing guardrails/edge protection on general contractor sites
Table 15: Unguarded openings and missing guardrails /edge protection on housing sites. General conclusions on Prevention from Falls from Heights
Rubbish on access routes There was an overall pattern with regards to amount of rubbish found: mostly all sites performed well in terms of compliance with this item. 12 sites out of 18 had 15% or less of access routes obstructed and 6 sites out of 18 had 16-30% of access routes obstructed (see fig. 4).  Figure 4: Incidence of rubbish on access routes  Figure 5: Incidence of rubbish on scaffold lifts Rubbish on scaffold lifts The second figure above shows the incidence of rubbish found on scaffolding lifts. No clear pattern here emerges with 10 out of 18 sites having 5% or less of scaffold lifts obstructed and 8 out of 18 sites having between 10 and 15 % of scaffold lifts obstructed (see fig. 5). Trapped board and missing toe boards Figures 6 and 7 show the incidence of trapped scaffold boards and missing toe boards per site. With regard to missing toe boards the incidence rate is generally even with a mean incidence of missing toe boards being 13.1% with a standard deviation of 6.96  Figure 6: Incidence of trapped scaffold boards  Figure 7: Incidence of missing toe boards External hard hat wearing With regards to wearing hard hats externally, 7 out of 18 sites had high compliance rates with 5% or less of operatives not wearing hard hats. 8 out of 18 sites had between 20% and 70% of operatives not wearing hard hats (fig. 8).  Figure 8: Incidence of internal hard hat use  Figure 9: Incidence of external hard hat use Internal hard hat wearing 9 sites out of 18 had 5% or less of operatives wearing hard hats internally. 7 sites out of 18 had between 15% and 60 % of non - compliance. 2 sites out of 18 had between 80-100% non - compliance. Viz Vest wearing Figure 10 shows the incidence of viz vest wearing and the results are variable across the sites. 8 out of 18 sites had 25% or less of operatives not wearing viz vests. 8 out of 18 sites had between 26% and 65% of operatives not wearing viz vests. 2 out of 18 sites had between 66% and 100% of operatives not wearing viz vests  Figure 10: Incidence of viz vest wearing With regards to hard-hat and viz vest wearing the results were variable across the sites. However those sites that had the best performance in terms of fall prevention tended to have a higher level of hard hat and Viz vest wearing. Back to Contents This paper appears in the eLCOSH website with the permission of the author and/or copyright holder and may not be reproduced without their consent. eLCOSH is an information clearinghouse. eLCOSH and its sponsors are not responsible for the accuracy of information provided on this web site, nor for its use or misuse. |
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