As an employer or someone who controls work at height (ie a contractor), work at height regulations apply to you and it is your responsibility to ensure work is planned appropriately, supervised and is carried out by employees who are appropriately trained. As stated by Work at Height Regulations 2005 (WAHR), it is also within an employer’s duty of care to ensure that staff and contractors are supplied with the relevant personal protective equipment (PPE), which should also have been adequately tested and inspected.
As a result of legislative pressures to keep employees safe when working at height, many contractors and construction employers are opting to work alongside work at height specialists, like Heightsafe Systems, when carrying out construction projects. The benefit of working with a company that specialises in work at height is that they have the experience to design and install fully compliant equipment that also fulfil job specific criteria, for example, not detracting from a project’s sightlines. This was important at The Green Man Pub in Chelmsford, where the owners were looking to retain the sleek, contemporary style of the new extension. At the same time, the guardrails supplied by Heightsafe Systems still had to comply with Work at Height (2005) and all other relevant legislation.
Working alongside construction companies on large scale projects is something we’re familiar with here at Heightsafe. In fact, the work we did with Phelan Construction, installing a freestanding weighted guardrail to the Michelin Starred The Green Man, is just one of the latest of a large number of such projects.
As WAHR 2005 state: work equipment or other measures to prevent falls must be taken when working on a roof and this includes the installation of edge protection. Therefore, in order to achieve a high quality building that met all work at height requirements, Phelan Construction appointed Heightsafe to install a collapsible guardrail on the mansard roof of the new extension. Our range of guardrail products are able to eliminate unnecessary risks that people still take on a daily basis when working at height.
Although edge protection is required by law, it was also important to the owners of the pub that the edge protection did not detract from the character and integrity of the building, which dates back to 1314. Heightsafe’s collapsible guardrail was the perfect solution for Phelan Construction, as it met the visual brief set on this project whilst still providing fully compliant edge protection. The guardrail could also be installed quickly and easily, without the need for specialist tools or expertise, helping Phelan Construction to complete this project exactly to schedule. When not in use the guardrail is folded down so that it is completely invisible from ground level, and therefore doesn’t affect the sightlines.
For more information on our collapsible guardrails, call: 020 3819 7199.