Fall Protection Forum
Recent Posts
February 21, 2014
Rooftop Fall Protection during Hazard Analysis and Installation
Before you can install a fall protection system to reduce the risk of rooftop hazards, a hazard analysis and fall protection system installation must occur. During those processes, there are some general guidelines to follow to reduce the exposure to dangerous situations. By following these basic protocols, everyone involved with…
January 24, 2014
RESCUE ME! Assisted Rescue vs. Self-Rescue
Rescue planning can be a very tricky part of implementing a comprehensive fall protection program in the workplace. The biggest reason that system rescue is so difficult is because there are an almost endless number of circumstances that can happen in any workplace. A competent or qualified person is responsible…
December 27, 2013
Suspension Trauma: Symptoms and Treatment
This blog was originally posted on 12/27/2013 and reviewed on 2/11/2021. Disclaimer: The staff of Rigid Lifelines are not medical experts. If a worker is experiencing suspension trauma, seek medical assistance immediately. Whenever workers need to use fall protection systems to work at height, it is CRUCIAL that a rescue plan…
November 15, 2013
Swing Falls: Problems and Solutions
Fall protection systems are a wonderful protection method for people who work at height. But, those systems are only as good as their correct installation and use. When a fall protection system is installed and used correctly, a worker should be able to have their fall arrested with minimal consequences….
November 1, 2013
Winter Weather Safety
Although snow can be pretty, it can also be extremely dangerous when people are working at height. For this reason, people need to employ some of these concepts when they are about to access different work areas. There may be times when workers do not know the best practices for…
September 27, 2013
Enhancing Your Training Sessions
Many safety training sessions are like watching a cluster of snails move across a deck—it feels like there’s a lot of ground to cover and you’re not sure if everyone will make it to the end. And yet, making a safety training and information session can actually be a fun…
March 22, 2013
How to Reduce Swing Falls
Conducting an elevated worksite hazard assessment allows you to rule out passive fall protection options for your workers. Once you have determined that you need to use an active fall protection system, it’s important to consider the following things in order to avoid swing falls. Your active fall protection system…
March 15, 2013
Fall Protection: What to Do and What Not to Do
Whether you are the owner of a construction company, the foreman at a jobsite, or the safety manager on a factory floor, you all share a common concern about employee safety while performing tasks in the workplace. Worker safety is especially important when anyone is performing tasks at elevation. If…
March 1, 2013
Fall Protection, Bad Weather, and Avoiding Failure
As with all feats of engineering, there are always a variety of different things that need to be considered during the design process. Our engineers use a variety of calculations to ensure that the desired system is best suited to the weather patterns of the installation location. One of the…
February 8, 2013
Fall Protection for Icy Conditions
Working at height has a special set of challenges associated with it. To complicate a dangerous situation further, when workers need to perform tasks at height during winter weather, there are even more opportunities for danger. If workers are tying off to a cable system such as a flexible horizontal…
August 3, 2012
Basic Carabiner Use and Safety
Carabiners are an integral part of a comprehensive fall protection system. They are built to withstand extreme forces, and are light so as to add minimal weight to a worker’s gear. Different tasks require different kinds of carabiners. The variables that typically distinguish styles include shape, gate type, strength, weight,…
June 15, 2012
Guardrails: Getting a Grip on Fall Protection
We’ve all heard Occam’s razor: all other factors being equal, the simplest solution is most often the best. When it comes to fall protection, many workplace fall hazards can be eliminated or minimized using a rather obvious solution—the guardrail. Although hardly glamorous and rarely high-tech, guardrails are often the difference…