PROVE IT! - A lesson in documentation.

[Justin T. Wittwer]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In an age where information is so readily available I am shocked, and even sometimes appalled, at how many of us don't actually know what the pieces we are working with are rated for by the manufacturers  I believe I have posted another rant about this, but I have come across the problem again and still got the same answer. It's pretty simple. If you are going to tell someone a 5' bar is rated for a 5000# center point load, you better be able to prove it with something besides a drawing on a cocktail napkin written in lipstick. If you read the standard (this is only for us Americans as I don't know of the standards for the rest of the world) all scaffolds must be designed by a Qualified Person. See the regulations if you need a definition of a qualified person.  Otherwise if you are using a scaffold to build for a client, you had better know what it is rated for and where to find it to prove it. There are many resources for this including websites and such but if you are working with a particular system of scaffold you really need to keep a copy of their technical manual n hand to show to whomever poses that million dollar question. My understanding of how we get around the Qualified Person rule is as long as we are doing simple supported scaffolds we can use the manufacturers data to establish the safe working load for each of the pieces and provide an educated plan for how the scaffold will be built and the capacity of the completed scaffold. If you can't calculate leg loads and safe working loads for simple scaffolds, you at the very least need re-training and at the most need to get competent person training from some reputable source like the SAIA. I am a little gun shy of company sponsored competent person training as sometimes it just seems like a crash course in brain surgery Safway services has one of the best competent person courses I have ever taken. The TRN1000 was a phenomenal course and it was very informative and provided great resources to provide that educated answer I referred to earlier. 

 Bottom Line: If you are going to say it you better be able to back it up when you get called to the carpet!

 

More to come later! Please feel free to correct me and sound off if you agree/disagree with any of my rants posted on the site.

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Cheers,

JW