On the morning of the incident my colleague Bob, a more senior and experienced worker and myself arrived on site. The boss met us, threw us a couple of harnesses and said, “Put these on and get up on the roof, there’s a leak, we need to find the cause.” I recall him shouting above the ruckus of the busy site. I had never used a harness before, I had seen other workers occasionally wearing these but had no idea how to use one. “Boss,” I called out, “I’ve never worked at height or used one of these before.” “You’ll be right,” he replied, “Bob will guide you.” Bob helped me put on the harness and we both jumped into the bucket of the cherry picker to head up to the roof of the old warehouse. As we head up to the roof Bob handed me a piece of equipment he called a lanyard, “Just attach this to the D-ring on the back of your harness, then when we get up on the roof we’ll attach it to an anchor point,” he said. As the rickety bucket reached our destination and came to a stop, we surveyed the roof, that’s when I heard Bob sigh and shout out “Damn it! There are no anchor points up here.” I had no idea what Bob was talking about. Bob took out his phone and called the boss down below to explain the situation.

I could hear the boss’s muffled response through the phone in a somewhat angered and frustrated tone, “Look Bob, we don’t have time for this, its safe up there, just keep away from the edge. It won’t take you long, take a look around, find the problem and get back down. You’ll be in and out before you know it.” I remember asking Bob if he had ever been trained for this type of work, he shrugged, shook his head and said, “She’ll be right mate.” We both scramble onto the roof on our hands and knees, when we are far away enough from the edge we get up and start walking around, Bob on one side and me on the other, searching for the possible cause of the leak. “Bob” I called out, “the flashing around this skylight looks cracked, not sure though, too many leaves and other debris to be able to tell.” “Hang on.” called Bob, as he walked towards me.

The statutory obligation to provide a safe work environment for all workers and visitors to a site rests with the site owner. Given that many work sites, and in particular construction sites are typically littered with many hazards including falls, it is critical that all relevant state regulations, Codes of Practice for safe work at height and the Standard AS/NZS 1891.4 are closely observed. All these guidelines specify the involvement of a competent person to undertake tasks on a worksite. AS/NZS 1891.4 defines a competent person as someone with “the skills, education and experience to perform a specified task.” It is up to the employer to ensure that only those people performing working-at-height activities are competent to do so.

Regrettably there is currently no licensing or defined requirements by regulators to determine what a competent person actually is or ‘looks like’. It is therefore contingent on the employer to be able to assess a person’s competence to complete a set of tasks. One way they can achieve this is to obtain from the employee certificates of competence from a reputable training organisation specific to work-at-height activities, along with a resume of their various work activities. The employer may alternatively take the decision to provide competency based training regardless of prior skills, to ensure they have a standard level of skills across all employees undertaking work and are deemed competent. Regular retraining and/or assessment helps to ensure employees are current.

Who should deliver training?

Fall protection training is best delivered by training organisations that specialise in vocational training and assessment. In Australia, Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) are independently assessed by the Australian Skills and Quality Authority (ASQA) for their ability to deliver competency based training against a strict criteria. TAFE colleges and private training organisations are examples of RTOs. They should be able to provide you with a registration number to validate their status as a current provider. Another method to validate their competence is to identify their details on the www.training.gov.au website, which will also allow you to verify the nationally recognised competencies they are registered to deliver.

The key with any training program is to provide learning that approximates actual work conditions so the workers can easily apply what they’ve learned to real world scenarios. Since workers typically learn the most by watching first then doing, it is best to conduct a competency based training program with an equal amount of classroom and hands-on training, followed by assessment.

Dedicated to bringing every worker home safely.

When it comes to protecting your work site, no matter where it is, 3M Safety Training offers a variety of accredited training and consulting services to fit your needs. At our site or yours, you can trust us to provide world-class training with the industry’s best instructors. Our training competencies are not just limited to a comprehensive range of fall protection training and specialised working at height programs, including a wide range of rescue courses, we also provide a number of relevant industry training, including:

• Manual handling
• Spill kit & Fire evacuation
• First aid
• Confined space entry
• Breathing apparatus and gas detection
• Working at heights
• Rescue