Fall Protection and Rescue Training for Windfarms
a report by Kevin Denis
Training Manager, Gravitec Systems, Inc.
Wind turbine installation and maintenance pose serious health and safety risks to workers. Among the dangers associated with this type of work are falls from height. To mitigate these risks, employers have a duty to provide fall protection and rescue training to ensure the safety of their personnel.
There are several options and methods employers can use to conduct fall protection and rescue training for their personnel. Governing bodies do not specifically dictate how fall protection and rescue training should be conducted, which creates some challenges for employers when developing their own programmes or evaluating third-party training companies. Fall protection and rescue training is conducted to improve the safety and security of the workforce and to demonstrate due diligence if an employer’s training programmes are ever challenged. Without specific direction from governing bodies about how this should be accomplished, employers are sometimes at a loss as to how to conduct training.
Employees at a windfarm can be broken down into basic categories to assist employers in developing their training programme. These categories include authorised person, competent person and qualified person.
Authorised person training is designed for workers at height or end users who are required to have a working knowledge of fall protection systems and their components. Students receive basic instruction on how to properly use the systems covered during the course to protect themselves against fall hazards.
Competent person training is designed for supervisors, lead hands, managers or foremen who will be directly involved in the implementation and supervision of their employer’s fall protection programme. This level of training typically covers how to identify existing and predictable fall hazards in the workplace and how to eliminate them through the selection, implementation and use of appropriate fall protection systems.
Qualified person training offers an advanced curriculum of engineering principles, physics and mandatory requirements for fall protection and rescue equipment and systems. Persons completing a qualified person
Kevin Denis is Training Manager for Gravitec Systems, Inc., a fall protection training, consulting and engineering firm based in Bainbridge Island, Washington. Mr Denis has developed fall protection and rescue programmes for numerous energy companies and supervises a professional training department that generates over 50,000 student-hours per year.
E:
denis@gravitec.com
course will be able to supervise the design, installation, selection and inspection of certified anchorages and will be able to calculate forces generated during fall arrest, total loading, deflection of a fall arrest anchorage and the impact on structures to which anchorages are connected.
ANSI/ASSE Z359.2 ‘Minimum Requirements for a Comprehensive Managed Fall Protection Programme’ American National Standard is an excellent resource for employers developing a fall protection and rescue training programme. It specifies categories of training and includes an additional category of training for the administration of fall protection programmes. Programme administrators are usually safety professionals who are responsible for administering a company’s fall protection programme but may not necessarily work at heights themselves or otherwise be specialists in fall protection. Courses are available to provide programme administrators with the necessary tools and guidelines for developing a comprehensive managed fall protection programme.
Governing bodies do not specifically dictate how fall protection and rescue training should be conducted, which creates some challenges for employers when developing their own programmes.
At a minimum, anyone erecting or performing maintenance work on top of wind turbines should be trained to an authorised person level and have access to supervisors trained to a competent person level. When choosing or developing a training programme, it is important to consider the following factors.
Work Environment
Training should represent the workplace and should cover the types of system that will be used. Wind turbines present several unique fall protection challenges that traditional fall protection equipment may not adequately address.
Training should include standard equipment use as well as unique situations that are present on turbines. Fall protection systems typically adhere to a maximum free fall distance of six feet, as specified by regulatory agencies. However, changes in the industrial landscape have prompted the need for an exception to the six-foot free fall rule. Overhead anchorages are not always available for many
76 © TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2011
Wind – Control
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