What do you think of when you think of Safety Products? Safety glasses, gloves, Hi-Vis apparel, and hard hats are all quick and easy ones. We see these all the time in pictures, when we see people drive to and from work, and signs requiring such products upon entering many workplaces. What we may not think of as much are safety products geared towards fall protection. We’d like to highlight a few simple fall protection guardrail systems that increase safety and save lives.
Safe Roof Access Systems
Safe Roof Access Systems are used at transition locations where an employee is subject to a fall hazard. A safe roof access system, when implemented correctly, significantly limits or completely removes an individual from a transitional fall hazard. One major transition location is a roof ladder. Whether you are going up an exterior access ladder from the ground, interior access ladder out of a roof hatch, or moving from one roof level to another via a ships ladder, during every instance, an employee is subject to a fall protection hazard.
Industrial Safety Gates for Ladders
Safety Gates for ladders can be one of the easiest, simplest, and most cost-effective ways to protect employees from fall hazards and openings. It functions as part of a safe roof access system that prevents a worker from falling back into the ladder opening that he or she came from. With safety swing gates that are simple to install like our safety gates, there should never be a case where workers are unprotected at a ladder opening.
Safety Guardrails at Leading Edge Transitions
While protecting the ladder openings themselves are paramount to safe roof access, you are still unsafe if you are near a leading edge and there is no protection beside the 18-36” wide ladder opening. This is where roof safety guard rails come into play. At this transition point, employees should either have 10’ of protection with safety guard rails along either side of the ladder access point, or they should be in a corralled area where an employee is guided by safety guard rails until they are a “safe” distance away from the leading edge. Of course, it’s always best to protect your entire rooftop, but when this is not an option, our ladder guard achieves this perfectly without any penetrations.
Safety Hatch Guard Rails
Finally, the third important safe roof access system comes into play at roof hatch transitions. While closed, besides perhaps a trip hazard, the roof hatch poses no significant safety issue to employees, BUT, while open this hole in your roof can be deadly. Safety hazards are most dangerous when employees do not consider them as such. An open roof hatch is one such safety hazard that is often overlooked as a non-issue. The fact of the matter is that open roof hatches are considered holes in the roof, just as manholes, skylights, or trenches are considered holes. These roofs hatches also require a safe roof access by way of safety guard rails and a safety swing gate. Our hatch guard safe roof access is either a fully welded or collapsible system with a self-closing safety gate that guards all employees from fall hazards when the roof hatch is left in the open position. It is completely non-penetrating, OSHA compliant, and will protect anyone working around the roof hatch hole.
