It's easy to underestimate just how dangerous working at height can be. Remember, 'working at height' doesn't always mean standing on top of a skyscraper; the UK Health & Safety Executive defines it as "work carried out in any place where a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury". Whether you're standing on a scaffold or an upturned box, if there's a chance you could fall and hurt yourself then it counts as working at height.
And when you're working at height, it's crucial to take the appropriate
height safety measures. Again, it's easy to underestimate the measures that might be required - everybody knows that you need some sort of fall prevention system in place when you're working on a rooftop, but people are often perfectly happy to use, say, a stepladder without considering whether or not it's safe to do so.
But just as some lucky people have fallen from great heights and emerged relatively unscathed, many people have fallen off stepladders and ended up badly hurt. Earlier this month,
The Construction Index published a story about two BT employees, both of whom fell from stepladders while at work and suffered injuries of varying severity. The first man lost his senses of smell and taste; the second was left with long term memory problems, partial vision loss, and multiple fractures to his skull and spine. These two incidents occurred within hours of one another; BT eventually pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches and ended up paying a fine of £600,000 (plus costs of £60,000).
This unfortunate story deftly illustrates the importance of height safety measures. Never assume that you/your workers will be safe because 'it's not that high' - be sure to assess the risks properly and take any measures necessary to minimise the risk of an accident.
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