Tightening the fall protection requirements for residential construction was long overdue. Frankly, the interim guidelines were a joke. I have never seen so many unsafe actions and heard so many excuses by subcontractors as to why fall protection in residential construction is not feasible. It strikes me as odd that in their mind obviously a fall from a 15’ residential building hurts less than a fall from a 15’ commercial building. Most annoying for me was always the painted warning line. I just never understood how a painted line on a flat roof was in fact warning someone that the leading edge was really, really close by, especially if material was conveniently stored on the deck or roof and partially covered the painted line.
It will take some rethinking and adjustment to quite a number of residential construction companies or subcontractors on buildings that fell under the residential “standards”. There is such a variety of fall protection equipment that can also be used in conjunction with wooden rood truss work – if assembly on the ground or from elevated work platforms is not an option. It’s all about changing attitudes. Especially the attitude that safety is expensive, time consuming and inconvenient. It’s not. But we are all creatures of habit and changing a bad habit is hard work, means that we have to work to overcome the habit and adopt a new one. If you are a smoker and try to quit smoking, you probably know what I mean. It is time consuming and often times inconvenient to change ourselves. That’s the whole point.
Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining
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