Ladder Guards, Guard Rails, and Visual Warning Line Systems Are Safety Equipment You Might Need

One of the biggest causes of accidents in the work place is not having the right fall protection and equipment in use. How seriously a person is injured depends upon the length of the distance from where they fell and hit the ground. Falling even a few feet can result in bruising, sprains, and other minor injuries. As heights increase, the extent of potential injury also increases. For example, if one of your employees were to fall from a roof off of a three story building, they could experience broken bones, serious head injuries and internal organ damage, upon impact with the ground, and might ultimately die as a result of their injuries. As an employer, it is your responsibility to ensure work spaces and areas within around your facility offer safe working environments. This means that you have to use the right kinds of safety equipment and gear, including ladder guards, guard rails, visual warning line systems and mobile fall arrest systems.

Provide Protection to Employees Working on Ladders with Ladder Guards

Ladder guards are designed to offer protection to your employees working on ladders. The guards are set up and installed around the base of ladders, in order to prevent other people from walking into the area any time work is being performed. In addition to placing the guards around the base of the ladder, your employee will also need fall arrest equipment, such as a body harness, in case they misstep while climbing up the ladder, or lose their footing and fall off the ladder. Ladder guards are available in both permanently installed and portable models, depending upon your needs and requirements.

OSHA Requires Skylight Guarding on Building with Skylights

Skylight guarding is a specific type of safety gear that is required to be installed and placed over areas on your roof where skylights are in use. The exact specifications, requirements and regulations for this kind of guarding is based upon OSHA standards and have to be followed in order to create a safe, secure and compliant workplace. The reason guarding has to be placed over skylights is because they do not provide any support or protection in the event someone were to trip and fall onto the skylight. The person could easily fall through the skylight and be seriously injured, or may subsequently die as the result of the fall. In fact, OSHA views unprotected skylights just as if you had an open hole in the roof of your building.

You have different installation options available with skylight guarding. One option is to use OSHA compliant guarding manufactured and assembled to your specifications and measurements. The guarding must be able to support a load of at least 200 pounds, when applied perpendicular to any area on the screen. The screens must also be high enough away from the glass so they do not bend downward and cause the glass to break under ordinary impacts. These finished pieces are designed to be simply placed over the top of the skylight. There is no welding, mounting or drilling required with this style. Another option is to use this style and mount it to the surface of your roof, which may be required, depending upon local regulations, such as locations impacted by tropical storms and hurricanes.

Make Sure Safety Railing Meets OSHA Guidelines and Requirements

Safety railing is required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to be installed in specific locations throughout your facility. Any area that is raised over a predetermined and specified height off the ground has to have railings in place in order to prevent accidental falls. This includes locations like loading docks, mezzanines, roofs and cross over ladders. Additionally, railings may need to be installed at the ground level, when it is used as a barrier around equipment and machinery, in order to prevent and lower the likelihood of accidents in the workplace. It is worth your time to review the current OSHA guidelines on a regular basis, to ensure your facility is compliant. It would be a waste of previous corporate resources, to purchase the wrong size railing and discover later it did not meet the minimum OSHA requirements, and then had to be replaced.

Some Organizations Were Provided a Grandfather Clause with Their Safety Railing

OSHA has made allowances in certain situations in regards to safety railing. When they changed the height requirements of the railings and made them taller, some industries were grandfathered in at the previous requirements. This was done to prevent these businesses from having the expense of replacing all of their, then current, guard rails. However, these companies have to follow the new guidelines for any new railing installations within their facility. They also have to install new guard rails, in the event they have to remove and replace old railings covered under the grandfather clause.

Organizations Use Safety Guard Rails to Keep Workplaces Safe

Safety guard rails are used for multiple purposes to keep workplaces safe. One common application for guard rails is to provide fall protection assistance. Permanently installed railings can be used as an anchor point, when connected to a safety harness in elevated work locations. However, you need to make sure the railings are designed for this purpose, as they have to be able to support weight in the event someone accidently falls. Another application for guard rails is to use them in high traffic areas to control the movement of employees, from one work area to another. For instance, they are able to be used to section off access to production lines to ensure employees properly enter and exit these areas.

Portable Safety Guard Rails Are Suited for Applications That Do Not Require Permanently Installed Railings

Some of your applications for using safety guard rails around your plant or facility do not require them to be permanently installed. For these situations, you are able to find portable guard rail systems available. Portable systems are designed to be set up and used until the work is completed. They can be used to block of equipment and machinery that is currently being serviced or repaired. You could use them around the edge of your roof for roofing repair projects. You are also able to use portable railings along sections of sidewalks or in parking lots, as well as other outdoor areas where work is being performed to keep employees safe. Just like permanently installed railings, portable systems have to meet the approved OSHA guidelines and requirements.

Portable Safety Rails Can Be Used for Crowd Control

Organizations that hold special events, concerts, and other activities where there are a large number of people could use portable safety rails to aid in crowd control. The guard rails are able to be set up to fit with your requirements for your event. You might set up the railings in order to create specific walk areas for people by using two different sections of railing. Another option is to place the railings around a specific area, such as the concert floor, to prevent too many people from entering the location, or be used in areas where you want to limit access to the location. You may even decide to use portable railings as a way to create line queues in order to direct the flow of people in a more controlled and precise manner as they are entering or existing specific areas.

Keep Work Areas Safe by Using Portable Safety Rails Along with Your Portable Equipment and Machinery
 
Any time you are using certain types of portable equipment and machinery, it is worth your time and effort to set up portable safety rails, first. In fact, there can be specific OSHA guidelines and requirements where you might be required to ensure the location is safe and secure before work begins. For example, you should section off the aisles when moving inventory around in a warehouse using a forklift. Using portable railings helps to prevent others from entering the area where the forklift is being operated. Once the work is completed, the railings are able to be taken down and stored for future use, or moved to another location where the forklift needs to be used.

Safety Gates Are Available in Permanent and Portable Models

Safety gates are an important piece of hardware that need to be installed into entryways in safety rails to help prevent accidental falls, unauthorized access, and keep work areas safer. There are different types of gates which you can select to use within your facility, depending upon where they need to be installed. Some models are able to be installed directly into your existing guard rails. These models are often self-closing and will return to a shut position without any assistance. Other models are included as part of portable safety railing systems. Portable models are not always self-closing, so they can require additional assistance in closing the gate after entering or existing work areas.

Take Measurements in Order to Select the Right Size Safety Gates

To ensure you select the right size safety gates, you should measure the size of the opening. To determine the height of the gate, you measure from the top of the rail, downwards. Gates do not have to go all the way to the floor, and may only cover the top half of the entry when installed. Gates need to be installed so that the top of the gate is even with the top of your guard rails. Otherwise, if the gates were installed where the top of the gates were lower than the railings, they would not be effective in providing fall protection. Someone could fall over the gate because it was mounted and installed too low and in the wrong location.

Safely Store Your Stanchions in a Stanchion Cart

It is important to make sure you properly and safely store your visual warning line posts at your job site. You want to avoid situations where they could easily get bumped and knocked over. When the posts are not secure, they might cause an accident as they fall over and cause injury to your employees. One way to make sure your posts are kept secure is to place them into a stanchion cart. By using this cart, not only are your posts properly stored, you are also able to easily move them around from one job location to another. Further, using the cart makes it easier to set up and take down your visual warning systems anytime they are needed for projects on the job site.

 A Stanchion Cart Can Accommodate up to Eight Stanchions

 A stanchion cart is designed to hold up to eight SRC visual warning line x-stanchions. X-stanchions are available in stainless steel or plastic posts with OSHA perimeter warning line flags. Stanchions are used for a variety of purposes to section off specific locations and keep them secure. You can use stanchions on construction job sites, for repaving parking lots, roofing jobs, unloading and loading delivery trucks, and any other type of work that requires creating a secure work area. When you have more than eight stanchions, you either have to load and unload the cart in batches, or obtain multiple carts to make it faster to set up and tear down your visual warning line systems.