Rusted Scaffolding: How Much Rust Is Too Much Rust?

I recently toured three large scaffold rental yards. I visually inspected their scaffold components for the 3 D’s: defects, damage and deterioration. My evaluations were based on two condition categories: as-manufactured and other-than-as-manufactured. This last category constituted over 85 percent of the pieces I observed, which were either bent, broken, kinked, dented, cut, coated, corroded or a combination of all of these. Granted, these scaffold parts represented what was left-over in the yard after scaffolding in better condition had perhaps already been rented. However, our local building season is currently in a lull, to say the least, so I probably observed the majority of each renter’s total stock. As I walked their outdoor aisles of frames, braces, platforms and accessories, I gave very few grades much above C-plus. For me, that’s just one step before an “Out-of-Service” tag is applied. Except for recent deliveries of new frames and platforms, the rest of their inventory looked like it might have been used to stage Hollywood’s last Armageddon disaster movie. If I had been the competent person (CP) responsible for scaffold safety when a shipment of those scaffolds arrived on my site, I would have rejected it without hesitation. The single condition I found on every scaffolding component I observed at each rental facility was rust and corrosion. Every welded steel end frame or system component had between 50 percent and 100 percent of its exterior surface covered with rust. That observation is what eventually generated this article.