The Occupational Safety and Health Administration considers electrical safety to be a focused inspection item for all compliance officers. The OSHA Institute mandates that its electrical regulations be included in the construction (Subpart S) and general industry (Subpart K) training modules for the 10-hour and 30-hour Outreach Training Programs. MSHA also mandates electrical safety training in its eight-hour Outreach Training.
OSHA defines a "steep roof" as any roof with a rise/run ratio over 4:12 (18.43 degrees). While most standard-pitched residential roofs seldom exceed a 12:12 pitch (45 degrees), the landscape is occasionally marked by a design which harkens back to earlier times, when much greater roof pitches were more common. Architecturally described as a "dramatic pitch," the extremely steep roof (ESR) is considered to have a pitch in excess of 12:12, up to a plumb vertical plane.
It would be ludicrous to think that all OSHA site inspections are identical, but there is a basic "skeletal process" common to each one that contractors should be familiar with.
Our fluctuating, mobile economy has forced many contractors today to travel further afield in search of work in regions of the country where building permits are on the rise.
Decades ago, a foreman instructed me in my roofing duties by simply stating, "Keep your feet under you and your ass behind you." I've had worse advice since then.
It's a clear July morning with temperatures in the high 80s - a perfect day to lay 20 or 30 square of shingles. It's a little humid, but the winds out of the south give you just enough relief as you begin to sweat.
In the two previous articles in this series, I discussed terminal impact force (TIF) analysis in selecting a suitable structural point to attach an anchor device. A suitable anchor point is a point capable of withstanding the potential 5,000-pound applied impact force (per attached worker) imposed over any existing uniform and/or concentrated live and dead loads already in play. Now it is time to discuss selection of the appropriate anchorage device, based on the type of work being performed, the number of workers applied to the personal fall arrest system, and the structural parameters of the workplace, as well as the environmental conditions of the site.
A typical problem with the majority of construction jobsites is a lack of qualified persons (QP) to determine if any point of anchorage is capable of resisting the kinetic terminal impact force (TIF) of all of the potential anchorage points. By "capable," I mean the ability to resist TIFs without failure. The term "failure" in the OSHA standard is defined as "load refusal, breakage, or separation of component parts."
OSHA Subpart M [1926.500(b)] defines anchorage as "a secure means and point of attachment for lifelines, lanyards or deceleration devices." For physics buffs, it may also be identified as the terminus of the final force vector created by the arrested impact of a falling mass. Beyond the anchorage, the dissipation of the negative acceleration must occur without quantifiable structural failure in the mechanism or material supporting the anchor.
