No offence taken Karl, those numbers are alarming. It is about the time to approach safety bulletins, topic sheets and WASA reports for what they have been intended for, pass the information and learn from it. I think it is not only IRATA training centres to improve on this activity. Member operator companies are playing major role to provide and communicate these documents to their workers, where it can be easily related to company everyday operations and challanges. Hopefully we will see this to become reality.
IRATA safety bulletins for dummies….. I make no apologies for such a blunt post, but with 4 fatalities, 13 Major Injuries and 32 Serious Injuries in the years 2018 to 2022, it is clear that many of the lessons from Safety Bulletins are not being learned. I continue to train and assess revalidating candidates that have very little knowledge of the IRATA Safety Bulletins, Work and Safety Analysis, Serious Incident Briefings and other safety related publications from IRATA. Now I know that most training companies would blame the candidates, but in my experience, the learning materials provided by the training companies often do not focus candidate learning in an effective way. I find this frustrating, as from my time involved with IRATA I know of the many hundreds of hours of volunteer time spent trying to get valuable safety information out to frontline workers, and the evidence on the ground is that this information isn’t getting to those who need it. Not only are there IRATA volunteers, but in Dr Chris Robbins and David Thomas, IRATA have for many years had the service of two titans of the HSE world. At High Q we designed our own in-house online theory exam, and the main purpose of the exam is to familiarise candidates with these resources. The exam is open book and asks questions such as ‘name 3 recommendations from a WASA report’, or ‘provide 2 recommendations from Safety Bulletin 22. We’re not interested in testing whether a candidate can see a diagram of a compound 2:1 and 3:1 system to calculate the resulting mechanical advantage – subjects like this might be interesting for rope access nerds, but they are not the root cause of accidents and incidents. As you can see from the graphic, the majority of serious incidents result from five main categories: – 6 bulletins relate to rope damage – 5 bulletins relate to energised equipment – 4 relate to slack rope in the system – 4 relate to dropped objects – 3 relate to fragile surfaces/unprotected edges So come on IRATA Technicians, don’t be a dummy – log onto the IRATA website and take advantage of the resource there … and to my fellow IRATA training providers, I ask ‘are you confident you are adequately preparing your candidates?’
Owner, High Q. Height Safety Management Specialists.
4moAbsolutely agree Peter. I know it's mostly preaching to the converted here on Linkedin, but if we can provide even a few eager young techs with a starting point, and possibly influence industry cultue then it's worth the 30 minutes to create a post.