Simon Richmond, Senior Technical Officer
Since the Work at Height (W@H) Regulations came into force in 2005, our industry has been working to ensure compliance, while retaining a realistic approach to a wide range of work scenarios in arboriculture.
As readers will be aware, the issue of having a backup as part of the climber’s personal fall protection system has been an example of this move towards full compliance in the last couple of years, as articulated in the Industry Code of Practice (ICoP) and Technical Guide 1: Tree Climbing and Aerial Rescue (TG1), both published in 2020.
Another area resulting in significant technical development has been the principle set out in the W@H Regs that there should be a hierarchy of approach to working at height. This very reasonably suggests that workers should plan their work to involve as low a risk of harm as possible, and as a general principle, this means:
Avoid work at height if possible; if that is not possible, use collective measures which would automatically prevent the worker from falling; if that is not possible, or reasonably practicable, then use personal measures which minimise the distance and consequences of a fall.
In practice, the hierarchy means that if we cannot carry out the tree work from the ground we should consider working from a platform, e.g. a mobile elevating work platform (MEWP), before we consider using personal fall protection systems, e.g. climbing with ropes and harness. The ICoP summarised the hierarchy with this the graphic below.
Risk hierarchy for tree work at height, from Industry Code of Practice, page 24.
Risk assessment
The Association’s training course for ‘Risk Assessment for Commercial Arboriculture’ presents the generic and site-specific system templates and these are designed to take the contracting arborist through the risk assessment process, considering their specific type of business model and the operators and tasks they are engaged in.
In order to accurately and effectively quote for a particular tree work operation, the time, operators, equipment and any other resources required all need to be estimated in order to come up with a price for the work. To do this, an outline risk assessment needs to be carried out of the tasks to be completed and the methods and resources required to safely achieve them. The site-specific form template created by the Association as part of ‘Risk Assessment for Commercial Arboriculture’ course materials acts as a job sheet and risk assessment, and refers directly to the generic risk assessment.
W@H assessment excerpt from the Association’s site-specific risk assessment form template.
The section of the form that addresses W@H Assessment is reproduced below; it asks the questions that take you through the hierarchy and helps to clarify how any work at height should be carried out. Now we have also produced a flowchart that helps operators and those carrying out the risk assessment to follow the thought process, as shown below. To do this, we have consulted with colleagues and the HSE, who confirm that the balance of reasonable practicability is correctly portrayed.
If the work cannot be carried out from the ground then consider using a MEWP. If it is not possible to use a MEWP then use a personal fall protection system. If it is possible to use a MEWP, you may assess that it is clearly the best way to carry out the work. However, in some circumstances it may not be reasonably practicable, i.e. the reduction in risk may be so small that it is grossly disproportionate to the extra cost in terms of time, resources or money. In some circumstances, it may not actually reduce risk at all compared to climbing, in which case climbing should be chosen as the appropriate method. For those circumstances where the risk is in the ‘comparable risk’ region, the test of reasonable practicability can justifiably be applied.
This article was taken from Issue 194 Autumn 2021 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.