Fall Arrest

Six years ago, Victoria introduced workplace manslaughter laws. This year, those laws caught up with two more employers, and between them the bill came to nearly $3.75 million. In June, Risham Nominees, the company behind Centenary Bakehouse, was fined $3.4 million after a worker fell 4.5 metres while removing panels from the roof of their Reservoir warehouse. He died at the scene. The court found the risk was readily foreseeable and that the company's director should have known it. The workers were told to do the job safely. They were not given any actual instruction on how. It is only [...]

Most people who manage buildings where tradespeople access the roof have never seen a fall arrest lanyard deploy. If you have ever assumed the system would just work, that assumption is worth examining carefully before someone puts it to the test. A fall arrest lanyard is designed to stop a person from hitting the ground. But the mechanics of how it does that are more involved than most building owners realise, and those mechanics have a direct bearing on how a height safety system needs to be designed and installed. A lanyard that meets the standard is not the same [...]