Work at Height Survey

Work the survey below: the access, the work, the environment, the equipment, the rescue and the people — each item pass, fail or N/A, and the tool scores it and writes the verdict. A fail is the stop: the work at height does not start with a failed survey item, and the print is the record that it was checked.

How to use the tool

1. Set the location, the date, the surveyor and the task — the survey header
2. Work the access — the route up, the scaffold or the MEWP or the ladder, the transfer, the landing
3. Work the work — the duration, the load, the task at the edge, the transfer of the load
4. Work the environment — the weather, the wind, the ground, the overhead, the proximity
5. Work the equipment, the rescue and the people — the certification, the inspection, the plan, the kit, the trained and the fit — then print the survey; a fail is the stop, not a note

Worked example

The roofline re-sheeting, 9 m. Access — the MEWP (the cert current, the pre-use done, the route across the car park marked), pass. Work — the 4-hour task at the edge, the load the sheet and the fixings carried, the transfer the MEWPs, pass. Environment — the forecast the wind 12 m/s at midday against the MEWPs 10 m/s working limit: fail — the task is re-sequenced to the morning, the wind limit in the method. Equipment — the harness (within 5 years, the inspection this month), the lanyard (the self-retracting, the anchor the MEWPs point), pass. Rescue — the plan the MEWPs platform rescue (the winch down), the drill the last quarter, the local emergency the alarm and the 5-minute response, pass. People — the two operatives, the MEWP trained, the harness fit-checked, the fit confirmed, pass. The survey: one fail (the wind), the action (the re-sequence), the print filed, the work starts at 06:30 in the calm. The survey is the document that moved the task a day, and the fall that did not happen is the one the survey is for.

Standard & legal context

The UK Work at Height Regulations 2005 set the duty — the planning, the selection of the equipment, the inspection, the securing, and the rescue (the 2005 regulations added the explicit rescue duty that the earlier practice implied). The HSE Working at Height guidance and the IOSH and NEBOSH working-at-height units teach the survey method. The US pair is the OSHA 1926 Subpart M (the fall protection) and the 1910.28, with the rescue the named requirement. The survey below is the UK structure with the international columns; the equipment standards (the scaffold, the MEWP, the harness) are the EN and the ANSI families.

Common mistakes

1. The certificate as the survey — the tested equipment is not the right equipment for this task at this place; the survey is the task-level check, and the certificate is the equipment-level record it draws on
2. No rescue plan, or the we-will-get-the-fire-brigade plan — the rescue is the plan, the kit and the drill at the point; the fall is the one second, and the rescue is the minutes after, and the plan is the difference
3. The weather as a note — the wind limit is the MEWPs number, and the forecast against the limit is the go or the re-sequence; the survey writes it
4. The survey done and not acted on — the fail that is noted and worked around is the fail that is the incident; the stop is the surveys power, and the print is the evidence of the stop