Harness Maintenance

Harness Maintenance

Harnesses are a critical component of personal fall protection and offer comfort and confidence when working from heights. They come in numerous general varieties that are used in various applications, including:

  • Fall Arrest
  • Positioning
  • Confined Space Rescue
  • Ladder Climbing Devices
  • Descent and Suspension

Full-body harnesses work by distributing fall forces across the shoulders, thighs, chest, and pelvis through the straps. The harness straps feature means of attaching it to other components of a personal fall arrest system, like a lanyard, via dorsal D-rings. It is crucial to keep and maintain harnesses in proper working order. Doing so could be the difference between a safe day at work or becoming injured due to personal fall protection equipment failure. 

For this reason, it is vital to perform regular inspections. Personal fall protection inspections can include: 

  • Harnesses 
  • Lanyards
  • SRL Retractables 

A safety harness inspection should be conducted every time before donning a harness. A complete fall protection harness inspection involves ensuring the labeling, webbing, stitching, D-rings, lanyards, and snap hooks are in good working order. 

Safety Harness Inspection Guidelines

When completing a fall protection harness inspection, a common place to start is the manufacturer’s tag. The tag must be legible and clear to be able to read the following:

  • Manufacturer’s name
  • Unique serial number (this has to be traceable back to the manufacturer and all the materials used to make the harness)
  • The model number 
  • Sizing
  • Date of manufacture

If the manufacturer tag is legible, inspectors will then move on to the “hand-over-hand” inspection, where they will check the webbing, buckles, D-rings, grommets, rivets, straps, snap hooks, latches, and locking mechanisms for structural integrity. The following will disqualify a harness from service:

  • Deformities, corrosion, or cracks on D-ring or fasteners
  • Grommets not secure, missing, or bent
  • Loose or damaged mountings
  • Loose or frayed stitching
  • Worn or damaged fabric
  • Foreign objects adhered to fabric
  • UV or chemical  damage
  • Contact with corrosives or flames
  • Weld splatter
  • Cuts or holes
  • Crushing or knots

Additional Safety Harness Inspection Factors to Consider 

Under no circumstances should any user punch extra holes in a harness leg strap or reduce it from its manufactured length. Additionally, if the user can only pull the webbing through the buckle to the first grommet, a larger belt should be requested. It is crucial to note that friction buckles can loosen over time unless webbings remain taut. Tongue buckles can come undone if excess webbing is not held securely due to snagging. In addition, tongue buckles can uncouple if they are loose (especially on harnesses), therefore, users must inspect their harnesses closely before each use.

Why Partner With Ellis Fall Safety Solutions?

At EFSS, our team can assist with several critical fall prevention areas to make your workplace safer, including harness maintenance. Our company is comprised of fall safety professionals experienced in all facets of protection engineering, with a centralized focus on developing safety solutions that aid our students in learning the best safety methods and preventative steps needed when working from heights. Whether you are interested in having us evaluate your worksite or have questions about harness maintenance, you can contact us today at 302-571-8470.

Lifelines – Rope Weights

Rope Weights on Lifelines. Weighted lines are very important to keep lifeline slack from developing as the scaffold moves up from grade.  However, in some windy conditions, rope weights could damage the building, especially windows.  Physically securing the bottom of the line could be the answer in this case.  In addition, proper termination of a rope can prevent unraveling of the strands.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 235.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Anchorage Point Independence

Are anchorage points independent?  The independence of each anchor point from the main work-positioning anchor support is an important principle.  Where tripods or the building or structure itself are concerned, the question to address is, what kind of failure would likely produce an injury? Anchor-point design should address all predictable scenarios.

Is the fall protection system engineered?  An engineered system may permit the lifelines for several workers to be combined, as long as they are separate from the main work-positioning support.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 275.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Controlled Descent

There is no need to risk prolonged suspension after a fall arrest when it is possible to use an automatic controlled-descent system.  Rather than using equipment that arrests a fall but also could create a need for a difficult and costly high-level rescue, workers should use a lifeline system that automatically lowers them at a constant rate following a fall – either immediately or under rescur control, whichever is appropriate.  This is especially adventageous for external applications without obstructions below and for large confined spaces with a lower (bottom) means of egress, such as a generating or recovery boiler.  Postfall analysis is essential to solving such problems completely; often it indicates the need to substitute controlled descent systems.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 212.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Vertical Cable Climbing Systems

Cable guides that do not require manual manipulation to pass them are preferable.  Weather-resistant, synthetic cables that have long lifetimes in corrosive atmospheres are available.  They offer the additional advantage of radio-frequency transparency for antennas.  Synthetic cables must be protected  from wind abrasion, with the structure by suitable clearance spacing.

Telecommunications tower cable-type fall protection systems and Z-bracket rungs which may be less than 3/4 inches diameter and less than 16 inches width, must meet test requirements.

A very important principle of climbing, using vertical cable-type fall arrestors is to never hold the cable for any reason. The reason for this is to prevent the transfer of weight through the handhold above the sleeve, and thereby stop or limit the  gripping arrest of the line by the sleeve itself.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 322.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Fall Protection System Components

Both the employer and employee should realize that components of a fall protection system may not be interchangeable.  For instance, if a commodity-grade rope is used for a lifeline, the authorizing authority must be certain that is the correct diameter and has the test strength for use with a specific rope-grab device on a prolonged basis.

Components of a fall arrest system should note be substituted or changed unless fully evaluated and tested by a qualified person or the equipment manufacturer.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” pages 253-254.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Incident Investigation

In the case of a fall or near-miss incident, the fall protection administrator should appoint a competent or qualified person to conduct an incident investigation.  The investigation will help determine if the fall protection program has established the appropriate control method for a given hazard, if the training is adequate, and what improvements are needed to ensure such an incident does not reoccur.

Systems of root-cause analysis help identify the underlying causes of incidents and are valuable for determining what corrective measure should be taken as a result of hte lessons learned. Many times, the result of an incident investigation is that worker error is identified as  the main contributing factor. When root-cause analysis is used, multiple underlying causes are usually uncovered.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 406.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Lifts and Platforms

More important, articulated boom lifts have the propensity for the bucket to catapult the worker from the bucket on occasion.  If the boom is extended while the unit is being moved, a small curb, obstruction, or floor hole cover could cause the arm to exaggerate the movement in the bucket and throw the worker from it.  This is why the use of fall arrest system is critical for work in articulated boom equipment.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 178.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

HLL Requirements

All horizontal lifeline designs must be approved by a qualified engineer who is a specialist in this field (OSHA 1910.66, Appendix C, and 1920.500, Appendix C). Readers are expected to use the most recent standards.  OSHA standards may be checked at www.OSHA.gov and ANSI standards at www.ANSI.org. States with their own plans must update their standards within six months of any change in the federal OSHA standards.

See “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” page 310.

Order your copy of “Introduction to Fall Protection, 4th Edition” today.  This invaluable resource will take you from the structure design stage to post construction maintenance. Click to find out more!

Three Point Control

Three Point climbing without fall protection e.g. (movement at height with two hands & one foot alternating with two feet & one hand) can be better analyzed as follows:

1. Three Point Stance: American football term readiness to start play; FMCSA/DOT access points for truckers to/from the cab with at least two digits & no cutting of the finger at the second digit.

2. Three Point Contact: any point of body contact plus two feet position to climb and work balanced hands-free (no performance based definition).

3. Three Point Control: Hand or hands on a round rung or horizontal grab bar and a horizontal round or flat level for foot or feet. Ideal round grab bar or rung for optimal handhold performance is 1″ diameter based on a handhold coupling study of 36 subjects by Justin Young, Kettering University, Michigan, link: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/84452 .

Vertical handholds slide during a fall. Handhold shapes like angle iron fail to arrest dynamic falls both vertically and horizontally. Bottom line is that dynamic force on the hands arresting body weight is surprisingly large, and the 1″ diameter horizontal bar is the best shot we have for safe performance on structures at height. Designers need to understand this human limitation when designing tower structures, and tower climbers need to understand no free-climbing at any time.

Examples of climbing are shown.
Note: please wait a few seconds as sketches show movement.

THREE POINT CONTROL-GRABSAFE FOR PORTABLE LADDER

pt.GrabSafe.3point.b-800-Faster

THREE POINT CONTROL- HATCHGRIP FOR ROOF HATCH
HatchGrip.3point.b-800-Faster

THREE POINT CONTROL-GRABSAFE FOR FIXED LADDER

GrabSafefix.3Point.a-800-Faster