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Asking a team of skilled craft workers to hang hundreds of feet in the air by rope may not sound like the safest routine maintenance option for your company. But that’s exactly what using a rope access team can offer.
A rope access team deploys highly trained technicians who use ropes moored by a series of secure anchor points to ascend upward of 200 feet in the air. Once in the air, these technicians perform a variety of skilled crafts including pipefitting, boilermaking, insulation, welding, and ironwork.
Rope access can be a safe, efficient and cost-effective option over traditional scaffolding. Using rope access can help minimize risk by reducing required work hours for scaffolding construction and teardown, and it can lower costs by eliminating the use of scaffolding materials. Rope access technicians must also undergo rigorous safety training, which increases their awareness on the jobsite.
While rope access has its advantages, it takes an incredible amount of time and effort to establish a crew and to ensure their work will be efficient, effective and, most importantly, safe. While looking for ways to deliver efficient and cost-effective solutions for clients, Turner Industries invested more than two years in careful planning and research to establish its rope access group. Here are some focus areas to ensure a solution for your rope access success.
SAFETY FIRST
As with any job, safety is the number one priority. Before a rope access team can be deployed, project managers must first assess whether or not it is a safe and viable option for the site.
Early in Turner Industries’ planning and risk assessment process, trained rope access technicians are sent to the site to identify the benefits—and potential risks—of using a rope access team. For example, if technicians cannot find enough secure anchor points to tie off the ropes, or if technicians cannot work out a proper rescue plan based on the location of the job, then traditional scaffolding may make more sense.
Rope access cannot and should not be forced upon every site. If safety can be assured, then your site can reach new heights.
IT’S ABOUT TIME
Qualified rope access technicians have logged plenty of rope time before they even step on a jobsite. To be certified as a Level I technician by the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians (SPRAT), a worker must undergo 40 hours of classroom time, then be assessed on a jobsite by a third-party evaluator. To reach Level II, a technician has to put in 500 verified hours of rope time on a jobsite, which can take up to a year. Level III requires an additional 500 hours.
The Industrial Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA) requires 1,000 hours logged to reach Level II and another 1,000 hours for Level III, along with first aid training. Turner Industries has rope access technicians who are certified by both SPRAT and IRATA, including a rope access manager who is certified Level III by both organizations.
Logging all these hours doesn’t happen overnight. Companies interested in establishing a rope access group must be ready and willing to put in the hours to train their technicians for success.
STEADY AS SHE GROWS
Turner Industries has already seen results from its rope access group. At one facility, Turner saved its client more than $500,000 in the first quarter of 2019 through mechanical rope access. Long-term goals for the client include saving about $10 million annually in routine maintenance costs. At another facility, Turner helped a client save more than $3 million in 2018 through the use of a non-destructive examination rope access team.
With those kinds of results, it’s natural for clients to ask you to grow your rope access team rapidly to expand to other projects. It’s tempting to meet that demand quickly, but it’s also prudent to manage client expectations.
Growth must be sustainable. While using rope access can reduce work hours and lower costs, demand cannot outpace the available workforce. Companies must take time to identify workers who will make for great rope access technicians—and those technicians must be trained to reach SPRAT or IRATA certification. In addition, rope access teams have to be managed by a Level III certified technician, and it can take a technician about three years to reach that status.
Like with any job completed by Turner Industries, continued rope access success relies upon a balanced approach that includes keeping an eye on steadfast growth while ensuring that safety and skill are paramount. Without a proper approach, your rope access team—and your clients—could be left grounded.
For more information email Lance Wiebeck at lwiebeck@turner-industries.com or call (225) 214-9142.
