Protection Essentials for Hot Weather Jobs
WARM WEATHER SAFETY
Safety Under
the Sun
Protection Essentials for Hot Weather Jobs
By Philip Jacklin
6
Summertime brings warmer weather and longer daylight hours to stay productive on the jobsite. Unfortunately, the opportunity for increased productivity also provides more opportunities for workplace injuries to occur. According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics( BLS), most occupational injuries occur during June, July and August.
Warmer weather months might statistically bring about more falls and other workplace injuries, but it is imperative that employers always keep worker safety a top priority.
Let’ s discuss basic fall protection requirements that are relevant all year long and will help ensure your workers at height are as safe as possible.
Fall Protection Equipment Inspections
There are two types of equipment inspections required by the Occupational Safety and Health
Telecom & Utility Construction | Spring 2025
Administration( OSHA) regarding an organization’ s fall protection equipment.
First, is the pre-use inspection. While somewhat self-explanatory, this inspection is required every time a worker is going to use their personal fall protection equipment.
They must inspect their anchorage, body harness and connection device for original manufacturer tags, signs of deployment( meaning the equipment has arrested a fall in the past) and signs of damage or defects that could cause the equipment to fail during use or fall arrest. If a user identifies a failure during their preuse inspection, they are required to bring the equipment to their organization’ s competent person for further inspection or to be replaced by new equipment.
The second requirement is the annual inspection.( For construction companies only in California, this level of inspection must occur once every six months.) This inspection must be performed by the organization’ s competent person or an American National Standards Institute( ANSI)-accredited Fall Protection Equipment Inspector. Whether this person is an internal employee or a third-party contractor, the inspector’ s organization is the one who holds the liability for inspected equipment.
The annual check follows the same process as the pre-use inspection, but each piece of equipment must be thoroughly documented, and the records kept by the employer for its entire lifespan. Other information that must be noted during the annual inspection is:
• Manufacturer name
• Model number
• Serial number
• Date of manufacture
• Type of fall protection equipment( anchor, harness or connection device)