Safety & Loss Prevention
Scaffolds
General description
Scaffolds are used by campus employees for a variety of applications. In a Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) study, 72% of workers injured in scaffold accidents attributed the accident either to the planking or support giving way, or to the employee slipping or being struck by a falling object. All of these can be controlled by following your scaffold safety rules.
General regulatory citations (federal and Wisconsin)
Public employees in Wisconsin are covered by reference at COMM 32.50 under the various OSHA scaffold standards. The rules in title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) most likely to apply to campus employees would be:
- 1910.28, Safety requirements for scaffolding
- 1910.29, Manually propelled mobile ladder stands and scaffolds (towers)
- 1926 Subpart L -- Scaffolds
Employee training
A list of training topics for employees who work on scaffolds:
- The scope of the rules
- Common scaffolding terms
- The training requirements for employees
- Electrical safety
- Fall protection
- Guardrail systems
- Falling object protection
- Load capacities
- Proper materials handling
- Inspection requirements
- Damaged components
- Safe access to scaffold platforms
- Hazards of increasing the working heights on a scaffold platform
- Moving scaffolds
- Erecting and dismantling scaffolds
Link to campus training resources
UW-Milwaukee - PowerPoint training and web page. Note that their training includes safety and instructions for the particular scaffold equipment in use on their campus.
Link to other resources
The OSHA web page on scaffold safety includes links to the regulatory standards, frequently asked questions, directives and standards interpretations.
OSHA provides a very good online training tool for what you need to know about scaffold safety
A Guide to Scaffold Use in the Construction Industry: OSHA publication 3150 [pdf format] [html format]
Last updated 11/19/2009