Ashley Morpeth, an Authorising Engineer at ETA Projects, and an experienced health and safety professional with particular expertise in the field, discusses some of the key guidance on formulating emergency and rescue plans for working at height, including rooftop working.
When it comes to estates management, a large amount of PPM, reactive, or installation work occurs on rooftops across the country on a daily basis, and healthcare estates are no different. HVAC systems, lift motor rooms, mobile phone antenna sites, photovoltaic systems, fume extracts, lightning protection systems, water storage tanks, and many other types of systems and equipment, are located on the roofs of our healthcare buildings.
So, the question is, are the people who are doing this work, working at height? 'Working at Height' is defined in The Work at Height Regulations 2005 (WaHR 2005) as any work undertaken in any place above, at, or below, ground level, from which, if measures were not taken, a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury. This includes gaining access to or egress from such a place of work except by means of a staircase in a permanent workplace.
What this means is that any person who is working on a roof that they have had to gain access to via an external fixed ladder, a scaffold, a portable ladder, a MEWP (mobile elevating work platform), or any other similar means of access equipment, is indeed working at height. This in turn means that the requirements of the WaHR 2005 must be followed in full.
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