Industry In Review: Health & Recreation Centers

Working at heights in health and recreation centers is an important fall protection topic.

It’s common for Health and Recreation Centers to have many workplace fall hazards, including: cooling towers, ladders, surge tanks, catwalks, mezzanines, unguarded rooftop edges, ventilation shafts, and large boilers or other building system equipment to name a few.

The below are just some topics to think about for working-at-heights in Health and Recreation Centers:

Q. Who does this apply to?
Facilities maintenance and engineering, operations and maintenance staff, and industrial contractors. 

Q. What do fall protection experts help with in Health and Recreation Centers?
Fall protection safety experts can help your organization solve on site unguarded fall hazards and assess and help prevent accidental falls or near misses.

Q. Is fall protection safety legislative or mandatory?
Fall protection is legislated at, or above 6 ft. (1.8 m) and 10 ft. (3.0 m) height depending on the province your organization is in, as well at any height if there is an unusual risk (example: drowning, or falling into machinery, etc). It is also legislated at 6.5 ft. (2.0 m) horizontally from an unguarded roof edge on flat roofs, with sloped roofs (greater than 5 deg) also requiring fall protection everywhere.

Q. What’s the best practice for fall protection at Health and Recreation centers?
The best practices are to use control zones or guardrails on flat roofs and fall protection guardrails on tanks and other equipment.

Q. What are the best products and systems that can meet the needs of the Health and Recreation Centre client?
Non-penetrating (sometimes called “portable”) guardrail systems are an easy way to typically resolve any type of rooftop fall hazards. A Height Works valued partner Kee Safety KeeGuard uses recycled rubber ballast weights to create a stable physical barrier, while not penetrating the building envelope.  Which means that there is virtually no maintenance and no potential leaks to fix after the fall protection system has been installed!

For more information about fall protection solutions for Health and Recreations Centers, contact the fall protection safety experts at Height Works today!