PREVENTING FALLS FROM ROAD TANKERS
In 2005/6 there were 49 fatalities and 3350 major injuries resulting from falls from height in the workplace. In the same year the Work at Height Regulations 2005 came into force, specifically to address this major health & safety issue. The regulations apply to all work at height activities where there is a risk of a fall liable to cause personal injury. As an employer you must do all that is reasonably practicable to prevent someone falling and as an employee you have a duty to use all the safety equipment provided and report any safety hazard to your employer.
In relation to tanker loading the easiest and most practical way to load liquids and powders into a road or rail tanker or an ISO container is to fill them from the top (top loading). By its very nature this requires the operator to work at height, to access the man-way lid or fill point, to manoeuvre the filling equipment into position and to control the loading of the tanker. Other operational tasks such as batch sampling, inspection, maintenance and testing also require working at height on tops of the tankers. The petroleum industry have converted all their terminal distribution to bottom loading and this has had the secondary effect of reducing the risk of a fall from height to zero, as all loading and unloading is now done at ground level.
Very few of the other industries that rely on tankers and ISO containers to transport their products have taken that bold step yet, therefore the majority of non-petroleum tanker loading is still done from above and the same work at height regulations apply. IFC have always been involved in designing and manufacturing products and systems that allow for safe and easy access onto the tops of tankers and for the safe handling and loading of products into the tankers. Prior to 2005, this was mainly driven by the purely practical requirements our customers faced when loading their tankers. Post regulation we saw an increased interest in the operator safety equipment within our range, and since then one of the main focuses of our business has been safe access and fall prevention equipment for sites where access to the top of tankers and ISO tanks is necessary. When designing our equipment and systems we always use the recommended hierarchy for managing and selecting equipment for work at height where duty holders must:
1. Use work equipment or other measures to prevent falls where they cannot avoid working at height.
2. And where they cannot eliminate the risk of a fall, use work equipment or other measures to minimise the distance and consequences of a fall should one occur.
What this means in practice is that:
1. Collective protection measures such as gantries or guardrails should be given priority over personal protection measures such as safety harnesses.
2. Where tankers are loaded at fixed gantries, secure fencing is required, where possible, either as part of the gantry or the vehicle.
The challenge many companies face is not only the fact the operator has to safely work at height, but also the variety of different shape and size tankers that are used to transport their products. All our safe access solutions take this into account, including our portable TopTank access steps, designed for sites without fixed gantries or platforms and ideal for sampling, inspection and accessing and operating tank top equipment, along with a range of spring assisted self-levelling folding stairs & safety cages, which fold down to, and rest upon the tanker to enable safe access and exit. These units can be easily fitted to existing gantries or are supplied as part of one of our loading platform packages. Recently, another issue surrounding the use of these stairs has become more common, where some of the older or heavier sets of stairs have become too heavy to operate manually. This can be due to a number of reasons including the main spring balance mechanism reducing in efficiency or wearing out making the stairs heavier to lift, a better understanding of the risk of injury from lifting heavy loads, the repetitive stress of the physical action of operating the stairs regularly and a more general requirement for an easily controlled lowing and lifting action. To meet this new need we have developed a pneumatic power assist pack to enable the stairs to be lowered and raised at the push of a lever. The system can be retro-fitted to existing stairs so upgrading current equipment is easy and cost effective. It is also offered as an affordable option on any new stairs we supply. We also have an optional push-down feature, which enables the stairs to stay in contact with the tanker while it drops and settles as it is filled with product. Two recent safe access and fall prevention projects we have been involved with are a pneumatic power pack upgrade programme for Total Bitumen at their Preston site, and a supply of new folding stairs to West Yorkshire trading standards.
For further information please contact:
To find out more about how IFC Inflow can help your business or if you need help or advice, call 01268596900 or log onto IFCInflow.com for further information.
IFC Inflow, Unit 3 Ryder Way, Basildon, SS13 1QH, UK
UK: 01268596900
International: 00441268596900
Email: sales@ifcinflow.com