NTT Blog

Rigging Safety in Construction: Tips for Keeping Your Workplace Safe

As industrial sectors continue to expand, there’s a great need to keep their operations safe and running smoothly. Two of the most common operations in worksites are rigging and hoisting. Rigging and hoisting skills are used in setting, preparing, and moving loads. The loads may be moved by means of rolling, lifting, raising, or sliding. This means that rigging safety is key to maintaining a safe work environment.

Who uses Rigging Safety in their Daily Job Duties?

So, which economic sectors need knowledge about rigging? Here are some of the areas where rigging and hoisting is common:

• Manufacturing
• Military
• Transportation
• Rope rescues (Emergency Response Teams)
• Construction
• Forestry
• Lumber production
• Mining
• Firefighting

Dangers Associated with Rigging

Many unfortunate events can happen in a workplace when workers undertake rigging and hoisting operations. Here are some of those dangers that need a constant eye kept on them:

• Inaccurate Center of Gravity: When moving loads, the point of lifting must be the exact center of the weight distribution, otherwise a weight imbalance many result and cause the load to tilt. This could damage any surrounding structures and even hurt workers or bystanders.
• Too much load weight: A sling can only support so much weight. Also, the weight should be evenly distributed among the supporting slings. When the weight is increased while the number and distance between the slings isn’t increased, things could become dangerous very fast when the stress on the slings becomes too much.

The Role Of An Employer In Workplace Safety

So you’re an employer, and you have your workers doing rigging and hoisting. In this case, it’s smart for you to keep in mind that workplace safety is paramount, and that’s why you need to commit to your roles to this end:

• Purchase all the necessary lifting and safety equipment: It’s never a good idea to purchase low-quality equipment and then hope for the best. The equipment used in delicate operations like rigging and hoisting needs to be top-of-the-rank in effectiveness, strength, and ease of use.
• Conduct workplace safety inspections and include relevant machines: People tend to forget the rules when kept unchecked for long. Machines, too, can get worn-out without people noticing. You need to conduct regular inspections and maintenance to ensure everyone and everything is in optimal safety condition at all times.
• Safety training: Having your employees trained on workplace safety can go a long way in preventing accidents and damages. You can outsource the service. Also, you need to employ only qualified people well-versed in rigging and hoisting operations. The last thing you want is a worker causing accidents because they don’t know what they’re doing.
• Follow the rules: There are specific government policies put in place to govern workplace safety in rigging and hoisting. You should follow them to the letter.

Are you a smart employer who values workplace safety? You can have your employees undergo on-site training in Hoisting and Rigging. For more details, or to schedule this on-site seminar, connect with NTT today.

For more information about National Technology Transfer or any of our programs click here: http://www.nttinc.com or http://www.nttinc.com/seminar-list-catalog/.