A Safety Review - Elevated Work Access

How are your contractors safely gaining access to your roof?  

Many of our customers understand that in order to repair or renovate a roof, access to that elevated work surface needs to be conducted safely. How are your contractors safely gaining access to your roof?  If you have other elevated work areas on your building, do you separately consider how are those areas being accessed? It might come as a surprise,  but there are many different things a building owner can do to increase safety at their facilities -- just by addressing this one aspect of safe access. This isn't limited to roofing -- and incudes any activities where employees or contractors are accessing an elevated surface (such as window washing, art and light installation, or HVAC).

Almost all roofing contractors use a ladder as their primary tool to access the work area. Whether it's an extension ladder, a building owner’s vertical ladder, or an interior ladder with a roof hatch; ladders are the primary piece of equipment that all trades utilize to work on a facility’s elevated working surface.

At TeamCraft Roofing, we approach things differently. The ladder is the last piece of equipment that we consider utilizing to access the roof. Have any guesses as to why?  

Let’s take a look at a typical industrial roofing project, that has 10 roofers accessing a roof that is 30 feet high. The average roofer on this job would use the ladder for approximately 5 trips per day, or in total would go up and down the ladder 10 times. With 10 employees accessing the roof, that means the employees are using the ladder 100 times per day. That adds up to 100 opportunities for an employee to get injured.

Now let’s consider the length of a project -- many of our projects are several months long. Knowing that, we can calculate the number of opportunities there are for a ladder injury to take place over a 60-day period. If each day there are 100 times someone uses a ladder, this means that over the course of this project we would allow 6,000 injury opportunities -- just by utilizing a ladder for roof access.  Another compounding factor is that many roofing jobs are at a working height of greater than 30 feet. These variables all point to an important conclusion -- ladders should be avoided for elevated work access.  6,000 injury opportunities on a single job is way too many.

Many of our jobs will have twenty to thirty roofers on a single project, and we have multiple projects happening simultaneously all over the country -- so scale comes into play as well. If we think a bit differently, we can evaluate how these variables effect elevated work access, and come up with a better plan.

TeamCraft Roofing’s policy is "Ladders Last."  

Whenever possible, our primary roof access is conducted via a stair tower. In almost all cases, stair towers are a safer method of roof access than ladders, when installed and used correctly. Stair towers minimize fall potential, are easier to climb, and drastically reduce the opportunity for employee injury. As a result, this helps protect the building owner and contractor by offering a significantly safer method of roof access.  

Next time you hire a roofing contractor, ask what their plan for safe roof access is (before they perform any work).  If they say ladder access, you can push back and ask them about stair tower options. Sometimes stair towers come at an increased cost, but the additional capital is well worth the peace of mind knowing that you have a safe work environment at your facility.  

We are happy to discuss safe roof accessibility options with any customer. Give us a call and request to speak to the safety department if you have questions.  

Authored by Jeff Mason, Director of Corporate Safety