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The Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration, OSHA, requires the services of a professional engineer for certain activities regarding scaffold design and analysis. What is the significance or this requirement? The obvious answer is that it is important that an individual with specialized...

It’s time to take a serious look at how fall protection is regulated in the scaffold industry. I have addressed this issue in the past with no apparent effect since nothing has changed. There is no doubt that fall protection, particularly personal fall arrest equipment, has made tremendous...

Is there such a thing? A friend asked me about it the other day; he wondered if I had ever written about a “perfect scaffold.” Well, I don’t ever recall specifically writing about a perfect scaffold. I know I have written about safety aspects of scaffolds. I have written about the components that...

Did you ever wonder where the OSHA standards came from? For that matter, did you ever wonder where OSHA came from? How did the scaffold standards come to be? Did they always exist? Have you ever heard of Letters of Interpretation and Directives? You might be surprised at the answers. The Federal...

The US Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, has promulgated scaffold standards for both general industry and construction. While the scaffold equipment is common to both applications, the standards are not. First, the standards are written in two different styles. The...