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In the year 2000, at the turn of the century, the U.S. Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration, OSHA, issued a Letter of Interpretation wherein it opined that aerial lifts known as scissors lifts (see illustration) are not aerial lifts but instead are mobile scaffolds. The opinion was...

As with all scaffolds, there are design, construction, and safety issues with mobile scaffolds. The idea here is to discuss some engineering issues, leaving the obvious safety issues to the “competent person, qualified in scaffold construction.” Now that I think about it, perhaps the safety issues...

I can answer the one question easily: no, safety standards are not there to make your life more difficult. The fact is, they are there to make your life safer. Depending on your age, you may think that they come from ancient history but in reality they are a relatively recent development in...

It is not a healthy or a safe thing when scaffolds fall over. Consequently, and not surprisingly, there are codes and standards that address scaffold stability and the minimum expectations regarding scaffold stability. Both OSHA and ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, have minimum...

Federal OSHA, as well as the American National Standards Institute, ANSI, has definitions for competent and qualified, particularly as it pertains to scaffolding. To paraphrase the definition, a competent person is an individual who can recognize a hazard and has the authority to eliminate that...