Posted By Advanced Safety Hi I am looking for some clarification on roof fall protection design. A client Architect is specifying a fixed guardrail system for a new flat roof, which although offers collective protection, serves no real purpose, as there is no access to the roof area and the covering of the roof has a 25yr life, so maintenance would be unlikely. If they fit a fall arrest system, this will need access to be inspected every 12 months, again, with no access. My clients question is, if their is no access to the roof, is fall protection required at all? My answer is no. any thoughts?

Posted By Robert K Lewis We recently had a similar discussion with HSE over a job and the conclusion was that if people are not expected to access the roof then there is no need to provide such as man safe or other protection. When work is to be done one will be using a competent contractor and they will make appropriate arrangements to suit the work they are to do. Even man safe systems cannot be guaranteed to cover all eventualities even where they are fitted. The ideal situation is to reduce the need to work on roofs to a minimum. Our designers have been, for instance, placing tell tale weirs in roof edges with syphonic drainage so that you can see from the ground if the drainage is blocked - This eliminates 2 accesses per year for inspection. They are also located so that cherry picker access and work is possible - eliminating actual access onto the roof. We do need more creativity about roof design as no doubt CFT would agree. Push the designers to come up with solutions to reduce access to the absolute minimum. Man-safes etc cost money to install test and maintain so why use them and gain the need to access the roof simply to ensure they are available some time in the next 20 or so years. Bob