For me it's 1 man, 1 ladder that the 30min rule applies to. But if you are cleaning gutters/roof etc then I'd be looking at other means.

For some sites the 30min rule can't work. I was recently on a site in reading where ladders in general were banned completely but for some tasks there was no other option. Working in riser cabinets for several hours at a time. No other method of getting the engr at height wouold fit in the riser cupboard

Morning All

I have an issue at the moment surrounding the definition of short duration, light work that I would appreciate your opinions on.

I work for a company who carry out civils and maintenance work on electrical substations and part of this is work on flat roofs for repairs, vegetation clearance, gutter cleaning etc. For the actual job we require full edge protection, however, this issue comes when operatives survey the roof areas before the job.

A lot of the substations are about 2.5m high with a roof that is approximately 5m by 5m in area. The issue we have had recently is that operatives are showing up to site alone, using ladders to climb up onto the roof for a minute or two, take some photographs and then leave. It has been discussed that to do the vast majority of the surveys, they do no tneed to climb onto the roof but could look and take photos from the ladder. We are imminently looking to trial roof inspection cameras as a means of avoiding work at height for these surveys but in the meantime we need to come up with a SSoW until the cameras are approved or rejected.

My SSoW suggestion was if two persons were present, a suitable ladder could be used, footed by one and used by the other to get their head above the roof level to inspect and take the relevant photographs. This would take approximately 2 minutes on the ladder. I feel this falls into the short duration light work definition. The powers that be have said full edge protection should be used or some sort of secure ladder system with harness. The reason being because operatives may do a few of these a week and dozens over the year, this is no longer short duration due to accumulation of time on the ladder. I disagreed and said each individual job had to be taken separately.

My question is, in your opinions, would the SSoW I have proposed seem reasonably practicable and is my interpretation of the short duration light work correct?

Many thanks in advance.

Cheers Brian

Drones are being considered. I understood they are used by some of our roofing contractors on normal jobs but we are currently finding out what restrictions are in place for using them in electricity substations.

Does the 30min duration apply when up the ladder, and then you can move the ladder and apply the 30min rule again, or is it total time on the ladder. I thought it meant max time 30 minutes, but have been informed it is 30min each time tou go up the ladder; the problem with that is you could, say replace 200 lamps by moving and going up the ladder 200 times, but thought this wasnt reasonable