Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Yesterday I was on a tower crane rescue course.  We listened to a bloke in a classroom for a couple of hours, played with a stretcher for a bit, swung around on some ropes, then spent the remainder of the day on top of a 60m tower crane.

Hanging around

For those that know me well this may cause some amusement since my level of comfort at heights is not one of my strong suits!

Hiding the fear!

All being well we would have practiced the rescue of a person from the cabin and would pass as qualified tower crane rescuers.

If you tie them down they can’t run away…

Just to prove that almost anything could be a TMR…

The course was called short while we were on top of the crane but prior to the rescue happening as the site could not afford the down-time on the crane.  The course had been planned for ages and they knew the crane would be out of use for an hour while this training was conducted, so why the change of heart?

It’s because we’re meant to be pouring a slab section on Friday.  The steel for that section is yet to be installed and the steel fixers spent all morning in the canteen as they’d not been paid.  Therefore there was a mad rush in the afternoon to fix the steel and the crane was being used to move the steel into position.

So because our sub-contractor hadn’t paid their sub-sub-contractor, we now don’t have people qualified in tower crane rescue.

Fat bloke stuck in ladder

Is it the end of the world?  The Work at Height Regulations 2005 require us to have the capability to recover an ill / injured operator from an area where we have sent him to work.  That includes the top of a tower crane.  We’ve got a plan and we’ve got the kit.  We’ve got willing people who have had all the lessons but haven’t completed the course.  The Regs do not require the rescuers to be qualified, only “competent”.  So do I consider myself competent?  No.  Unless I have actually completed a full rescue serial I would not consider myself competent.  If the crane operator had a heart attack now I’d have a crack at it obviously, but I would be that confident.  So could we stage a rescue of our own so we had practiced it?  Until we are competent we must be supervised conducting this activity by someone who is.  So we would need to get the instructor, or someone else, back here anyway in order to watch us do our training.  At which point we’d get the qualification anyway!

So while the rescue team must be “competent”, not “qualified”.  Without the qualification it is almost impossible to be competent.

It was a long way down!

The definition of “competent”: I am sure you could get 3000 words out of that, there’s 465 to start you off!