Secure Rigging and Guard Rails at the Work Site


A modern construction site is a place for a lot of hardware, from bulldozers to cranes to I-beams and bricks, and beyond. During work at an American construction site, crews will be hard at work getting everything in place, but this can sometimes be dangerous work, and there’s a lot of heavy materials around. Not to mention the dangers of falling right off a platform or incomplete building’s floor. In fact, falls are a common and serious hazard at construction sites today, and measures should be taken to prevent them to keep your workers from getting hurt or worse. Safety straps, rigging products, web slings, a polyester round sling, and much more can be used to either secure cargo or keep a worker in place to prevent a fall.

Moving Cargo

A construction site is a place for manual labor, and for this reason, a lot of the right hardware must be present. For example, heavy items such as pipes, palettes of bricks, steel beams, and more may have to be lifted during work, and this means having the right way to secure them to a crane. A polyester round sling is one such option. This may be a tough, synthetic sling that can carry heavy loads, and it can be used for pipes, steel, and more on the construction site. A polyester round sling is not unbreakable, however, and good sense should be exercised at all times to prevent accidents or injury. A polyester round sling will be rated for a maximum amount of weight, and workers must always know the limits of their materials. A polyester round sling strained beyond its weight limit may snap, and the heavy cargo may fall on someone or a piece of property, and no one wants that.

Other slings may be made of steel chains instead, and here too, caution should be exercised. Managers should regularly inspect the chains for any faults, such as worn-out links or even broken links, and the chains should not get jumbled up or tangled at any point. And workers should, like with a polyester round sling, know the weight limit of their chain link sling assemblies to prevent disaster. A sling that is damaged, whether polyester or chain, should be taken in for repairs and a different one should be used in the meantime. If all these precautions are exercised, a safe and productive day’s work is possible. It may be a matter of preference whether a crew used a polyester sling or a chain link model, or a very heavy load may only be lifted by one type or the other. This is something for a crew manager to figure out, and the right model of sling must be used. Logging is another industry where slings may be used, such as lifting heavy fallen logs onto a truck bed or elsewhere. Tree trunks can be very heavy, so a heavy-duty chain link sling may be the best call.

Worker Safety

Safety for workers on a construction site is always a concern, such as the old adage “safety first.” A lot of hazards are present at a work site, from exposure to flames to inhalation of paint thinner fumes to getting run over by a bulldozer. Falling is another issue, and it is more common and dangerous than some Americans may realize. Back in 1971, OSHA set up the fall protection measures for general industry in the United States, and injuries from falling are in fact the most common OSHA violation. Similarly, accidental falls currently rank as the most common cause of death at construction sites, so naturally, measures should be taken to prevent this.

One way to keep workers safe is setting up temporary guard rails on a work site, such as on the floor of an incomplete building where the walls may be missing. These rails may be taken down once the building is complete. And earlier in the construction phase, when a building is made mostly of steel beams, safety harnesses may be used to keep workers from falling. This may be similar to harnesses used for outdoor sports such as rock climbing or walking across a rope bridge.


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