Scaffold Safety Course

Scaffold Awareness or Competent Person Training?

29 CFR 1926.454 splits scaffold training in two: everyone who works on a scaffold, and everyone who erects, moves, inspects or dismantles one. The catalogue follows the same split.

• • Scaffold Safety Course. The page you are on. One to two hours of awareness-level training for workers who use scaffolds: the types, the hazards, fall protection, platform and access rules. Buy it for everyone who sets foot on a platform.
  • Scaffolding Competent Person Training. The in-depth course for the person who inspects scaffolds before each shift, directs erection and dismantling, and makes the calls the standard reserves for a competent person. View the Scaffolding Competent Person Training.

Buy the awareness course for the crew and the competent person course for whoever inspects and directs.

Scaffold Guardrails or Harnesses: Which Applies?

More than 10 feet above a lower level, fall protection is required under 29 CFR 1926.451(g), but the form it takes changes with the scaffold. The Scaffold Safety Course covers the whole table.

• Fall arrest only. A boatswain's chair, catenary, float, needle beam or ladder jack scaffold calls for a personal fall arrest system.
• Guardrails only. A self-contained adjustable scaffold whose platform is supported by the frame structure, and walkways inside a scaffold, call for guardrails.
• Both together. Single-point and two-point adjustable suspension scaffolds, and self-contained adjustable scaffolds supported by ropes, need both a fall arrest system and guardrails.
• Either one. Overhand bricklaying on a supported scaffold, and every other scaffold not named, take either a fall arrest system or guardrails.

Getting that match right is the single most useful thing a scaffold user can take away.