The Flat Roof Dilemma - When is Fall Protection Required with David Kozlowsky

According to BLS data, workplace fatalities from falls to a lower
level were up from 615 on 2018 to 711 in 2019. 


Fall hazard exposures exist in almost every industry and finding
the right fall protection solution for you’ your situation is not
always easy.  There are many factors that should go into
choosing the best fall prevention method, especially when it
comes to fall protection on roofs.


On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with
David Kozlowsky, President and Owner of Safe Approach in Poland,
Maine about fall protection requirements for roofs.


Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and
welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I'm your host, Peter
Koch. There are fall hazards in almost every industry or
business, and personally, whether it's scaffolding, ladders,
anchors, fall protection, arrest systems, rope access rescue or
fall protection training and education, that all makes up a
significant part of what I do with the businesses that I serve.
And today we're going to talk about falls and specifically falls
from a height and even more specifically, fall exposures while
you're on a roof. So before we get into that recently, I got the
chance to talk to one of my friends, who's another safety
professional in a different area of the country. And we got to
talking about fall protection and the excuses or reasons that
workers and business owners have given us for why they don't or
won't use fall protection on their job sites. So here are some of
the ones that we've had in common, and I bet you you'll find some
of [00:01:00] these are actually pretty familiar to you. If
you're a safety professional and if you're a business owner,
maybe you've used one of them yourself. I know before I got to be
a safety professional, I've used a number of these to make an
excuse of why I'm not or won't use fall protection. So the first
one that came up, which was, I think, one of the more common
ones, it's way too time consuming to set it all up. I can get the
job done and half the time. If I can just get on the roof and do
my roofing work, that's the first one, too time consuming. It
gets in the way you talk to workers all the time that they're on
the roof you have the rope gets in the way, the guardrails get in
the way it just gets in the way. Another one is it makes me feel
less safe. So the ropes are a tripping hazard. And honestly, I
think maybe the pneumatic hoses are probably more of a tripping
hazard than the lifelines, but it's all perception. So it makes
me feel less safe. It limits what I can do. It's uncomfortable,
and I totally get that. If you're in a harness all day long
[00:02:00] on a roof, you've got enough discomfort up there from
the environment and the pitch that you're on and everything else.
So the harness can add a little discomfort to it. But again, it's
an excuse, so it causes more of a hazard. Getting back to that
makes me feel less safe. It doesn't add value to the job, so we
quantify that one is it just costs too much. I can't bid
successfully for a job against the guy down the road. He's not
using fall protection. If I bid the job with fall protection,
it's going to cost me way too much. I won't get the job. Another
excuse that my friend and I have heard often is when I did buy
it, my employees didn't use it, so I stopped buying it and asking
them to use it. So they just kind of gave up instead of powering
through and making it an initiative and part of the culture. But
again, there's the excuse I'm only going to be up there for a
minute. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that
particular excuse, and more often I've [00:03:00] heard that
excuse during an investigation or an analysis of why the fall
occurred. So I'm going to a client and we're talking to them
about why this person got significantly injured, falling off the
roof, the ladder, the whatever it was. And the answer is, well,
they were only going to be up there for a minute. I didn't think
I needed to set up all of the fall protection. Another one, which
is interesting because it's all about perception. Again, I've
never used it before and I'm really comfortable working at height
or being up on the roof. So my comfort level is driving the non
need, I guess, for fall protection. Another interesting one is
what we are using fall protection and I'm talking to the business
owner and he's pointing up to the roof where his roofers are on
roofing planks instead of actually a fall protection system. So
that's not fall protection. We'll get into that as we talk
through this in the podcast. And this last one probably was my
most favorite. And it's more than just a statement. It's a couple
[00:04:00] of statements. So bear with me here. So when I was
asking this individual about fall protection on the job site, the
answer was, Well, we have a safety monitor and that's all we
need. Because for roofing, there is an accommodation there to use
a safety monitor under very specific conditions. But his answer
was we have a safety monitor. That's all we need. And he was
saying this while he's pointing to one of the workers who was on
the ground shoveling shingles from the ground of the dump
trailer. But he was in an orange vest so that designated him as
the safety monitor. But his buddies or the other workers were up
actually stripping the roof on a 10 12 pitch. So the safety
monitor was doing something else while the guys were up stripping
the roof. And while I looked at him, the follow up to that was
from the guy was, well, he's only there for a few minutes because
he needs to stay ahead for the cleanup. And while the other guys
are at the peak, he doesn't need to pay attention as much. He'll
pay more attention when they get closer to [00:05:00] the edge.
Like, OK, fine. Excellent. So all of those are different excuses,
you'll hear them all over the place, but none of them really help
you because there's a lot of stats out there that really drive
the need for fall protection, and you can talk to anyone who has
taken a fall off a roof or off a ladder, and I'll bet you that
they wish that they had done something a little bit different, so
they didn't have an event that changed their life. So if we look
just at the stats, according to BLS data, fatal falls from roofs
accounted for seven hundred and sixty two of the three thousand
seven hundred and twenty two fatal falls between 2011 and two
thousand sixteen. And that's just fatal falls. That's not all of
the other types of fatal injuries that happened in the workplace.
Those are just fatal falls back to 2016. And if we look
specifically at roofing and some more current data in 2019
roofers accounted [00:06:00] for 111 of the five thousand three
hundred thirty three fatal injuries. And that's just in one year,
and it's up 15 percent from 2018. And the BLS data also shows
that roofers have a fatal injury rate of fifty four fatal
injuries per one hundred thousand workers. All right, so fifty
four per one hundred thousand doesn't seem like a lot. Well, I
guess to me as a safety consultant or just as a human, fifty four
people dying on the job is a big number, regardless of how many
workers you're comparing it to. But let's add some different
perspective to that. So the average fatality rate across all
industries, regardless of what the industries are, is three point
five per one hundred thousand workers. So that makes the rate for
roofing 15 times higher than the average. And it's only preceded
by fishing, logging and pilots or flight engineers with a higher
[00:07:00] fatality rate. And while those industries logging
fishing in flight engineers have a myriad of different exposures
that could cause fatalities and a significantly more limited set
of choices for controlling the exposures, roofing fatalities come
almost exclusively from falls and fall protection or prevention,
or excuse me, roofing fatalities come almost exclusively from
falls and then fall protection and prevention technology has
really exploded over the last 10 or 15 years, and there's been a
huge increase in what's available to the person working on a
roof. So to help us explore fall protection and how it applies to
roofing and tearing down some of those stats and maybe giving you
some better ideas about what to do when you're on a roof, is
David Kozlowski, president and owner of Safe Approach right here
in Poland, Maine. So, led by David Safe Approach's team designs
and builds fall protection equipment from harnesses, [00:08:00]
anchors and lifelines to safety netting and custom fall
protection worksite solutions. Over the years, they've developed
some really creative fall prevention solutions for a variety of
different industries. So David, you were on the podcast back in
March of two thousand twenty one talking to us about the basics
of fall protection. Welcome back today, and I'm glad to have you
to talk about some more specifics.


David Kozlowsky: [00:08:24] Peter, thanks. And
thanks for having me back. It was a lot of fun last time and
hopefully people got something out of it. And hopefully I can
give you some good information that people can take back to their
places of employment and help them implement safer work
practices.


Peter Koch: [00:08:43] Oh, I'm sure they will.
There's a lot of great information on the other podcast. We
talked about the hierarchy of controls and different types of
fall protection and fall prevention that were out there and when
to apply it. And I know we were talking before the podcast about
how prevalent roofing [00:09:00] exposures or working on a roof.
It doesn't have to be roof work, but working on a roof is. And
just the other day I was driving down my road and two property
owners were actually standing on the peak of the roof, installing
a chimney lining. So there was not a stitch of fall protection.
Well, let me tell you, the only fall protection was in my car
driving past them. It wasn't anywhere on the roof, and you made
the comment to me that you spend the majority well, quite a bit
of your time having conversations with different clients about
fall protection for roofs because it can get a little bit
confusing, I guess.


David Kozlowsky: [00:09:39] Well, all the
reasons that you gave earlier are still very prevalent. I mean, I
spend a lot of time in my truck driving around, and I can't tell
you how many residential roofing projects that I drive by where I
still see them not wearing fall protection. Even though the
exemption was removed many years ago, [00:10:00] they still
aren't wearing it or. I'll see them wearing their harnesses, but
knowing what to look for, I can clearly see that they aren't
connected to anything, so I think they often put them on. So at a
quick glance, somebody driving by might think, Oh, there they
are, they're wearing their fall protection, but it's not actually
connected to anything. And I see it, you know, so often they
still a lot of them, for all the reasons that you gave, are very
resistant to it. And I don't think it's really going to change
until we can help change the attitudes in the hearts and minds of
the people that are actually there to be protected. If they don't
want to protect themselves, it's really hard to overcome that
mountain.


Peter Koch: [00:10:42] Yeah, it really is. And
if you've never fallen off a roof or had an injury like that, it
can be difficult to understand why you need it. Because some of
those some of the comments that were made to resist fall
protection are the reasons [00:11:00] why I'm not using it are
actually valid. I mean, they can be uncomfortable. They can, if
you're used to not having vertical lifelines and something else
on the roof and you're just used to having a naked roof that
you're on maintaining or re-shingling or putting new roof
material on it. It does get in the way. It's a change. It changes
your workflow and work process.


David Kozlowsky: [00:11:26] Well, all of those
all of those excuses are basically variations of the one single
most common excuse, which is not just used in roofing, I've seen
it with confined space training with all kinds of other types of
injuries that can happen not just fall protection. They're all
variations of the same basic excuse, which is I've been doing
this job for insert number here a number of years and I've never
had a fall, so [00:12:00] I don't feel that I need it. And I've
heard that excuse in rooftop safety and confined space safety and
all kinds of industrial safety applications where people just
don't think they need it. I've been doing this job for 30 years
and I've never even had a close call. Why do I need to do this
different thing now to protect myself? And it all goes back to
what you just said. If you've never fallen off a roof or if
you've never got your hand caught in the machine or, you know,
you've never tripped and fell into a hole or never been run over
by a truck. You don't think that you need those protections. I
mean, again, it's the attitude of the user is trying to overcome
the attitude that you don't need it. And once you overcome that
mountain, I think people will get a lot more receptive to it.


Peter Koch: [00:12:51] Yeah, I'll relate a quick
story. I have a good friend of mine that I worked with in a
previous industry, and he and [00:13:00] I share a love of
climbing. So he's got a great climbing background. And after we
had a downsize at the company that I was working at, he actually
went to go work for a local roofing contractor, and he actually
brought that skill sets and understanding of not just fall
prevention and fall protection, but actually if he's going to be
setting up aide climbing or setting up protection on a rock face
someplace. He wants to be able to work with both of his hands. So
he sets up positioning. And so he brought a lot of that
information to the company. And interestingly enough, when I got
to work for MEMIC, he was one of or at that company was one of
the first companies that I was assigned to from a construction
standpoint, and I met him again on the job and I was looking at
what he was doing and he had taken a lot of that thought process
of, look, I get it. You know, from a fall standpoint, this is
really not a whole lot different than if I'm climbing [00:14:00]
somewhere in the wilderness. I can use that same technology to
make my job actually a little bit easier to be able to feel
comfortable. I mean, if you're installing metal roofing panels
someplace, it's hot, it's reflective, it's slippery. Why can't
you set up a system that will allow you to actually work more
effectively right in there so it can be done? It totally can be
done,


David Kozlowsky: [00:14:24] And you just hit the
nail right on the head. Most of the reasons why people don't want
to use it is effectiveness of the fall protection. It's, you
know, it doesn't. It doesn't do any good to set up a system
that's technically quote unquote compliant that it doesn't work
well. And I literally just this week went to look at a client who
was looking to. They just had 11 ladder climb systems installed
on some silos. So they had silos with these ladders and somebody
[00:15:00] came in and said, you. Need to put climb systems on
these, they installed it and the employees were complaining, so
when I got there, the argument was is these aren't compliant?
Well, I went and looked at them and they were. Everything was as
it should be. But the ladders were too narrow and they had
installed them, you know, in the center of the climb. And there
was it was when I climbed the ladder, I found that it was
extremely difficult to get between the ladder climb system and to
step through and get on to the top of the tank. Very difficult.
And when I came down, I said, I have to agree with the employees.
This system is compliant. But it really isn't set up to be very
effective. And so they were hoping that I could come in and
figure out a way to modify and change or provide something new
that would be a little bit more seamlessly integrated [00:16:00]
into what they had and make it not just compliant but actually
usable so that the workers felt safe and felt better using it.
And you know, that's one of the other big things, especially with
roofing is you were talking about in the beginning is not just
the culture or the attitude, but you know, there is a certain
amount of it that is cumbersome. It does get in the way, it's not
easy and we haven't invented the perfect integrated seamless
system yet. So, you know, we kind of have to work around that a
little bit, but you can try to do things to make it as effective
as you can and as seamless as you can with what's available out
there.


Peter Koch: [00:16:41] Cool. So we'll definitely
get into that because I think that's a great discussion about
what would be effective. And it's going to depend on the
environment, the work that you're doing, the skill set of the
people that you're going to have always it's going to have some
price component to it. So because you know, you can always you
can look to get the Cadillac or [00:17:00] you can look to get
the jalopy one of the two regardless of what you have. If it is
compliant, it definitely needs to fit within the work that you're
doing to keep it effective because there's always that balance.
We talked about this last time between safety, productivity and
the quality of the work that you're doing. And if those aren't in
balance, then something's not going to work well. And I think in
the case of the silos, right, they focused on the safety
component, but they missed the productivity and the quality
component like you can't,


David Kozlowsky: [00:17:31] Right?


Peter Koch: [00:17:32] It wasn't functional for
the work that they were doing.


David Kozlowsky: [00:17:36] Right. And that
becomes that's going to become plainly evident when we start
talking about low slope roofs, because that's one area where
there really is a vast difference between, you know,
effectiveness and costs in some cases and the seamless
integration on the on the flat roofs.


Peter Koch: [00:17:53] Yeah, very true. All
right. Awesome. So let's jump in and talk a little bit about the
requirement so that OSHA has a duty [00:18:00] for fall
protection and it's both it's a little different in construction
and general industry. So could you talk a little bit about what
OSHA requires for fall protection in the construction industry
and in general industry?


David Kozlowsky: [00:18:15] Sure. Well, there's
obviously a million different areas we could touch on, but
sitting in fall protection and kind of talking about roofs and
kind of narrowing it down a little bit. You know, the major
differences are construction. The construction standard has a
different kind of set of rules for construction operations or the
act of roofing, whereas the general industry standard does not,
the general industry standard has a set of rules that apply to
all. I get this question a lot. If you know John Smith works for
XYZ Company and he's up there patching a roof, isn't he in, you
know, roofing operations? So his standards [00:19:00] are
different, and that is not true because he's not a roofer in the
act of roofing. He's still under general industry. I get that
question a lot. So the biggest difference is that in for most of
your clients that are not construction related clients, they
should be following 19 ten and not nineteen twenty six. They
should be following the general industry standard. There's a
slight difference in the height standard general industry as a
four foot rule, construction has a six foot rule for most
applications and some slightly different ones for connecting
steel and some other things. But across the board, mostly it's
roughly six feet. So those are the main differences. And then
other than that, they both point towards the same standards. If
you look at the requirements for safety nets or guardrails or
personal fall arrest systems and the loading requirements and all
of that, they all point to basically the [00:20:00] same thing.
So the quality. Of product that you can use to solve either one
is the same, so there's no difference there. And so I think what
we're going to do is probably focus maybe a little bit more on
the general industry. I guess today it's kind of confusing, but
1910.28 has a lot of information in it. And the construction
standard, other than removing the exemption for residential
roofers, hasn't that portion subpart M hasn't really changed
significantly in the last number of years, so I feel like the
listeners are probably pretty well up to speed on that. So maybe
we'll focus a little bit more on the general industry.


Peter Koch: [00:20:48] Yeah, I think I think we
will. There's a that's a big topic, but before we delve into
that, I think it is important to restate that it's been a number
of years already since the [00:21:00] fall protection exemption
for residential roofing has gone by the wayside. So that is no
longer. If you are doing residential roofing, you are required to
have fall protection when you are six feet above the ground or a
surface above the surface that you're working on.


David Kozlowsky: [00:21:18] Correct.


Peter Koch: [00:21:19] So you got to have it.
And there's multiple different ways to do that. And there's some
different requirements if you're on a low pitched roof versus a
steep pitched roof. And maybe we can spend a moment defining
those two things because it gives a different threshold for the
level of protection that's necessary.


David Kozlowsky: [00:21:37] I was going to say
most of your residential roofing would fall under a steep pitched
roof. I know there are some houses built with a low, low, low
slope, but most of them would fall under the steep. But OSHA
defines the line of demarcation at four 12, four over 12, so four
inches of rise and 12 inches of run. If [00:22:00] the roof is
four 12 or less, then that's considered a low slope roof. It's
walkable, and so the standards and rules are a little bit
different. Once you get above four 12, that's a steep slope roof.
A lot of the options for steep slope roof go away. A lot of
options that you have for low slope go away, it becomes very
limited. So on a steep pitched roof, you have basically, for
practical reasons, pretty much personal fall arrest systems. You
do still have guardrails which are extremely difficult to set up,
especially on a residential roof. I've never seen anybody really
do it effectively. Safety netting is still an option, but it's
not really practical. So for a steep pitched roof, you're mostly
limited to a personal fall arrest system, which would include
some type of anchor, a connecting device that includes some sort
of energy absorbing device [00:23:00] in it. And then your
harness the big three.


Peter Koch: [00:23:03] Yeah. And I think for
those specifically for like the difference between your guardrail
system, which is what you'd normally want to see from an
engineering control standpoint for fall protection, you can set
up on a steep pitched roof a good system that will prevent you
from getting off the roof in the first place or falling off the
roof in the first place. So if you slip and fall on the roof and
you don't fall off the roof, you're eliminating the need for
rescue. You have probably much less significant injuries that
will occur if you're on a steep pitched roof, and all you ever do
is put guardrails on the bottom and someone takes the big whipper
from the peak of the roof. You're probably going through the
guardrail because the requirements for guardrails are like we
talked about the last time 200 pounds in any direction. If you're
a 200 pound guy and you're sliding down the roof, you're hitting
that guardrail with a lot more than 200 pounds of force. So
you're going to the ground.


David Kozlowsky: [00:23:58] Yeah, so the
[00:24:00] options are a little bit more limited as far as tying
off on a steep pitched roof. There really is very little reason
or excuse in today's day and age why you can't other than making
excuses about it being too hard or too difficult or too
cumbersome. Other than that, there's plenty of product available.
I don't care what kind of roof that you're working on. There's
probably something out there that's compatible may require a
little extra effort or work, but it's definitely there's
definitely plenty of product out there that's available for that.


Peter Koch: [00:24:37] Sure. And I think what
you're talking about is really the anchorage, right? So that's
the bigger challenge for most folks of where and how and what do
I use to set up my anchor to connect my lifeline into or my
lanyard into? And that becomes somewhat of a challenge. But like
you said, there is a myriad of different types [00:25:00] of
anchors that can be used. Out there, some which will penetrate
the roof and some will not penetrate the roof, even there's
plenty of different options out there for you.


David Kozlowsky: [00:25:10] People just need to
research what's available for options for residential roofing.
There are different ways to set up a system which can make it
easier and simpler. One of the biggest problems is rope
management. So when you talked about setting up a system so that
someone wouldn't fall off the roof, that requires good rope
management. And so ninety nine percent of the complaints that you
listed for a residential roofers basically center around the rope
management so you have your ropes and your grab and you're
constantly if you're doing it properly, your rope is almost
always in one hand, and whatever you're doing is always in the
other because you're always adjusting, especially if you're
nailing shingles. Those guys are going back and forth on the roof
so much it's almost [00:26:00] impossible to employ effective
rope management. If you're not switching Anchorage points or if
you don't have different people working in different sections of
the roof because rope management can become, you know, dangerous
if you're not paying attention to it. So in an effort to have
freedom of movement and not get held up, most of these guys will
just pay themselves out a bunch of slack behind the rope, grab
and the anchor. And so what could potentially happen if someone
fell off the roof as you could hit the ground before the rope
gets taut, depending on how high the roof is and how much rope
you have paid out so you can move around, it's basically you're
putting it on for looks, but it has actually no functional value
whatsoever. And so to manage that, it is a little bit more
difficult a retractable [00:27:00] is a better solution. But
there's a lot of people that would disagree with me on that.
There's been many case studies done about retractables on pitched
roofs and how quickly they lock up and the potential for someone
to slide off the roof and actually not engage the retractable
because they're not moving fast enough. So it doesn't think
they're falling. So that would be ineffective in preventing them
from necessarily falling off the side. But it would turn into,
you know, a free fall once you went off the side. So there's many
different people that have many different arguments on that, and
I don't know that there's really necessarily a right answer other
than the manufacturer. So you should always go back to the
manufacturer if the manufacturer allows the retractable on a
pitched roof, you can use it. If the manufacturer says no, then
you, then you definitely shouldn't. But rope management is
definitely the biggest complaint and the biggest area I see
[00:28:00] with problems with roofing. So if we could find a way
to make that easier or find ways for companies to plan the jobs
to make it a little bit easier for the workers, then that would
remove quite a few objections.


Peter Koch: [00:28:16] Yeah, I'm sure that's a
big objection that you have and you have a large roof where you
have multiple people up there, even if it's just a couple of guys
up there and they're crossing paths. It can be challenging just
managing your own rope. And then, like you said, making sure that
I don't have slack, that my rope grab is always at my anchor or
higher. That provides the greatest level of protection for me
because as you said, if I pay out enough slack to be able to move
anywhere on the rope or anywhere on the roof that I need to
without having to manage my rope grab. And I do take a fall. You
may hit the ground or if it's high enough, you may not hit the
ground, but you pull your anchor out because it's not [00:29:00]
designed for the forces that the extended freefall will cause.


David Kozlowsky: [00:29:06] And that's the
biggest fear to me and to probably a lot of other people, too, is
because, you know, if the product is not being used properly in a
lot of cases doesn't really matter. Once the lawsuits start
flying around, it very much becomes more about percentages and
bean counting and how who, which companies we can get to pay out,
how much money, rather than whether or not the person was
actually at fault or not. And so that's a big fear to me and to a
lot of other people with the roof anchors is, you know, they're
only designed to hold a certain amount of load and used properly.
They are fine. But as you said, if you're if you don't have or if
you have too much rope paid out and you overload the anchor, I
mean, it could, you know, it could come off the roof and then
we're stuck proving [00:30:00] that. Wasn't the anchor that
failed, that it was the usage and that can be that can be
difficult sometimes.


Peter Koch: [00:30:06] Very difficult, very,
very, very difficult.


David Kozlowsky: [00:30:09] And it behooves
employers to pay attention to that too, because, you know, most
of these contractors, you know, they leave it up to the employees
to, you know, use the fall protection and they don't really pay
attention. But I have news for all of them. They're going to get
drug into it just as much as anybody else. If an employee falls
off a roof and gets injured severely, even to the point of maybe
disabled or worse, everybody's getting sued, including them, and
they're going to start looking at their safety policies. They're
going to start looking at their safety plan. If they have
anything written up, they're going to look at the job. Was
anybody paying attention to what they were doing and out of
sight? Out of mind is not a not a good thing.


Peter Koch: [00:30:56] No, not a good thing at
all. And those are some basic requirements that OSHA has
[00:31:00] from a compliance standpoint. They require training.
They require you to have a plan before you go up on the roof.
You're required to have the appropriate equipment for the hazards
and exposures that your people have and that they're not exposed
before they have training and access to the proper equipment. So
those are all parts of the general fall protection requirements
that OSHA has, whether it's construction or general industry. I
wanted to back up just a second and ask you a question, and this
is kind of in setup for a steep pitched roof. And these are this
is not going to be a hard and fast piece. But in your experience,
as you are looking at a roof or talking to an employee or an
employer about setup, how do you assess a steep pitched roof as
to where might be the best places to put your anchorages? Are
there any recommendations that you would feel comfortable talking
about?


David Kozlowsky: [00:31:59] Yeah, so [00:32:00]
a lot of it centers around the conditions of the job. So you're
going to want to look at the size of the roof and you're going to
want to look at, even more importantly, the fall clearance
distance between the roof and the ground. There is a lot of fall
protection out there that were you to be working and actually
fall off the edge, may or may not arrest a fall, especially in
residential. I mean, if you're looking at a, let's say, a six 12
pitch on a ranch, you know, a low built ranch on the eve of the
roof may only be, you know, 10 feet or even less from grade. And
so, you know, if somebody's standing near the leading edge and
falls off, I mean, it becomes highly critical that the system was
set up and is being used specifically if you even have any hope
of arresting that fall before someone falls off. So [00:33:00] a
rule of thumb that I try to go by is 15 degrees off
perpendicular. So you want to look at your roof and you want to
take a measurement on the length of it, and then you want to draw
up a perpendicular line from the peak down to the to the eave.
And then you want to draw two more lines in a V-shape from the
peak at 15 degrees on either side. So you're drawing like a 30
degree window. And so what you want to do is you want to set up
enough. If you're going to use a peak anchor and not a line of
some sort, you want to set up enough peak anchors so you have the
entire edge or eve of the roof covered in those 15 degree windows
off perpendicular. That's a good rule of thumb. Number one So
it's not really easy to say put one every so many feet or this or
that, because depending on the length of the run and the length
of the ridge, I mean, those can [00:34:00] all affect, you know,
how often you may put one every 12 feet or 10 feet or even six,
depending on what's going on. So to say X number of feet doesn't
work. The 30 degree window is a much more effective system. And
so what that does is that sets up enough anchors so that you can
work an area. Your line will not be too far off center, so it
gives you a good working area. It helps limit and prevent
pendulum falls, so it prevents you from being tied off too far
away from the anchor so that if you fall, you don't swing towards
perpendicular because that's what's going to happen and then risk
impacting something below you or even the ground. And it gives
you enough points to have multiple workers up there so that each,
you know, we recommend each one takes a zone. I know a lot of
these guys like to lay shingles and literally run back and forth
the entire length of the roof with the nail gun. [00:35:00] But.
With this kind of thing that's really just not that practical.
You're going to tangle up your ropes, tangle up your air hoses
and tangle up everything, so you have enough anchors that there
can be enough guys working their own zones to get that
accomplished. So that's kind of a rule of thumb that we use that
really helps setting up and then again, management paying
attention to the amount of rope between you and the anchorage
point.


Peter Koch: [00:35:27] That's great. That's
really good advice that 15 degrees off and then have overlapping
zones so that you cover the entire roof edge. Good. I think that
helps. So let's move from our steep pitch roofs because we'll
have another we'll focus on that. Maybe another podcast. But what
we really wanted to talk more about is that low pitch, that low
sloped roof or a flat roof. And granted, there's a lot of roofs
out there, not so much in the new England area from a [00:36:00]
residential standpoint, but certainly commercially. There's a ton
of flat roofs out there and there are some rules around building
or constructing a flat roof that would be covered under the
construction standard and some different operations. But once
that's done, once it's built, the majority of the time, you're
going to have employees or contractors up maintaining either the
roof or the HVAC units or the skylights or something else that's
up there. So let's talk some more about the low slope or a flat
roof and how or what are the what are the standards and how does
fall protection enter into managing the exposures around a low
pitched roof in general industry?


David Kozlowsky: [00:36:48] Sure. So the first
thing is people need the first thing just by way of introduction
is that people need to start thinking about their roof as another
floor of their building really [00:37:00]. Most people don't.
They think about the roof as being out of sight, out of mind. But
OSHA considers it another floor of your building. If employees
are going up there and doing work, which means all of the same
standards that apply to general industry for work inside also
apply on the roof. The four foot rule, the unprotected leading
edge open floor openings, which would be skylights or roof
hatches. I mean, all of those things, it's a walking working
surface. And so kind of what they did with 1910.28 I felt like
was they included low sloped roof into the walking working
surface, integrated much, much more deeply to hopefully help
people understand that, you know, unguarded floor openings and
edges and whatnot on a roof are the same standard as they are
inside your building. So what they did was [00:38:00] they took
some of the construction standard and applied it. But then they
included a lot of things that are not included in the
construction standard. So what I can do if you want is just do a
brief overview of what the what the standard basically says. So
for low slope roof, for activities on the roof, even if you're
patching a roof because you're not actually a roofer in the act
of roofing or construction, you're just making a repair, which is
maintenance. So even if you're repairing a roof or patching a
hole or working on HVAC equipment, that's all wrapped into
maintenance of the roof. So OSHA set up three zones now. So the
old interpretations of there's no safe distance from the edge and
all those vague things are pretty much gone away. They still
don't feel there's any safe distance from the edge. However, they
have at least now [00:39:00] set up some lines of demarcation and
some options from what for what you may or may not do within
those areas. So the two lines are six feet and 15 feet is the two
distances that you need to remember. So your whole roof area
should be protected, and the most dangerous area is area within
six feet of the edge. They've highlighted that is obviously the
most dangerous. You're the closest to the edge, a trip or a slip,
you know, could easily lead to going over the edge. So any work
or any activity at all, even if it's just walking and not working
any activity at all within six feet of the edge of the roof must
have a guardrail, fall arrest, fall restraint, personal fall
arrest, a safety net, something. There's a list of things that
they put in that you're allowed to do. They mostly center around
guardrails, personal fall arrest and safety nets, and then fall
restraint also kind of gets lumped into personal [00:40:00] fall
arrest. So, but if you're within six feet of the edge, you either
need to be tied off one hundred percent of the time to a
horizontal lifeline or roof anchors or something, or have a
guardrail or a safety net if you're within six feet of the edge.
So the next area is what if I'm not quite six feet from the edge,
what if I'm just a little bit more than six feet? What do I have
to do? So the next line of demarcation is 15 feet. So if you're
in a in a zone on the roof, that's between six feet and 15 feet,
you have the same options that you had before. You can put a
guardrail or you can have a horizontal lifeline or roof anchors
or safety netting or some other form of fall protection, but
they've also opened up an area of a designated area. So from six
feet to 15 feet, if you are up there temporarily and [00:41:00]
infrequently, they will allow a designated area. So what is
temporary and infrequent? Well, they define it in the preamble.
They don't really say it in the standard, but in the 500 page
preamble to the standard that they came out with, they kind of
they kind of defined temporary as two hours and they define
infrequent as monthly. So if you're performing monthly
maintenance, you are not up there infrequently. And if you're up
there for more than two hours, you're not up there temporarily.
So if you have an HVAC unit up there and you only go up twice a
year to replace a filter, but it takes you more than two hours to
replace the filter. That's not temporary and infrequent because
it doesn't meet both standards, and it's important to remember
that your roof area is considered one area, not just spot that
you're working on. So this is the thing that I deal with all the
[00:42:00] time. It's like, Oh, well, I'll just put a guardrail
right here where this unit is, and I'll cover the standard.
Meanwhile, there's 14 units on the roof, and they might only
spend 30 minutes at each unit, but they're up on their roof for
an entire day, working, replacing all these filters. So your
whole roof area becomes the standard that you need to meet, and
there's a few different ways we can. We can approach that. But
just by way of general knowledge, if you're up there temporarily
and infrequently, which means you're less than once a month and
you spend less than two hours, both of those are met, then you
can do what's called a designated area, which means you can set
up a warning line system as long as you stay behind it. And it's
very important to note that a designated area is very specific.
It is a physical barrier between you and the edge of the roof. It
is not a line painted on the [00:43:00] roof. It's not a sign
posted on the thing saying don't go past this line. It is a
physical barrier with actual standards. A warning line should be
between thirty nine and forty five inches tall and must have a
two hundred pound brake strength minimum and has to be visible
from 25 feet away, and the posts need to withstand 16 pounds of
force at the top. So all of those standards point to no, you
cannot paint a line on the roof and call that your warning line.
It's a physical barrier, and there's a bunch of reasons in the
preamble they give why a warning line's a physical barrier, but
you can do that around areas if it's temporary and infrequent. So
then we've established now, OK, let's say the roof hatch comes up
in the middle of the roof and all of my equipment is centered
towards the center of the roof. Do I really need to do anything
now because I'm more than 15 feet from the edge? 
[00:44:00]So at 15 feet, if all of your equipment is set up more
than 15 feet and you're up there regularly, you know, like I
said, monthly maintenance or weekly maintenance if you're up
there regularly. Yes, you are still required to have something.
You must still have a designated area to corral people into where
they're going to be working. So we erect a lot of warning line at
15 feet back from the edge, where rooftops don't have units that
are closer than 15 feet and they're much further towards the
center. So we set up a designated area at the center of the roof,
15 feet back. We put the warning lines. You can go up there as
much as you want and do as much as you want for as long as you
want, if you have that designated area. If you're a small company
and it's more than 15 feet from the edge, you have one unit
[00:45:00] on the roof, you go up there once a year and you
change a belt in the filter and it takes you a half an hour to do
that. That is definitely considered temporary and infrequent.
OSHA does allow you to not do anything under that rare situation.
It's temporary and infrequent. You do not need to install any
type of designated area or fall protection. However, controls
would definitely need to be in place. So just because someone
tells you, no you don't need to install any fall protection
doesn't get you off the hook. And I've done quite a few things on
this telling people, you know, they say, What do I need to do?
And each situation is different. But at a minimum, if you have a
roof that's temporary and infrequent and you're allowing
employees to go up there without fall protection, we would
recommend that minimum a roof sign off sheet for people that go
up there to sign off, that they've had rooftop training.
[00:46:00] We recommend that you have a map of the roof with a
walk path delineated. And during the training, you tell employees
this is where you may and may not go and this is where you stay
and have them sign off on that. The roof itself should have a
delineated walk path. There should be pavers or the glued down
path or something. There should definitely be a delineated walk
path from the entry point to the thing, and the sign off sheet
should make sure people commit to staying on the walk path and
not deviating from it. So those are at a minimum, a few things
that people should do to cover themselves, because one of the big
reasons why OSHA said there's no safe distance from the edge is
because employees wander. They do it all the time. I've done it
and he's sitting on a roof and you're walking around and you get
bored or whatever. So you, you know, you walk [00:47:00] over to
the edge and you look down to the parking lot, you see what's
going on, and lots of people do that. They wander. So you want to
make people sign off saying that they're not, you know, they're
not going to deviate from that walk path. So that's at a minimum.
Those are the kind of things you should do. So yes, there is a
rare instance where you don't need to have fall protection at
more than 15 feet from the edge, but it has to be temporary and
infrequent. So those are the those are the three zones, the two
lines of demarcation, six feet and 15 feet. And when you can and
can't use a designated area or a physical, you know, fall
protection or prevention system, and that's all in 1910.28, I
think it's B 13 because the paragraph and it's all in there and
you can review that. But those are those are basically the zones
now.


Peter Koch: [00:47:58] Let's take a quick break
at MEMIC, [00:48:00] while we strive to help our policyholders
prevent workplace injuries, we also understand that they do
happen. No workplace is immune. And when they do happen, a solid
injury management plan must be in place, including reporting and
a return to work program. Statistics show that returning an
injured worker to work in a temporary modified duty capacity
instead of keeping them out of work until one hundred percent,
will reduce both the length and cost of the claim, as well as
increased the likelihood of a positive outcome for the worker and
the employer. Did you know that MEMIC has created a seven step
process for developing a return to work plan, as well as a matrix
to rate your current plan against what our team has found to be
the gold standard in return to work programs? Check out our
claim, reporting and return to work resources at
MEMIC.com/employers. Now let's get back to today's episode.


Peter Koch: [00:49:03] That [00:49:00] makes
sense, and I think there's a lot of information there. But it
does make it a little more clear, so temporary and infrequent,
you know, it is kind of unfortunate that they buried that in the
preamble with those definitions are because I know that that
information is or that question has come up quite often. What
does that mean? But that was a great answer. So, you know, less
than less than a month in less than two hours. And then the other
point you made it shouldn't be lost on our listeners is that the
roof is an, take the roof as an entirety. You could have one unit
or you can have 50 units up there. And again, it doesn't matter
if you're going to spend 30 minutes at one unit or 30 minutes on
the roof, right? If you're going to spend 30 minutes at each of
the 50, it's still going to be beyond that temporary requirement.
So then you're moved into. I need to do something. I need to do
something different. I can't.


David Kozlowsky: [00:49:58] We've done a couple
of roofs [00:50:00] where people have that situation where they
have like I can think of one roof in particular that had a half a
dozen units on the roof and they were all within 15 feet, not
quite to the six feet mark, but within 15 feet. And so at each
one, individually, they could maybe make an argument that it was
temporary and infrequent. But the roof area itself, when they're
up there, they're walking around and they're going from unit to
unit and they're not paying attention to where they are. And so
what we were able to do is we went up and we kind of corralled
each unit with a guardrail and then we just set warning lines
back 15 feet from the edge and then just had little pathways
connecting the central part of the building to each one. So the
employees were corralled within an area that was designated that
you don't go out of this area. And then as they approached closer
to the edge where they had the actual unit, there was a physical
hard guardrail to meet to [00:51:00] meet the standard so you can
do hybrid type systems. We do hybrids all the time that are
combination of physical guardrail barrier and then designated
area to keep people corralled and within the area that you want
them to be.


Peter Koch: [00:51:17] Yeah, great idea hadn't
even really thought about it that way. I tend to be more black
and white when it comes to some of those solutions, and that
hybrid solution might be very effective. If you've got, well, if
you don't have the ability to put guardrails up on the entire
perimeter of the roof, which would be the most simplistic
solution. But there is a lot of equipment to make that happen.


David Kozlowsky: [00:51:40] This goes back to
what you were saying when you just said that this goes back to
kind of our discussion back at the beginning about, you know,
seamlessly integrating and the cost. So the most effective
solution, the simplest and most effective and best solution is
for, you know, if you're up on the roof, you just put a guardrail
around the perimeter [00:52:00] of the roof. Problem solved. You
can have as many people as you want up there wherever they want.
No limit. You can do whatever you want. You can shovel the roof,
you know as much as you want and you're completely within the
standard. But it's also really expensive. I mean, a lot of
guardrail. Sometimes the weight is an issue. If we can't do
penetrations, they want to do counter weighted guardrail. You
know, with all the weight up there, sometimes that's an issue in
the cost. So you know, there's definitely there's definitely the
simplest and easiest solution isn't always the most cost
effective.


Peter Koch: [00:52:33] Yeah. So that's a great
point. And it gets to the fact that you, you know, as a business
owner or building owner, if you have a flat roof that you, you
have to have people on, it may be worth your while to jump out
there and contract with someone to do an assessment to figure out
what are your options because you might want to say, Yeah, I can
do that, we can put up guardrails all the way around the roof.
[00:53:00] I hadn't even really thought about the if I can't
penetrate the roof, from my stanchion, for my guardrail now, I
have to have a weight that's going to allow for that 200 pounds
of outward and downward force. And that's pretty substantial when
you start thinking about how many stanchions you need on some of
these large commercial roofs. So yeah, it's a really good point.
Reach out get some help.


David Kozlowsky: [00:53:21] Yeah, get some help.
And each in each situation, you know, is unique. A lot of them
are unique. So we have the ability to have a combination, like I
said of guardrails and maybe warning lines or other solutions
that might help somebody accomplish what they are trying to do
without breaking the bank, so to speak.


Peter Koch: [00:53:46] Yeah, great. Hey, so I've
got a question for you and it's around access. So I got I don't
have internal access to my roof. I have to have external access
to my roof for whatever reason, right? Didn't get didn't get
[00:54:00] planned correctly. Didn't wasn't in the budget to put
internal access in, so I'm climbing up on a fixed ladder or maybe
even a portable ladder. And how do I manage that type of thing
within flat roofs? So what is what are the requirements around
access zones?


David Kozlowsky: [00:54:16] So what we usually
do with a fixed ladder, first thing to do is look at the look at
the height of the ladder. So if it's under twenty four feet, you
don't need to do anything specifically with the ladder itself.
But if it's over twenty four feet, then the ladder itself needs
to have fall protection as of November of twenty eighteen. The
standard for ladders was changed to basically say anything
produced after that state after that date should not have a
ladder well or cage on it and should have active fall protection.
And then basically it was left that after November of twenty
[00:55:00] thirty six, that I think the original standards said
that all ladders had to have the cages removed. But I think they
changed that to say that they only had to be removed if they
interfered with the function of the fall arrest system. So if
it's over twenty four feet and you have a cage, if it was built
before twenty eighteen, you're currently OK. You have until
twenty thirty six to upgrade that in retrofit it. But if it was
built after that date, it should not have a cage on it and it
should have an active fall protection system. So what we do, what
we try to do with the ladders is once you once you've established
that the ladder itself is safe and it meets the standards and it
has fall arrest if it needs. Usually what we do is depending on
again, the layout of the roof. If it's a small roof and there's
it's densely compacted and there's a bunch of things up there.
Normally what we just do is try to ring the roof in guardrail,
[00:56:00] tie the guardrail into the ladder and put a swing gate
at the top of the ladder. So you always want to have that swing
gate just because that that becomes an entry point or an
unguarded opening at the side. So if it's a larger roof and
there's not a lot of stuff right in the area. What we usually try
to do is we try to put like a little corral or a little runway.
So we try to get back 15 feet from the edge of the roof, or
sometimes 10 feet, depending again, on the usage and how often
you're up there. But we try to get back at least 10 or 15 feet
with a hard guardrail, little runway or corral with a swing gate
at the end of it. And then we tie that into either additional
guard rail or a warning line, a designated area from there. So we
try to corral people to approach the ladder down a guardrail
area. So as they approach through six feet from the edge, they're
protected in between the guardrails [00:57:00] with a swing gate
at the end, and then they can open the gate and get onto the
ladder from there.


Peter Koch: [00:57:06] Yeah, so full protection
all the way through from the time you step into that six foot
danger zone until you either get back onto the ladder to climb
down or you get into the area that's beyond 15 feet or the
workspace that you're within that warning line area.


David Kozlowsky: [00:57:24] Yes. Yeah. So we
usually tie hard guardrails back from some thing, either warning
line or guardrail, or sometimes there is nothing. What we've done
and we've done it a few places is we'll put a kind of the runway
to the ladder with a gate and then at the end of the runway is
either an anchor point or access to the horizontal lifeline
system. So when they come out, they go on before they exit the
kind of corralled area they hook on to the fall protection and
then they go on the roof from there. That's most common on
[00:58:00] roofs that have a little bit of a slope to them. I
could think of one client that has it's a pretty low slope. It's
definitely under four 12, but it's a white TPO roof. So when it's
wet or if it's even snowed at all, it is absolutely treacherous.
And so we definitely wanted 100 percent tie off up there. They
didn't want to try to ring the guardrails all around. I'm not
sure that it would have worked anyway unless they were
permanently mounted because of the slipperiness of the roof and
the counterweight and the fact that it was sloped. So it probably
would have had to have it permanently penetrating. So we made
sure that there was a swing gate at the ladder, that it was tied
into the ladder, that it was highly secure all the way back to
the point where they tie off onto the fall protection. So that's
another option as well. You can always tie that runway back
[00:59:00] into an anchor point.


Peter Koch: [00:59:03] Yeah, that makes sense,
and I haven't seen it employed, but I can see where that could be
employed well, especially from a snow removal standpoint as we
think about the New England area and you might have a
multi-tiered roof where you might have a steep pitch above, but
you've got an overhang that is within that four 12. And just to
be safe on that, as you come up to stand on that, it's going to
be less than six feet sometimes and having that horizontal
lifeline running behind you that I can tie into and then shoveled
down to the leading edge of that roof and then come back to
shovel against the end.


David Kozlowsky: [00:59:41] So, that goes
beyond. So that goes beyond a kind of a controlled access zone
into what we call a designated area.


Peter Koch: [00:59:50] Ok.


David Kozlowsky: [00:59:51] So we've done that
quite a few times on roofs. So especially for shoveling
operations on large roofs. One of the complaints is, well, I you
[01:00:00] know, first of all, this snow up there, I can't tie
off to, you know, roof anchors because they're buried in snow.
The cables are buried or I need 10 guys up there shoveling and
your cables only rated for two. I can't have five cable systems
running around the whole roof. I mean, it's just not going to
work. So what we do is a designated area. We take a section, we
take the warning line and ring the roof with morning lines. So
you can have basically as many people as you want back from the
edge shoveling snow to one or more designated areas, which are
areas closer than 15 feet where employees will stay permanently
as movers to get the snow from the roof off the roof. So in those
areas, what we do is we warning line it or guardrail it off and
then install a couple of anchors so that when they go beyond the
warning line and remove the warning line, they go into an area
that has [01:01:00] anchors for fall protection. Those employees
stay in that area tied off and move the snow off the roof and
have everybody else kind of feeding snow towards them for
shoveling. So again, another hybrid solution that's not uniform
throughout the roof, picking pieces that work the best for each
area.


Peter Koch: [01:01:20] Now that makes, it makes
sense. And I'm thinking it from thinking about it, from a
business owner or a building owner standpoint. You might not
actually have your guys removing the snow, but if you're
installing a system like this, you're going to need to do a
little bit of training about how this particular system works
with your subcontractors so that they can take advantage of the
safety or the protection pieces that you have, regardless of
compliance, because again, go back to a comment that you made
before. If one of your subcontractors falls off the roof at some
point in time, you're going to get hauled into that lawsuit, or
you're going to get hauled into the worker's comp claim as well.
So regardless of how it works, you're going to get [01:02:00]
tied back to it.


David Kozlowsky: [01:02:01] From that, you're
much more versed in that area than I am. So you would have more
information about that other than I do know there is a bit of
gray area in this particular type of applications to fire is
who's actually responsible for the fall protection. The way it's
mostly been handled is the building owner provides it because
usually what happens is they'll say, OK, you can't do this unless
you have fall protection, and then they'll either put it back on
the contractor to bring all of their own fall protection, which
becomes difficult when the roof is covered in snow. So the
contractor kicks it back to the building owner and says, Well,
OK, that's all fine and good, but what do you expect me to put up
there when it's already covered in snow? So there's a little bit
of gray area there. I know for building maintenance, especially
façade maintenance, which is a different set of standards. We
won't go into that today. But if façade maintenance, if you're
over the side of the roof suspending doing [01:03:00] anything
that does fall back on the building owner exclusively. So that's
definitely there's no gray area there. But for this, I'm not
really sure. Maybe, you'd have some insight into, you know, who
is actually ultimately responsible for this or is it basically
what I've been saying? It's basically an agreement between the
building owner and the contractor as to who's going to supply it.


Peter Koch: [01:03:27] So OSHA's going to look
at it from the perspective of the you're going to have the
exposing employer, the controlling employer or the creating
employer. So there could be multiple different roles that the
employer or the subcontractor can play, depending on what they're
doing. So do you own the building and did you hire the
subcontractor? Did you create the hazard? Did you expose the
employee to the hazard? So there is some liability around there
from an OSHA standpoint, depending on what part [01:04:00] you
play in. That role from a workers comp standpoint, it's going to
come down to who are you employed by? And so if I'm the worker's
comp person and I'm insuring the subcontractor and the
subcontractor didn't put the or didn't use fall protection, it
doesn't matter because they got hurt. It's going to be on my dime
and it's going to be something that I'm going to have to manage
as the worker's comp carrier between myself and the person that I
am insuring from a loss control consultant standpoint. When I'm
going out to work with a subcontractor who might be in the
business of either roofing or if they're going to do something
for a snow removal or maintenance, then my recommendation is you
have to protect your employees. So there's two routes for you to
go. You can either work with that building owner to provide you
with the appropriate fall protection that [01:05:00] fits within
the work that you're going to be doing and the workflow that you
have to do to maintain safety, quality and productivity, or you
bring it yourself and you implement it there. So at the end of
that long description, I think the bottom line comes down to not
from a worker's comp standpoint, but or even from a worker's comp
standpoint, because it helps clarify is to make sure that there's
a contract that you describe who's responsible for what within
the contract that you have with the subcontractor. So if you're
the building owner or the business owner and you're reaching out
to a subcontractor, make sure it's outlined in the requirement.
Who's responsible for the fall protection and following all of
the OSHA rules around fall protection? That would be that'd be my
recommendation to one to make it clear and to then to have
something to fall back to if there ever is the unfortunate
situation where you do have a problem.


Peter Koch: [01:05:56] It's been a great
conversation so far around fall protection. What I like
[01:06:00] to touch on it, just a couple of fringe things that
come on to the flat roof discussion here. I almost said flat
Earth discussion, but the flat roof discussion, right? So are
there any requirements or changes to the requirements around or
if there is around roofs size? So if I got a big roof or a small
roof, are there any changes around what I need to do for fall
protection around roof size, David?


David Kozlowsky: [01:06:25] Not per the standard
other than the roof size and the amount of equipment on the roof
would probably it would do more to limit your options rather than
to require a different set of standards. The only deciding factor
in 1910.28 is the slope of the roof. And then after that, you
know, the larger the roof, the more options you have if you have
a small 20 by 20 roof. Obviously, it's going to be hard to stay
more than six or 15 feet from the edge at all times. So it just
basically would just do [01:07:00] to limit your options.


Peter Koch: [01:07:01] That's good. That's a
really good point and just a good thing to consider because I
want people that are listening to understand that we're talking
about the general industry standard 1910.28, not the construction
standard where there are some changes if you're doing if you're
working as a roofer or doing roof work, actually, there are some
roof size requirements in there and we're not going to touch on
those. That's going to be a topic for another podcast. So thanks
for that clarification. Another one I have are what are the fall
protection requirements if I'm actually doing an installation or
building, say, an HVAC system on an existing roof. So I'm not
maintaining, but I'm not actually building the roof. Are there
any differences in what's required for fall protection if I'm
doing that kind of activity, either as a subcontractor or as the
building owner?


David Kozlowsky: [01:07:54] Yeah, so that's
basically going to go back to the activity. So [01:08:00] as you
were saying before about the liability, the difference between,
you know, workers comp and liability. So workers comp is made to
cover the employees of the organization. And so basically, the
1910.28 is the general industry standard is I mean, it's not
really a perfect correlation, but I kind of like in that towards
the worker's comp kind of thing where it applies to the employee.
So if you're XYZ company and you're maintaining the roof and your
specific employees are up there, that's what 1910.28 is mainly
supposed to cover. Not exactly like I said, but mainly once you
switch over, like when you said the word construction, you hit
the nail right on the head. You're doing roofing construction
with, say, building a new HVAC system. Then you really did cross
over from [01:09:00] general industry into construction. So the
standards that the workers, including the roofers and anybody
working on erecting or dismantling the existing HVAC would fall
under the construction standard, so they would have to follow
that set of rules as far as that's concerned.


Peter Koch: [01:09:21] So just making that
differentiation, knowing that if I'm building something,
constructing something, I'm going to be having to look into that
different set of standards. And again, I hate to keep saying
this, but there's just so much in this one particular topic on
flat roofs for general industry that we don't want to cross too
much into the construction side of things. So we'll deal with
that in a different podcast. So one more challenge and this
happens. Actually, it's happened fairly recently within Maine's
history, especially in our wintertime, are skylights and
skylights and flat roofs. We've had employees [01:10:00] who are
up there doing maintenance, who are up there doing inspections
actually fall through a skylight that's hidden underneath the
snow or they're not paying attention and they take a step back
and they fall into the skylight. So what are the requirements
around skylights for flat roofs regarding fall protection?


David Kozlowsky: [01:10:20] So the rule of thumb
for protecting a skylight can start with the curb height, so the
guard rail standard is forty two inches. So in a situation where
you might have an architectural skylight that might actually have
a forty two inch curb height so that glass doesn't start until
you're at forty two inches, and that really becomes a non-issue
at that point because you're not. It's not technically part of
the walking working surface. Once the glass portion gets lower
than 42 whether it be a architectural type skylight or one of the
smaller like the dome light type skylights, [01:11:00] then
those. I'm just going to come out and say those need to be
protected either with a screen or a guardrail. There are limited
situations if you have documentation from the manufacturer
stating that the glass is rated for, you know, a walk on surface.
Basically, if you don't have that documentation from the
manufacturer, regardless of however strong you think it might be,
then you will need to. You will need to get that protected. If an
inspector goes up there and sees a skylight and it's not
protected, they're going to ask you for documentation showing
that. And if you don't have it, you'll get cited. I've seen it
happen a couple of times, actually, especially those the ones
that get ignored. Most people pretty much know those little dome
skylights, you know, by the time, even if they're new from the
factory with whatever pound load on them, by the time they've
been up there for 20 years and [01:12:00] they're all faded and
cracked. And, you know, I mean, that's pretty self-explanatory.
The ones that I see people get dinged on the most is the
architectural ones because there are a lot of them have really
heavy duty double pane glass, and some of them are designed to be
walk on for maintenance and whatnot. And so I see people get
dinged on those because they don't have they don't have the
paperwork. So if you have paperwork, you're OK. But other than
that, you should definitely have a guardrail or a screen of some
type over it.


Peter Koch: [01:12:33] And then again, the
guardrail has to meet those certain certifications or
qualifications for strength. And also, I would imagine the screen
has to have similar ratings for walk on or fall through, correct.


David Kozlowsky: [01:12:47] So basically, the
screen kind of it's kind of a little bit different. It's a little
bit different application, but the screen falls under protecting
a hole, an open hole. [01:13:00] So that's really more what it's
like. And the standard for protecting an open hole is that the
fall protection, if you don't use a guardrail, whether you use a
safety net or some other in a screen, believe it or not, loosely
falls under a safety net standard. It's kind of a rigid net if
you think about it. So that has to be able to withstand and
you're going to have to forgive me because I think I've forgotten
the exact number. It's either a three hundred and fifty or a four
hundred pound bag of sand dropped from the highest point from
which a person may fall, but not less than 42 inches. So in other
words, if the nets mounted five feet below the surface, it has to
be able to withstand that times. Five feet three. I think it's a
four hundred pound is the on site and then three hundred and
fifty, I think, is the test weight. But anyway, so then if you're
at the walking, working surface or above, the standard says a
minimum of 42 [01:14:00] inches. So I believe that most screens
would be designed to that four hundred pound bag of sand at forty
two inch drop. So that would be the equivalent strength required
for that, right?


Peter Koch: [01:14:14] Nice. And so again, if
you're going to purchase one or you're out looking for to
retrofit or to replace, it's easiest actually to go and look for
the manufacturer's certifications and qualifications so that you
know that it's going to meet those standards. So that's always
good to know. You can just even if you go build your own, have
your welders fab up something and there are some particular
standards that it has to meet. And then you have to prove that
you are able that it's able to do that. And when you test it, it
can't just be tested at that. It has to be tested beyond what the
rating actually is.


David Kozlowsky: [01:14:50] Mm hmm. So and you
could if you wanted to build your own, I mean, you could. But you
would have to either invest in some onsite [01:15:00] testing to
make sure you cover it and document it thoroughly or get it, get
it engineered. So you'd have to hire a P.E. To come in and do all
the calculations and stamp it. I believe OSHA would accept either
one of those. I can't say the same for ANSI because they've just
kind of gotten a little bit crazy with the requirements, but OSHA
would, I believe, accept either one of those, yeah.


Peter Koch: [01:15:26] And you know, either way,
you want to go, it's. I do find that there's enough suppliers out
there and manufacturers out there that can produce something
either as a one off. If you have some, some need that doesn't fit
what's standard out there or they have enough that will fit some
of the standard sizes for your skylights, and it'll be great.


David Kozlowsky: [01:15:49] There definitely is,
and they're reasonably priced too good.


Peter Koch: [01:15:53] All right. So we're
getting towards the end of where we are, and I've got one
question that I've been wanting to ask you ever since our first
podcast [01:16:00] since you have you got tons of creative ideas?
You know, I've worked with you. Way back. Well, before we started
this podcast, when I first started working for MEMIC, we actually
worked together with the client to try to get some flat roof fall
protection for snow removal, believe it or not. And the question
is, if cost and technology were no issue and I know I mean pie in
the sky. But if cost and technology were no issue, what would you
create as the perfect fall prevention system for a roof?


David Kozlowsky: [01:16:31] Oh, that's so easy
because and you really opened that up by saying cost and
technology. Yeah, because I we've joked with clients eight
million times that the first person to in invent levitation
technology was going to become perfect. There's eight million
reasons and times when you're on the top of something [01:17:00]
and you need to protect yourself from falling off, but there is
nothing above you to tie off to. There's no beam or roof or
structure of any kind, and you're left constructing this massive
support thing to hang a single anchor point over somebody's tank
or roof or something that they need to work on. And you could
ever invent a levitating anchorage point where you could just
hang in mid-air and let somebody tie off too. You would put a
whole lot of people out of business?


Peter Koch: [01:17:32] You definitely win. I
totally thought of that. There's been many times where I'm
sitting there going, if I could only have that. And you know
what? That's funny because I'm right there with you. If I could,
just if I could just not fall, like, take something where I
could, if I could step off into space and I'm not going to fall
would be perfect.


David Kozlowsky: [01:17:48]  Or if you
could just or if you could invent a levitating anchor point where
you could just bring it above you and just tie off to it like
that would be the way to go.


Peter Koch: [01:17:58] Or I think that's
the  [01:18:00]scouting thing. I remember when I was in
scouts, when I first in scouts, they sent me off. I had to go get
the left handed and smoke shifter to be able to be attached to
the Skyhook. And those were the two things that I searched all
over the campsite for, and they never existed, so


David Kozlowsky: [01:18:16] They never existed.


Peter Koch: [01:18:19] Awesome. So thanks, Dave.
That about wraps up this week's Safety Experts podcast. So thank
you so much for coming on again and sharing your expertise with
our listeners.


David Kozlowsky: [01:18:29] No, thank you. I
love doing these. It's fun, and I appreciate that you invite me
on. Thank you.


Peter Koch: [01:18:35] Oh, fantastic. So where
can our listeners find out more about Safe Approach in your
business and what you do


David Kozlowsky: [01:18:42] If you can go on the
internet at www.safeapprocah.com? You can email us at David
Kay@safeapproach.com or sales@safeapproach.com or the 800 number
800-471-1157 and we'll be happy to help.


Peter Koch: [01:18:58] Perfect. Thanks.
[01:19:00] I appreciate it, and thanks for all the listeners out
there for joining us today. Today on the MEMIC Safety Experts
podcast. We've been speaking about fall protection specifically
on roofs with David Kozlowski, president and owner of Safe
Approach, right here in Portland, Maine. If you have any
questions about fall protection or would like to hear more about
a particular topic on our podcast. Email me at Podcast@MEMIC.com.
Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you
can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with Dave,
as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there,
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