Rescue and Emergency Services
- The employer shall have a rescue plan for every rope access work site or project. The plan shall provide for the prompt rescue and safe extrication of a sick, injured, or entangled rope access technician. The plan shall include the following provisions:
- The plan shall ensure that all persons conducting rope access work have been trained and are competent to perform self-rescue.
- The plan shall ensure that sufficient rope access technicians trained and competent in partner rescue are present and available to perform a rescue in a manner appropriate for the mechanism of injury or the patient’s medical condition.
- The plan shall ensure that the Rope Access Supervisor is capable of managing a rescue incident and where appropriate, performing a rescue.
- The plan shall include the information required to respond to the appropriate emergency services.
- A rope access rescue plan recognizes that the best trained persons to perform the rescue of a sick, injured or entangled worker may be other rope access technicians. Fellow rope access technicians have the training and skills for work at height, have practiced rescue techniques on-rope, and are immediately on site. In most cases they can have the rope access technician at risk on the ground by the time the local emergency services arrive.
- Retrieval systems or methods shall be available on-site whenever a rope access technician is on-rope, unless use of the retrieval equipment would increase the overall risk of the rope access work, or would not contribute to the rescue of the rope access technician.
- Retrieval procedures using retrieval systems should be practiced at regular intervals and before the start of any work at situations that are unfamiliar to the work team.
