News Archive

Workers in confined spaces face potential risks, such as oxygen deficiency, toxic atmospheres, and physical engulfment. IRATA has released a case study exploring the complexities encountered by a rope access team operating within confined shafts in Safety Bulletin No. 50.

Consider these 5 key lessons from IRATA’s WASA 2024, highlighting actionable learnings from member company employment, incident, and accident data to help rope access companies improve operations and protect their workforces.

IRATA has released ICOP Annex S: Working Over Water, guidance for safe industrial rope access operations over bodies of water.

Further IRATA Safety Bulletins have been released aimed at raising awareness of hazards within the rope access industry.

Safety Bulletin No. 44: Rope access main rope failure

This safety bulletin summarises the findings of a main rope failure. The rope access technician was undertaking non-destructive testing and fell when a hot plug on top of the pipework melted through both the rope protector and the main rope to the point of failure. The technician fell until arrested by their back-up safety system.

For the full bulletin click here.

Safety Bulletin No. 45: Fall from height - aid climbing

This safety bulletin summarises the findings from two non-fatal falls from height which occurred during the de-rigging of safety nets whilst using aid climbing techniques. The accidents took place on two different sites, with different specialist netting contractors. Primary causes included the potential for an equal and opposite horizontal reaction not being recognised and work that was taking place in an area away from that planned as the original area was not available.

For the full bulletin click here.

Safety Bulletin No. 46: Fall from height – major injury

This safety bulletin summarises the findings of a fall from height accident which occurred during work to clean the external windows of an office building, the fall resulted in significant injuries. Following an investigation by the employer and local enforcing authority, several underlying causes were identified as contributing factors of the incident. Issues included equipment selection and training.

For the full bulletin click here.

Safety Bulletin No. 47: Working in a bunker – dangerous occurrence

This safety bulletin summarises the findings of a dangerous occurrence that took place whilst two IRATA Level 2 rope access technicians were cleaning the internal walls of a limestone bunker. Following the incident, the method of work was changed to prevent a recurrence.

For the full bulletin click here.

All new and existing safety bulletins are freely available here.

Following the release of the ICOP Annex P edge management poster in November 2016, we are pleased to announce that a further two posters have been translated into other languages by our member companies.

If you have not seen our Edge Management Video please take a moment to now!

Annex O – ‘Protecting rope access technicians against environmental conditions’ has been updated.

The text affected by this update can be viewed within the Annex O ‘contents page’.

We trust that our members will find this latest version of the ICOP to be of assistance whilst planning a safe system of work for all technicians working within difficult environmental conditions as part of their rope access operations.

Annex O can be found within the ICOP which is available to download here.

As well as helping to run the global organisation that is IRATA, and speaking on behalf of rope access throughout the world, many of our representatives are also involved in important national and international standards committees; contributing on the behalf of rope access for the good of us all.

In the UK, we are represented on the British Standards Institution’s (BSI) Technical Committee, PH/5, ‘Personal fall protection’. This committee is responsible for personal fall protection equipment standards and codes of practice and, in the past, has contributed to and published important rope access documents, e.g. BS 7985, ‘Code of practice for the use of rope access methods for industrial purposes’. PH/5 is currently writing the much anticipated BS 8610, ‘Personal fall protection equipment - Anchor systems - Specification’, which IRATA members have recently been invited to comment on.

Following on from the success of the Edge Management poster (as found here: provide hyperlink to poster) the team at IRATA have been busy creating a safety awareness video aimed at furthering the safety critical knowledge of edge management in rope access.

The objective of this short film is to educate rope access workers to the dangers to their ropes found on-site and the care needed from all workers to safely manage such hazards. The hierarchy of: remove, avoid, protect (RAP) as found in Annex P of the ICOP (hyperlink ICOP download page) is outlined, together with the importance of all technicians working together as a team.

This film is in its final stages of development having been shown at recent RAC meetings, and shall be released shortly with the aim of it being used as part of a safety meeting or toolbox talk. The film contains a set of questions for discussion in the meeting, and is intended to be an interactive learning experience for all attendees.