Anchorage Strength: Why OSHA Requires 5,000 lbs of Anchorage Strength...

The question I get asked most in the fall protection line of work is “will the components support 5,000 lbs?” The simple answer is “products engineered by a Qualified Person (as defined by OSHA) will absolutely meet or exceed all OSHA and ANSI requirements for fall protection anchorage and performance”. In fact, some of the products that we manufacture here at Rigid Lifelines exceed this 5,000 lb requirement by a factor of (3) three or more! But first, let’s take a hard look at this requirement and how it was cleverly written by OSHA to keep all workers at height as safe as possible.

Here is the actual wording as it appears in OSHA law (it’s the same wording in both General Industry OSHA 1910 and Construction OSHA 1926):

OSHA 1910.66 App C (I)(10)- “Anchorages to which personal fall arrest equipment is attached shall be capable of supporting at least 5,000 pounds per employee attached, or shall be designed, installed, and used as part of a complete personal fall arrest system which maintains a safety factor of at least two, under the supervision of a qualified person.”

The most important words to the layperson who reads this are the requirement “capable of supporting at least 5,000 pounds per employee attached”. This guarantees that if a worker or supervisor is going to tie off to something, they must first determine if it’s capable of supporting an old Buick. This keeps our workers safe by preventing them from tying off to a temporary wooden handrail, a flimsy piece of electrical conduit, or a questionable piece of steel. OSHA should be commended for using this wording, because most people interpret this wording as 5,000 lbs per employee attached.

There is another meaning to this OSHA wording however, and that is the cause of the most confusion, even for the supervisors or engineers with years of experience in the safety field. If you read the wording carefully, the word “or” appears half way through the passage. This “or” is critically important to the Qualified Person who engineers complete fall protection systems. As long as the Fall Protection Professional is a “Qualified Person” as defined by OSHA and ANSI Z359, this Qualified Person can engineer the “complete personal fall arrest system” to a safety factor of two. Again the engineer must be in conformance with the “Qualified Person” requirement as defined by OSHA. This ensures that the complete system will be incredibly safe, yet not consume inordinate amounts of steel and costs.

So the bottom line is if the components were picked out by anybody other than a “Qualified Person” (as defined by OSHA) then the anchorage must be capable of supporting 5000 lbs. If the system was designed by a Qualified Person, then the anchorages must be capable of supporting the loads defined by the Qualified Person. As always, read the instructions, and when in doubt call the manufacturer for clarification.

Stay tuned for more fall protection insight and news every month.

Thanks for reading!

As always- Stay safe, and I am here if you need me...

Arnold Timothy Galpin, P.E.

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May 17, 2012
06:35 AM

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