Planning for Scaffolding Work

Planning construction activities Scaffolding Work
Planning before scaffolding work starts can help eliminate many of the associated health and safety risks. An effective plan will help identify ways to protect persons who are:

• Erecting, dismantling, maintaining and altering the scaffolding
• Using the scaffolding
• Near the scaffolding (for example, other workers and members of the public)

A scaffold plan is one tool that can assist you to safely plan and manage scaffold work and help you meet some of your health and safety duties under the Act.
Scaffold plan.

• A scaffold plan should be prepared and provided by the PCBU doing scaffold work. To develop an effective and useful scaffold plan consult with:
• 
  The scaffold designer, for example, to discuss the design loads and the capability of the structure to support any additional loadings
• 
  The builder or principal contractor, for example, to assess the location of underground drains or pits. The work should be planned so as to avoid excavating service trenches under, through or adjacent to scaffolds; andworkers, workplace health and safety committees, and workplace health and safety representatives (WHSR), regarding erecting, dismantling, maintaining and altering the scaffolding.

The scaffold plan should include a site layout plan and detail the elevations and sections of the scaffold. It is to be made available for inspection at the worksite. The scaffold plan should address the following issues:

• basis of design
• foundations (including ground conditions and loadings)
• supporting structure
• access and egress
• tying
• bracing
• type of scaffold
• edge protection