Masonry Magazine April 2005 Page. 22
ELEVATING SCAFFOLDING
Strong Safety Asset
CONTRACTORS OFTEN mention safety as a key consideration for any equipment. The general opinion is that OSHA is much tougher than ever before, and the issue it most often cites is scaffolding deficiencies.
"Our company is extremely safety-oriented," says Sinclair's Hansen. "I think frames are four times the work to keep the safety equipment in place. Now we just start on the ground with all the safety rails in place and go until we top out. Think about all the hazards in building and tearing down frames. We don't have that any more. I know the workers feel safer because the platform is so stable. We were up 45 feet high, and it was like walking on a sidewalk."
Tips & Tricks
WHEN ASKED what tricks or tips they would pass on to others just starting out with elevating scaffolding, the contractors came up with quite a few:
Alan Hansen: "Park your blocks near the scaffold, even under the scaffold. You're going to lay a lot more blocks using this scaffold, and that'll save the lift driver a lot of time."
Sal Monarca: "Invest in an enclosure system. A lot of our work is in the winter, just the time we need to make every extra dollar of profit we can. Also, get your foreman to mark the plans with a red pencil where every set of towers is going to land. Moving wall to wall will fly. The lift driver can see just how to set up every wall."
Ricky Skinner: "For some reason new foremen think it's just for long straight walls. As soon as you can, make your workers use it on some walls with lots of corners and jogs and offsets. They'll see for themselves it actually sets up faster and easier than frames in problem areas. Then they'll make you more money everywhere."
Monty Skinner: "Wash the wall as you bring the scaffold down. It takes a little extra time, but you don't have to come back."
Conclusion
Judging from the experience of these contractors and others, it looks like adjustable scaffolding is here to stay. If the transition is handled properly with good training from the scaffolding manufacturer, it can be a painless, permanent improvement to the average contractor's daily operation.
The overall consensus is that the masons love it immediately because they work waist-high all day and go home without a sore back. The laborers' duties are reduced with the net effect being less work, but it seems to take them about a week to get used to the new routine. It takes the foremen about three days to figure out how to efficiently move from wall to wall, and then after that they move along a lot faster than they ever did on frames.
The best part is that all the contractors report higher profits often doubling the estimated profit on the jobs where they use it.
Justin Breithaupt, Jr. is the owner of Non-Stop Scaffolding Inc. and has been involved with elevating scaffolding and the masonry business since 1975, when his father invented a tower scaffolding system for their own masonry business.
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