27.03.2012

Safety Awareness day in UAE

Manlift Middle East held an on-site safety awareness day for the contractors and sub-contractors working on a major hotel project in Abu Dhabi, this weekend.

Manlift ran the workshop as part of The Habtoor Leighton Group’s site safety week at one of the country’s most prestigious hotel projects -The Ritz Carlton Abu Dhabi - in an on-going effort to increase awareness of the need for training in the Middle East construction sector.

Nearly 4,000 people are currently working on the Ritz Carlton project. And around 200 of them either work regularly at height or work closely with aerial work platforms.
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The outside presentation prior to the demonstration

In order to be as effective as possible in dealing with the large number of attendees, many of whom were unable to speak English, Manlift devised and ran a two stage interactive workshop for groups of 30, lasting roughly an hour and supported throughout by a bilingual translator.

Part 1 was a practical demonstration focusing on site safety, using a JLG 450AJ, articulated boom lift. Following a verbal introduction covering the safe practices of working around powered access machinery, Manlift’s group operations manager and IPAF instructor, Robert Cavaleri performed a live simulation in which he ejected a man (Dummy) with a harness and overly long lanyard from the platform, primarily to highlight the incorrect way to connect to the platform, but also to facilitate a longer drop for dramatic effect.

He then went on to explain the basic ground controls of the boom lift which is the most common lift on site.
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The dummy fall demonstration

Whilst the demonstration was not official training, the workshop attendees went away with the basic knowledge of bringing a platform down safely in order to facilitate an emergency rescue.

Part 2 was a series of interactive short video clips designed to challenge the group’s safety awareness - ‘Spot the mistake’ produced originally for IPAF. Each of the six clips shows a typical jobsite scenario where an aerial lift operator or someone in a related field is doing a task incorrectly that may ultimately endanger them or others. The workshop attendees were then encouraged to guess/work out what the mistake is and how it could be rectified/avoided.
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The classroom presentation

Cavaleri said: “We’ve had an excellent day safety awareness and basic safety knowledge in the Middle East construction industry is developing, but has a long way to go to achieve a consistent and acceptable standard. We applaud groups such as HLG for organising these safety initiatives and hope that through repetition, more companies will try and copy the example. Events such as this highlight the need for correct training and the importance of someone on the ground having enough knowledge to lower a platform in case of an emergency.”

Manlift is an official IPAF Training Centre in the United Arab Emirates with purpose built facilities. Awareness campaigns such as this one also highlight how easy it is for the larger companies to send their staff on IPAF courses.