Edge Protection New Zealand Ltd 2.86

In mid June of 2012 I attended a meeting in Hamilton held in conjunction with Placemakers and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment at that time known as the DOL.

I attended the meeting as I own a small building business in Hamilton employing 2 staff and felt it necessary to hear what changes were on the horizon for us as builders as we had been informed by our trade rep that it was a very important meeting that would deliver a major change within the industry.

We were not sure what to expect at the meeting but assumed it would be something of a pre warning regarding a change to some legislation down the track or something to that effect.

What a shock it was to hear that we had two weeks to prepare for a Working safely at height campaign in which the ministry was to issue prohibition notices and instant fines for non compliance!

Something we had been doing as builders for years had finally come to an end and we were no longer allowed to stand on the top plate and work on the roof framing, nor were we allowed to work off ladders for a prolonged period of time etc etc and look out if we were caught doing any of these things more than once!

This was met with mass disapproval from the crowd of angry builders and to be honest, at that time I was one of them because what the Ministry had done was give us a huge problem to solve with absolutely no offer of a solution.

“Read this pamphlet" they said,"its all in there” and that was that.

I remember getting home and thinking, “Man that was pretty intense, I hope that takes a while to come into effect”. A week later the roofer who was to carry out a job on the alteration we were doing at the time refused to do the job until we had “Edge Protection” in place. “What the hell is edge protection?” was my reply and he went on to explain that they had been ordered off a site recently and made to erect scaffolding around the perimeter of the work platform before commencing further works.

This is when I realised it was a serious issue and that the industry was changing whether we liked it or not. I called in a scaffold company who seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to do as far as this new fangled edge protection idea was concerned and they charged a small fortune for the privilege too!

I got to thinking that there has got to be a better way of doing this and went for a drive around the subdivisions to see what Joe average builder was doing about the problem.

Half the guys out there were doing nothing and the rest had scaffolding up around the roof edge so I asked around and a few guys had been ordered down from the roof and told to get edge protection before going back.

Back at home I got my little booklet out read through it to find that yes it was indeed all in there and these guys were serious alright.

Looking out the window over breakfast at the neighbors alteration which had edge protection scaffolding all around it with poles down to the ground and bracing poles over to my section basically in the way of any further exterior building progress until the roof was completed, I thought about a better system and whether a bracket would work in place of all the poles.

I did a few sketches before taking some measurements and welding up my first prototype out of box section steel and screwing it to the underside of the soffit framing next door.

It looked ugly but also looked like it would work with a bit of fine tuning and the more I thought about it the more I realised that there was a whole industry of residential builders out there scrambling for a solution to the issue of Working Safely at Height.

I got on the internet and found a local company called Stainless design that looked like they were in the position to help me develop my idea into a saleable product and gave them a call.

I took my prototype down along with a full scale timber model of a soffit section to show a typical detail and working with the design team some weeks later after having determined the correct New Zealand standard to comply with, and spending numerous hours studying it and covering all aspects of material, dimensional, and installation requirements finally had a real prototype bracket that looked like a viable solution.

This was of course just the beginning but I saw the potential steadily growing and the coming weeks saw the establishment of Edge Protection NZ LTD as a limited liability company as well as meetings with patent attorneys to protect my design and IP as well as readying the bracket for a full static and dynamic test with a registered engineer in attendance to get the product compliant and ready for sale.

My main objective with the “E Bracket” as it has been branded was to be able to provide a product that was not only a practical solution for builders and roofers but also one that is as versatile as possible to fit as many different applications as possible and present the least amount of inconvenience to the end user without compromising on quality or safety.

We employed laser cutting techniques for accuracy and efficiency and this enabled us to be able to stack the brackets on top of each other for easy transportation and storage which no other system can claim. We ensured the safety rail mounting points were within the limitations of the NZ standard in all instances the bracket would be employed and chose powder coated mild steel for strength and durability in the work environment in safety yellow to signify the products safety oriented purpose.

I constructed a test rig to simulate a house roof and we conducted our first tests without the registered engineer to iron out any weaknesses etc.

Minor changes were made and we tested the E Bracket in August of 2012 with great success and gained our compliance certificate from McDowall Structures.

We sold our first set of E Brackets shortly thereafter and since then, we have gone on to refine the original E Bracket to include 3 variants able to accept both SG8 4x2 timber as well as standard galv or aluminium scaffold tube for the safety rails proving popular with builders, roofers and scaffolders New Zealand wide.

To date we have sold more than 2000 E Brackets between Whangarei and Invercargill and have received nothing but positive feedback from our customers.

Our main bracket fits onto the soffit bearer/sprocket on standard soffits as well as the gable end on the outrigger and top truss chord on monopitch roofs. Another is designed for top chord mounting on sloped soffits or where the soffit bearer is not available as it was found that builders in the south island did not build their soffit framing until after the roof was on.

We provide a full set of instructions with every set of brackets we sell and have also developed our own Task Analysis example outlining how to employ the hierarchy of controls to ensure the building processes carried out at height to get a single storey residential roof erected safely are followed by everyone on site. We pass this information on to anyone who is interested through various trade breakfasts that I attend as well as contact through our website and trade shows such as the National Safety Show which we had a stand at recently to engage with industry professionals and collect feedback for future developments which include brackets for existing roofs and commercial applications. We are committed to the future of safe working practices in the building industry and have become Partners in action with MoBIE to keep us updated with any developments. MoBIE keeps a copy of our test certificate on file and accepts our system as a practical and compliant solution to the issue of working safely at height in NZ.

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ones!