For high productivity and efficient business operations, it is important to properly maintain your entire infrastructure, facilities and buildings. Unfortunately, this is not always so easy because certain structures or equipment may be meters high or difficult to access.
Fortunately, rope access exists, a specific technique for making all parts of your infrastructure as accessible as possible and, consequently, able to maintain and manage them. In this blog, we would like to tell you exactly what rope access is, for what purposes it can be used and what IRATA has to do with it.
What is rope access?
In a nutshell, rope access is the use of specific rope and climbing techniques to safely access difficult-to-reach facilities and places. It involves the use of strong ropes, tools, equipment and certain positioning techniques.
Experts in height work or maintenance employ rope access when other methods such as scaffolding, cranes and scaffolding are not sufficient to safely reach certain places or installations. It often involves great heights, depths, tight spaces, places above water.
The purpose of this technique is to carry out the work in a safe and accurate manner to avoid damage to infrastructure or machinery, dangerous situations or other accidents. It is an innovative system where structured execution and proper risk analysis is important.
Rope access therefore has some interesting advantages, namely: low impact on the environment because there are no obstacles, fast start-up and dismantling time and guaranteed safety.
Applications of rope access
Rope access can be used for different sectors and situations. In most cases scaffolding and scaffolding will be used, but when this is not practically possible or when a faster solution is needed, rope access can be the perfect working method. It also guarantees a safe way of working for hard-to-reach places or height work.
The technique is therefore often used for technical maintenance, cleaning of specific parts or coating work on metal structures, assembly and coating, and so on.
A lot of sectors therefore rely on rope access as a safe way for maintenance at height. Consider, for example, the industrial sector, offshore oil and gas, energy and petrochemicals, as well as the maintenance of office buildings.
IRATA certified
When it comes to rope access, IRATA is also often mentioned in the same breath. Our rope access specialists are therefore IRATA certified. But what exactly does this mean and why is it important?
IRATA stands for Industrial Rope Access Trade Association and is an organization that specializes in the safe and proper execution of rope access rope techniques. It is the standard used to use the technique correctly so that risks and hazards are greatly reduced while performing maintenance work at heights or hard-to-reach places. Every member of IRATA must follow certain guidelines and rules that the organization controls. The IRATA International Code of Practice (ICoP) provides such guidelines for the use of rope access in specific working conditions.
IRATA therefore organizes specific training and assessments to obtain the certificate. Each member must have his or her certificate renewed every 3 years. If an aerial worker has not climbed for 6 months, they must also take a refresher course. IRATA uses 3 levels:
- Level 1: expert led by a supervisor.
- Level 2: professional who must be able to perform more difficult techniques, but always under the direction of a supervisor.
- Level 3: The supervisor who possesses the best rope access skills and leads the others.
In addition, IRATA members are at the forefront of technological innovations that provide safe, efficient and effective access to hard-to-reach areas or during height work.
Would you like more information about safe maintenance of your industrial facilities or difficult-to-reach infrastructure? Are you looking for an experienced partner in safe and quality height work? Then contact Iris quickly. Our certified elevation engineers will review the options with you.