09/02/2025 TBT - Ensuring safety on Work Platforms (Scaffolds)

9/2/2025 Toolbox Talk: Basic Scaffold Safety – Tips for Ensuring Safety on Work Platforms [Reference 1910 Subpart D / 1926 Subpart L]

The following TBT will focus on general safety rules so we can avoid accidents and injuries while performing work on scaffold platforms. Key requirements to remember include the following:

• Keep work platforms clear of excess materials, tools, and equipment that may accumulate and create a tripping hazard to workers on the platforms;

• Never perform work on scaffolds covered with snow, ice, or other slippery material, except when approved by the Competent Person for the removal of such materials;

• Make sure that platforms do not deflect more than 1/60 of the span when loaded. Heavy items such as, but not limited to, pallets of bricks or blocks, mortar boards or buckets, compressors, and other heavy materials or equipment, might need to be separated, or be placed at or near the vertical frames to lessen the load on the center of platform planks;

 • Work on or from scaffolds is prohibited during storms or high winds unless a Competent Person has determined that it is safe for employees to be on the scaffold, and those employees are protected by a personal fall arrest system or wind screens. However, wind screens shall not be used unless the scaffold is adequately secured against the anticipated forces imposed by the wind;

• Make-shift devices, such as pallets, concrete blocks, boxes, or barrels, shall not be used as platforms to stand on while performing work on a scaffold;

• Ladders shall not be used on scaffolds to increase the working level height of employees, except on large area scaffolds where the Competent Person has specifically approved the use of ladders that have been set up to meet additional OSHA safety criteria;

 • Do not climb up or stand on cross braces, guardrails, cross-members on frames, or other scaffold components to gain height while working on a scaffold platform; and,

• Where swinging loads are being hoisted onto or near scaffolds such that the loads might contact the scaffold, tag lines or equivalent measures to control the loads shall be used.

If followed, these safety requirements are essential to keeping our employees safe when working on and around scaffolding.