A full-body harness goes a long way to protect workers from the chances of incurring workplace injuries. Workplace injuries take the most devastating toll on productivity and compel the management to incur significant unproductive expenses in paying compensation to the injured workmen. Thus, the full-body harness is highly sought-after in workplaces where there are high chances of catching injuries. However, you need to take good care of these gears so that it stays in the perfect condition to extend comprehensive protection to the workforce. This is why regular inspection becomes inevitably important. Here comes your guide in that regard.
The inspection schedule should have the right balance between physical and visual approaches.
So far, harness inspection is concerned; it comprises of the visual and the physical inspection. As you can make it from the name itself, visual inspection deals with inspection techniques based on vision. The major problems and loopholes will obviously be visible through this technique.
But how will you manage the more subtle points? How will you detect those cons that are beyond the scope of visual checks? Well, in such instances, you need to go for the manual inspection.
This approach is completely dependent on touch-based inspection techniques. The inspector will touch the harness physically to explore any loopholes. As per the OHAS inspection guidelines, the inspection schedule must have the right balance between the touch and visual inspection techniques. It ensures that no relevant point slips out of your consideration. This way, it enhances the quality of the inspection.
What are the major aspects that the visual inspection covers?
The scopes of visual inspection comprise the following points:
- Look for tears, nicks, and cuts.
- Exploring broken/cracked fibres if any
- The extent of deterioration
- Major user-made modifications
- Abrasions and Fraying
- If the material has gone discoloured
- Appearance of shiny or hard spots
In addition to the points stated above, the visual inspection will cover areas like webbing thickness, missing straps, and unsolicited stretching. It will also look for charred and melted fibres. Most importantly, at this phase of the inspection process, the inspection team will also look for abnormally high brittleness and hardness.
Uneven webbing thickness indicates that the harness possibly underwent a fall. Hard and shiny spots speak about possible thermal damages. On the other hand, excessive brittleness and hardness exhibit chances of heat-borne or UV-borne damages to the harness.
Stitching covers a major aspect of the inspection process
This step covers the visual and physical inspection techniques alike. The major points in this regard are as follows:
- Are there any pulled stitches?
- The inspection team will thoroughly check for pulled stitches, if any.
- Looking for missed stitches
- Are there any hard and shiny spots? It indicates heat-borne damages to the harness.
- Is there any discolouration of the stitching? There can be various factors triggering this damage.
What are the major points about inspecting the hardware?
The inspection process should offer good attention to the hardware as well. Here are the key points in that regard:
- Twists, bends, and distortions
- If the harness has caught corrosion or rust
- Looking for distorted/broken grommets
- If the user has made some major modifications to the harness
- Checking if the bars are upfront
- The inspection process should check if all the springs are in the right functional condition.
Besides, at this phase, you need to look for cracks and breaks and the appearance of sharp and rough edges.
If these steps get completed in the desired manner, you can keep the harness in perfect working condition.
Tagging system must get adequate attention during the inspection process.
The inspection process must involve adequate attention to the tagging system. Ideally, all harnesses must feature legible tagging that should identify the harness. The tag should uphold information like the manufacturing date, model, manufacturer’s description, warnings, and limitations.
The inspector must check the tagging for the manufacturing date, and one should stop using the harness in case it has passed the expected lifetime. In case the tagging is not appropriate, it is better to stop using the harness.
The inspection process has to check the cleaning and storage methodologies
Adequate and regular cleaning keeps the harness in the best hygienic condition. It will eliminate the spots and stains before it causes any damages to the fabric. The fact is, adequate and timely cleaning is very important to extend the lifetime of the harness.
The harness incurs the majority of the damages for adopting the wrong storage methods. Hence, the inspection process must pay due attention to this point as well. In case downsides are explored in this regard, the inspector must advise for the right storing methods. It will go a long way to extend the lifetime of the harness. It is always better to hire a specialized inspection agency to conduct the inspection assignments. It will add the maximum expertise and skills to produce the best inspection outcome. However, it is important that you engage the most reliable and trustworthy partners.