Working at height means any work where a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury: off ladders, platforms, mezzanines, machine tops, racking, or roofs. Falls remain a leading cause of serious workplace injury in industry, and maintenance owns a disproportionate share, because maintenance is what happens where the plant was never designed for people to stand.
Height work has its own application of the hierarchy of controls: first avoid the height (work from the ground, lower the component, relocate the serviceable part); then prevent the fall (fixed platforms, guardrails, scissor lifts, properly used MEWPs); only then mitigate it (restraint systems, fall arrest with harness and anchorage, nets). A harness is not a plan; it is the admission that the fall can still happen, with everything that implies about anchor points, clearance, and rescue.
Changing high-bay light fittings, 9 meters up, 46 fittings per year across the plant, was done from a rented boom lift with two technicians: rental, travel, and setup made each fitting a 1.5 hour job, about 70 hours a year. An engineering review relocated the drivers, the failing component, to wall boxes at 2 meters during a lighting refurbishment. Fitting failures now mean a 15-minute ground-level job; the boom lift appears twice a year for lens cleaning. The height risk was not managed better; for the routine case it was designed out, which is what "avoid" means in practice.
Fabrico manages the program’s moving parts: height-work equipment (harnesses, lanyards, anchors, MEWPs) in the asset register with inspection schedules and pass/fail history, height-risk work order types carrying the JSA and permit steps automatically, and recurring at-height jobs surfaced by frequency in the history, which is exactly the evidence an engineering-out proposal needs. Fabrico does not rate anchors or write rescue plans; competent people do, and Fabrico keeps their controls attached to the work. EU-built, with EU data residency.
Most modern regimes define work at height by fall consequence, not a magic number: a fall from 1.5 meters onto machinery can be worse than 3 meters onto soft ground. Treat any potential injurious fall as in scope and let the risk assessment set the controls.
Short duration, light work, three points of contact maintainable, ground firm, ladder secured or footed, and the task not requiring sustained two-handed work at reach. Outside that envelope, specify a platform or lift, and make the specification part of the job plan, not the technician’s improvisation.
How a suspended person is reached and lowered within minutes, by whom, with what equipment, verified available at the point of work. Suspension trauma develops quickly; a plan that depends on external emergency response times usually is not one.
Want inspection schedules, permits, and JSAs riding on every at-height job? Book a Fabrico demo to see height-work discipline run through a field-ready CMMS.
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