Health and Safety for Beginners Forums

Can anyone help me out with what exactly a work positioning line is for? I know what fall restraints are and what fall arrest lanyards are but I have seen the term 'work positioning line' and have tried to find out exactly what they are and what they do but to no avail!

Hi Keith
As I understand it, it's a line, or more, that is/are set to a particular position, so the worker can do their job, whether it be hanging over the edge of a structure, working on a bridge structure etc
So it's a type of 'Fall Restraint', but it's not just generic, i.e. simply being too short to let someone approach the danger. It's specifically set to have the worker in the position required and no further.

See
https://www.spanset.com/uploads/uk/CLIM ... 068453.pdf

A WP Harness would usually have additional D rings on the sides to allow multipoint holding in position if that is required, but these are for positioning, not for fall arrest anchoring.

There's a promotional sales video here that shows a couple of guys using the 'positioning aspects': https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... NS2KW3quoE

Thanks Berni,
I'd seen what the apparatus physically was but there wasn't an explanation that it was designed with accessing one specific place. The vast majority of the work my employer does it at height and I'm more than happy with WAH provisions and the hierarchy etc but I hadn't come across this particular piece of kit before.

I used to wear a work position belt when I was climbing telephone poles for BT. My feet were on the steps at the top of the pole and the belt had a length that went around the pole and anchored back onto the belt around my waist, this allowed me to lean into the belt and freed up both my hands to work on the cables, so the belt held me in the correct positioin to work effectively and safely.
Wasn't really much for fall arrest or prevention, if my foot slipped off the step I would fall, bouncing off the pole and hitting the other steps along the way.

Thanks for the example Kev. My dad used to work for BT but he wasn't up the poles!