Safety and facilities managers juggle an endless array of competing priorities. For single-floor warehouses in the South, those might include heat; for crowded factories, they might involve maintaining clear footpaths. Every business with rooftop activities, however, should include roof fall protection requirements as one of their highest priorities in the immediate future.
OSHA found that non-compliance with fall safety measures represented the biggest safety violation in 2024, and that should make it your top priority for 2025. Not only are heights (especially rooftops) incredibly dangerous, but they represent a big liability for failure to comply with the small life-saving details. Start creating a path to eliminating this top OSHA violation for your own business by learning more about the risks and implementing our favorite tips.
Businesses across construction, agriculture, general industry, and dozens of other areas must comply with rooftop fall safety regulations. Depending on your location, this could include OSHA or CCOHS regulations alongside more regionalized and niche roof fall protection requirements. Before fully complying with these regulations, though, you need to understand them. Reviewing the 1910 and/or 1926 OSHA standards that apply to your business gives you a better frame of reference before you move on to (i) auditing your facility's current compliance and (ii) filling in the gaps with better equipment and processes.
OSHA found that 1926.501, specifically, was the standard businesses had the hardest time complying with. This standard outlines the duty organizations must provide fall protection systems. These can include safety nets, modular railing systems, personal fall arrest solutions and harnesses, and control lines. Fully familiarizing yourself and your team with this standard is essential because it's the one on which OSHA found the most violations. That implies three potential concerns for your business:
A lot of businesses are failing to meet OSHA standards because they're hard, complex, or tedious.
This specific area of risk hits a lot of businesses because it's so common.
OSHA inspectors may be extra vigilant regarding 1926 due to their research and commons.
Rooftop safety isn't simply essential because OSHA found a lot of violations in 2024, though that's more than enough reason to make sure things aren't slipping through the cracks on your own worksites. Consider the full context of why it's so important and the potential costs of OSHA violations:
Objective safety failures: OSHA regulations are designed to limit or eliminate the likelihood of injury from slips, trips, and falls, especially at dangerous heights. The more safety you practice, the more likely your employees are to go without injuries or dangerous incidents.
Bad reputation: Employees, business partners, and clients care about your safety record and how it impacts your productivity, reliability, and quality. Poor safety compliance can cost you in terms of business relationships.
Fines and penalties: Without modular railing systems or other fall protection measures, businesses can get cited for violating OSHA standards. Those citations come with fines, penalties, increased inspections that can interfere with production schedules, and the requirement to complete costly interventions and equipment purchases during off-budget cycles. These costs not only take from your revenue but can compromise your cash flow (especially for construction companies with historically low margins).
Knowing that rooftop safety is your top priority and acting on it are two different steps. Once you decide to focus on rooftop safety solutions for 2025, start implementing these four tips:
Do you know your worksite's weaknesses? If you don't know what needs to be fixed, you can't fix it. That's why our top tip is to audit your rooftop workspaces to ensure every inch complies with OSHA regulations—or, if there are areas of non-compliance, you know exactly what they are and can start to fix them. Thoroughly assess all five of these areas by either 1910 or 1926 fall protection standards:
Access points, such as hatches or ladders that require a roof access ladder security door
Edges
Equipment
Openings
General navigation and workspaces
Use Bluewater resources, including our complete Rooftop Safety Audit Guide, to assess your facilities and find areas to address. Not only does this give you a detailed to-do list, but it also gives you a baseline to measure future performance and improvements against.
Now, it's time to act on the results. One of the most common flaws in rooftop protections is the perimeter. The entirety of the edges and open spaces must have barriers in place to keep workers away from the edge. In most circumstances, these must be physical guardrails that meet OSHA roof fall protection requirements regarding height, mid-rail construction, the amount of force they can withstand, and so on. Other edges may be sufficiently protected with warning lines that act as a visual cue instead of a full modular railing system, while still, others will require active fall prevention systems like safety harnesses.
There are two broad categories of fall protection solutions and both matter. They are:
Passive protections, including modular railing system products, automatically closing safety gates, a roof access ladder security door, equipment enclosures, and warning lines
Active protections, such as fall prevention harnesses or harnesses to be worn while suspended above the ground
It's not enough to just have the right equipment—you need to be sure the equipment works with your teams' behaviors and routines. For example, even where warning lines are sufficient, you might invest in heavy modular railing system options where workers congregate or there are unique risks. You might also replace harnesses that are serviceable but routinely ignored because they're uncomfortable to wear or slow down task completion.
Fall protection violations are one of the top risks both for OSHA inspections and for workers. Keep your teams and records safer by investing in equipment, fall protection systems, and harnesses that address specific gaps in your workspace's safety efforts. Reach out to Bluewater by Tractel for products that specifically map to different OSHA regulations, like rooftop fall safety harnesses, a roof access ladder security door, and modular railing systems, so you can improve on-site safety with more precision.
