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Linemen and other electrical utility workers often need to perform their duties at height, exposing themselves to potential falls. Fortunately, they can protect themselves when supplied with the proper active fall safety equipment. Those types of gear typically fall into three main categories: harnesses, lanyards and lifelines. To help you navigate the wide range of personal protective equipment options available in these categories for your team, we have gathered a list of products in each, explaining their unique features and benefits that can protect your linemen from falls.
Harnesses
Harnesses use a combination of carefully designed buckles and straps to protect workers from falls. The utility lineman harness is a category of harness designed specifically for electrical utility workers, and products that meet that description include the options below.
Positioning Harnesses
Positioning harnesses help utility workers maintain a certain posture or stay at a specific position while working at height. This type of utility worker fall safety equipment could feature belts with foam backing for comfort and support, as well snap release lanyards for easy attachment, detachment and repositioning. While working from a utility pole, workers can use a positioning harness to keep from swinging away from their point of interest. It can also promote safety during projects by removing the worker’s need to split focus between completing their work and constantly stabilizing themselves.
With a positioning harness, utility workers can lean whenever necessary and use their hands to execute tasks like equipment installation. These devices can also help technicians secure themselves while working from elevated platforms like aerial lifts and bucket trucks.
Ladder-Climbing Harnesses
As the name suggests, this type of utility lineman harness is for people who frequently climb ladders. It regularly comes equipped with quick-connect buckles, favored for their ability to help users swiftly put on and take off the harness in emergency situations. In addition, teams in need of ladder-climbing harnesses will also find products featuring support padding, back plates and pro-seat saddles to help wearers avoid “pelvic pinch” due to frequent climbing.
Workers may use ladder-climbing harnesses in a range of settings to protect themselves. For example, electrical workers would wear them when working at height near energized electrical equipment. Should they get shocked, the harness, clipped to a ladder with a lanyard attached to a sternal D-ring, could stop them from falling.
Confined Space harnesses
Sometimes, electrical utility workers need to work in confined spaces. Most confined space requirements define these spaces as areas with little room for entry or exit. These include pipelines, storage tanks, underground vaults and equipment housing. For instance, if electrified equipment in a vault malfunctions, a utility worker may have to enter the vault to troubleshoot.
To do so, they would use a confined space harness. Clipped via a lanyard to a hoist, anchor point or other lifting device, they could safely enter the confined space to complete their work. Most of these specialized devices have features like leg straps and waist belts for optimum security and padding for enhanced comfort.
Tower-Climbing Harnesses
Tower-climbing harnesses are tailored for scaling utility poles, electrical towers and similar raised structures. They boast features like fall indicators and inspection tags, as well as multiple adjustment points for a safe and comfortable fit. Workers could use a tower harness when scaling a cell phone tower to do repairs or maintenance. In the course of their work, they would put on the harness, clipping it to a lanyard they would tether to the cell tower. Design elements like sliding bar adjusters keep a worker’s gear free of wide, cumbersome straps, removing potential obstacles during their work.
Rescue Harnesses
These harnesses are essential for search and rescue teams; however, electrical workers could also use them to help a teammate who has become trapped somewhere like a confined space. In this situation, the worker could be wearing the rescue harness. Depending on the scenario, they could also send one to victims by lowering it with a descent device. The victim could don the equipment themselves and the rescuer could lift them to safety.
Before engaging in rescue work, ensure your team’s equipment, training and practices comply with OSHA’s or CCOHS’ confined space requirements, severe weather regulations and more. Once in the field, however, a rescue harness is an asset that increases the likelihood of safe and successful efforts.
Lanyards
Another essential piece of utility worker fall safety equipment is the lanyard. Lanyards enable wearers to connect a utility lineman harness to a fall protection anchor point or pre-installed lifeline. Quality lanyards are made from wire rope, synthetic rope or webbing, which are strong enough to support incredible weights.
Below are several types of lanyards best suited for electrical utility workers.
Fall Restraint Lanyards
Fall restraint lanyards can help electrical utility workers reach certain positions while minimizing the risk of falls. Workers would use them when working on overhead powerlines, for example, because they could be operating on a platform with an edge that doesn’t have guardrails. In this case, the fall restraint lanyard would be connected to an anchor point on the ground. Should workers need to cross a gap, the lanyard could help them lean forward to continue their work. It could also help them cross the gap to another surface without letting them step right up to an unguarded edge where they could slip.
Fall Arrest Lanyards
The fall arrest lanyard can help protect wearers from injuries during a fall. Featuring high-abrasion resistance and created with techniques that ensure they don’t unravel, these lanyards also use shock absorbent webbing. That means an electrical worker scaling a pole could lose their footing and fall, but the lanyard would stop their descent. In doing so, it would also limit the force of the impact when that happened, minimizing the potential for injury.
Lifelines
A lifeline is a flexible cable an electrical utility worker can attach to when working at height. Workers use OSHA-compliant lifelines as connection points to their fall protection equipment, and they can be instrumental in fall prevention, as well as minimizing danger should a fall occur.
Self-retracting lifelines can be an ideal addition to an electrical utility worker’s collection of PPE due to their strong-yet-lightweight materials and unique features, all of which allow strength, durability and protection without blocking workers’ movements or being cumbersome. These lifelines typically offer dual inertia- and speed-activated breaks, as well as the ability to automatically remove slack when linemen move vertically up or down. Combined, these features could help workers who may, for example, be operating at various heights on a vertical structure by not only keeping the lifeline out of their way, but also by minimizing the distance that they would drop should they fall.
Need Quality Utility Worker Fall Safety Equipment?
Fall protection can save lives and prevent severe injuries. That is why your teams need utility worker fall safety equipment like lineman harnesses or lanyards, as well as safety gear that helps your business meet confined space requirements.
If you need help identifying the right equipment for your team, reach out to Tractel®. Our qualified experts can walk you through your harness, lanyard and lifeline options, and introduce you to other equipment that could keep linemen safe when working at height.