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Who writes the rescue plan for work at height?

The contractor whose people are clipping on. The law says so: regulation 4(2) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 says that planning work at height includes planning for emergencies and rescue, and regulation 3 puts that duty on the employer of the person who could fall and, to the extent of their control, on anyone who controls the work (reg 3(3)). On a managed site the subcontractor doing the work writes it and the plan arrives with the RAMS; the principal contractor, who controls the site, reads it, asks the questions below, and nobody clips on until the answers are on paper.

What the law says, and what it does not

Regulation 4(2) says the plan must exist. It does not say what it looks like or that it must be written down. HSE's guidance on the Regulations fills the gap, and its central point is that a rescue plan must not rely on the emergency services alone: the fire and rescue service may be some distance away, may not carry the equipment for a suspended casualty, and has never seen your anchors. On a site the rescue is done by people on the site, with kit at the workface.

For a confined space, regulation 5 of the Confined Spaces Regulations 1997 is sharper: nobody enters unless suitable and sufficient arrangements for rescue are already in place. The entry permit points to them. Under everything sits regulation 8 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the procedures for serious and imminent danger, and CDM 2015 regulation 30, arrangements for any foreseeable emergency on site. For a MEWP or a crane, LOLER 1998 regulation 8 requires the lifting operation to be planned by a competent person, and that planning extends to the platform that will not come down and the operator taken ill in the cab.

Why it is urgent

A person whose fall has been arrested is alive and hanging in a harness. Hanging still, the blood pools in the legs and the person can lose consciousness. How long that takes varies with the person, the harness and how they are hanging, and the minutes you see quoted are not a promise. That is why a good plan writes in the time it will be rehearsed to, and why the plan is decided before anyone clips on.

The questions the reviewer asks

  1. Where would the person hang? Against a face, over a void, in a shaft, over water. The answer decides the method.
  2. What is the method, and the backup? Haul back up, lower to the ground, a MEWP to the casualty, a rope-access team.
  3. Where is the kit? At the point of work, inspected, with a rope long enough to reach the ground.
  4. Who does it? Two people, named, trained on that kit, on site the whole time anyone is clipped on.
  5. When was it practised? With that kit, at that workface, against a clock, with a dummy and not a colleague.
  6. What is the target time, and who set it?

A plan that says "rescue will be by the emergency services", or "operatives will self-rescue", is returned.

The family

Five plans and a drill record: the harness plan the work at height permit points to; the MEWP plan, which rests on a ground person shown the controls on that machine that day; the confined space plan, which is the regulation 5 arrangements behind the entry permit; the excavation plan, built on the rule that nobody jumps in; the crane cab plan, written with the crane supplier; and the drill record, the proof any of them was practised.

What a template does not do

A plan gives the headings, the questions and the legal driver printed on the sheet. It does not know where your anchors are, and it rescues nobody: the people it names and the rehearsal it requires do that. A competent person decides the method and signs it, and no document makes anyone compliant. Why we will never call a document "compliant".

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