Safety Systems

Budgeting for Your Building: Part 3 – Rooftop Fall Protection

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Proactive safety measures do more than comply with regulations—they safeguard lives. Maintenance teams and contractors depend on the safety systems that building owners and property managers implement. By prioritizing safety within your budget, you protect people, reduce your liability, and make the most of your maintenance funds before they’re gone, ultimately enhancing your building’s operational stability.

Safeguarding Your Building by Prioritizing Safety Measures

Avoidable incidents, including the recent tragic loss of a business co-owner in Charlotte and the injury of a maintenance worker in Houston, highlight exactly how overlooking safety measures can result in devastating consequences.

As a building owner, it’s critical to understand that your duty to provide fall protection and adhere to OSHA’s General Duty Clause cannot be outsourced or delegated. For this reason, legal and ethical responsibilities for maintaining a safe environment free from recognizable hazards fall squarely on your shoulders. You can protect people by prioritizing safety, reducing liability, and enhancing your building’s operational stability.

Additionally, having proper fall protection systems in place, such as guardrails and anchorages, enhances safety and speeds up maintenance requests, providing quicker resolutions for tenants. For instance, an HVAC contractor can start work immediately when fall protection systems are already in place, eliminating the need for time-consuming setup and breakdown of equipment. Similarly, if there is a leak in the building, proper anchorage allows faster access and repair compared to using an aerial work platform, which requires more coordination and logistical challenges. By prioritizing safety, you protect people and reduce liability, streamline operations, and enhance your building’s overall efficiency.

The High Costs of Overlooking Safety Systems

The safety component is often overlooked or taken for granted when hiring a building service provider. It’s easy to assume the provider you hire is professional and skilled and that they bear the responsibility to operate safely. That’s only partly true. Safety is a burden both the provider and the building owner share. 

Shared assurances are commonly required. The building owner must provide anchorage, load testing and certification of the anchorage. The maintenance technician is responsible for supplying proper equipment, ensuring trained staff, and implementing safe work plans. Failure to meet your obligations can lead to liabilities, higher costs, operational disruptions, and far worse. 

Let’s examine the financial implications of not complying with OSHA’s regulations. Here are the levels of fines for OSHA violations as of 2024:

  • Serious Violations: Up to $16,131 per violation.
  • Willful or Repeated Violations: Up to $161,323 per violation.
  • Failure to Abate Violations: Up to $16,131 per day beyond the abatement date.

Fall protection citations are among the most common citations handed out, and for good reason. Falls from heights remain the most frequent cause of workplace fatalities and injuries. On top of fines, with some reaching seven figures, property owners could also face lawsuits and civil judgments for neglecting fall protection responsibilities. For these reasons and moral obligations, it pays to keep fall protection as a non-negotiable for your annual budget. 

Maximizing Your Safety Systems Budget

A key aspect of creating a safety systems budget for your building is staying in lock-step with OSHA regulations since OSHA is the minimum level of safety required. OSHA will continue to ratchet up efforts to reduce tragic and avoidable falls from heights. 

One example is OSHA’s recent National Emphasis Program aimed to raise awareness and reduce injuries and fatalities related to falls from heights. For these reasons, allocating unspent funds toward safety systems ensures you remain compliant and that you, as the building owner willfully took action to mitigate hazards. 

Here are our recommendations to maximize your safety systems budget. 

Rooftop Assessments: This assessment is the first step in the path to compliance. You can use our self-assessment tool to get started or reach out to us to schedule a professional site evaluation. If we identify any fall hazard risks, we will develop a straightforward, cost-effective plan to bring your building into compliance.

Fall Protection Solutions: We tailor our approach to rooftop safety to meet your building’s unique needs. The goal is compliance, safe facade access, and coverage for all potential fall hazards. A1 provides you with a complete turnkey service from design to installation and certification. Examples include: 

  • Roof Hatch Guardrails— OSHA requires roof hatches to be protected on at least three sides by a guardrail and a self-closing gate. This way, no one can fall back down inside when the hatch is open.
  • Skylight Protection— Plastic and glass skylights must be protected. OSHA views all skylights as holes or openings where someone can fall through. A simple fix is a skylight cover or guardrails.
  • Guardrails— Any elevation change of 4 feet or more requires a guardrail or parapet wall that is 42 inches (± 3 inches) in height and able to withstand 200 pounds of force applied in a downward or outward direction. A counterweighted guardrail system can be an easy permanent fix without adding roof penetrations. 
  • Ladders, stairs, and ramps— For rooftops with slopes or uneven surfaces due to architectural features, you may need to install stairs, ramps, or ladders to ensure safe access. If you have fixed ladders, whether inside or outside, leading to a roof hatch, OSHA regulations require specific safety measures to protect workers, especially at the upper levels of the ladder. These regulations include fall arrest systems and other safeguards to prevent falls from heights. 

Roof Anchorage Testing, Certifications, and Inspections

If you have a roof anchor system, the end of the year is a good time to use the remaining budget funds and complete your annual anchorage inspection. By this time, window cleaners would have likely used the anchorage from the annual inspection 2-3 times throughout the year. Keep in mind that certification and testing are required every ten years and recommended every five years for adhesive anchors. 

Rooftop Anchor Installations

A1 and third-party engineers work together to review your rooftop and, if needed, develop and design a compliant and functional anchor layout. An added benefit of working with A1 is that our team of experts is well-versed in working on high-rise buildings as well as OSHA’s Rope Decent Systems (RDS) and scaffolding requirements. We will design a functional anchor layout and leverage our trusted third-party engineers to verify anchorage points and ensure structural stability. This step is crucial for meeting the certification requirements (due every ten years) per OSHA 1910.27, as our engineers physically test anchors via pull test while reviewing structural attachment and structural analysis of the anchorage design. 

This is a major safeguard with many components designed to allow for certifiable attachment points for workers to suspend ropes and safety lines. A Professional Engineer (P.E.) must examine the anchorage and structural attachment to your building to determine what can be considered a safe anchorage point. In some cases, structural elements like steel columns, concrete columns, or cooling tower supports can be evaluated for use as anchorage.

Our webinar highlights wise budget maneuvers to make as the year draws to a close to ensure a safe and compliant workplace for building service providers working at heights. These quick wins don’t just protect next year’s budget from being reduced; they protect you and those who work to keep your building in top shape. 

Leverage A1’s Safety Systems Expertise

As you can see, prioritizing safety in your annual maintenance budget provides peace of mind and delivers value in terms of increased speed of service, increased tenant satisfaction, avoiding fines, achieving compliance, and overall worker safety. When you overlook these items, you put yourself and those who work on your building at risk. 

Don’t leave safety to chance; take proactive steps to secure your building and protect those who work at heights. Contact A1 today to explore how we can help you achieve a safer, more secure environment for everyone involved.

Building Owner Liability

Shielding Building Owner Liability with Comprehensive Insurance & Safety Measures

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When a building service provider carries comprehensive liability insurance without risky policy exclusions that are so prevalent in the industry, it alleviates concerns about potential financial liabilities arising from accidents, damages, or other incidents. But insurance is just one part of the equation. What truly sets a provider apart is a deep-rooted commitment to safety.

At A1, safety isn’t just a priority — it’s our core mission. Our extensive knowledge and dedication to building safety and compliance, backed by our ultra-comprehensive liability insurance, offer you unparalleled value and peace of mind. Read on to discover how this powerful combination makes us stand out from the competition.

Minimizing Worry and Stress for Building Management

Maximizing the value of your commercial properties requires a proactive approach to mitigating risks. It’s not just about avoiding accidents; it’s about ensuring the smooth operation of a property, maintaining profitability, and safeguarding against potential litigation. Who you choose as your building service provider for services like window cleaning or facade repair can influence your risk exposure.

Comprehensive Liability Insurance and Common Exclusions

As a building manager or owner, you already require a comprehensive general liability policy from your building service providers. However, that’s not the whole picture. It goes without saying that general liability insurance is crucial as a safety net that covers risks that might occur while performing building maintenance or repair work on your property. You may be absolutely convinced that your building service provider is fully covered by general liability insurance if, for example, a worker accidentally damages a tenant’s property or, worse, if a passerby gets injured due to a service-related mishap. But are you really sure?

You may have even examined the service provider’s Certificate of Insurance (COI) (or even had an insurance professional do so), and that review may have fully satisfied you that a service provider has full coverage with a top-notch insurance company and with minimum limits that meet or exceed your standards. It turns out, though, that the COI only tells a small part of the story, and you might actually be in dangerous territory.

That’s because it’s very common for service providers to cut corners and reduce premiums by accepting very risky exclusions in their insurance policies that could lead to no coverage just when it’s needed the most. Unfortunately, this situation is becoming more and more prevalent in the building services industry. The scariest part is that you will have no way of knowing if such exclusions exist in a service provider’s insurance company unless you review the full policy. The COI does not mention these exclusions, so it’s not enough to simply review the certificates.

For example, one of these increasingly common exclusions is the residential exclusion. This excludes coverage for residential construction projects such as condominiums or apartment buildings. Another example is the exclusion of coverage in certain states and for certain types of operations. Are you sure that a service provider is covered for the applicable type of operation in your state? There are many other examples as well.

Inadequate coverage, because of these and other common exclusions, could lead to significant out-of-pocket expenses and potential legal battles for you as the property owner. That’s why it’s imperative that the vendors you work with meet all insurance requirements and have taken care that these dangerous exclusions are not in its general liability policy. 

At A1, we are proud that we have focused strongly on the dangers of these exclusions, and our general liability policy does not contain the exclusions mentioned above. Before any work begins, you already ask your contractor for a COI, but you should also ask for the policy forms list, or even the full policy, for any sign of exclusions that could impact coverage.

In sum, working with a vendor who not only meets insurance requirements but also cares enough to ensure policy exclusions won’t leave you high and dry when it counts removes many of the financial uncertainties and worries concerning the project. 

Robust Safety Measures

Building owners are responsible for ensuring their workplace is free of known fall hazards, providing, maintaining, and inspecting appropriate fall protection systems, and ensuring employees who work on premises receive proper training. At a minimum, employees should:

  • Understand their role, the dangers of falling, and how to reduce hazards.
  • Receive training from a competent person.
  • Understand how to use fall protection systems, how to inspect and maintain them, and the system’s limitations.
  • Know how to use and operate arrest systems, guardrails, controlled access zones, etc.

Safety isn’t just about ticking boxes and meeting the minimum requirements; it’s about creating a culture where preventing incidents is paramount. Robust safety measures encompass everything from thorough employee training to eliminating hazards and strict adherence to OSHA regulations and beyond. With these measures in place, insurance fulfills its proper role as a safety net, stepping in only when all other precautions fail.

Working at heights is dangerous and continues to account for a significant amount of workplace injuries and fatalities. After decades of work and several fatalities, Minnesota, according to the Star Tribune, will require “window washers working higher than 24 feet without a ladder, unionized or not, will have to earn a certificate after training in equipment safety, first aid and crisis management.” These measures and other awareness efforts are in response to decades of preventable and tragic injuries.

How Building Service Providers Integrate Safety and Insurance for Optimal Protection

At A1, we design, install, and support fall protection systems, which places us in the unique position of fall protection expert and service provider. Our turnkey solutions ensure your building’s fall protection systems meet your needs, are OSHA compliant, and are properly maintained.

Proactively Improve Safety to Reduce the Risk of Incidents

To a well-trained eye, safety hazards are glaringly obvious, while others may overlook or underestimate the risks. We train our teams to identify and eliminate hazards during the initial job safety analysis and work plan. Our teams deliver value for you by reporting potential safety hazards even if they aren’t within the scope of work. Early intervention allows you to address safety hazards to prevent incidents proactively.

Enjoy the Benefits of Building Safety Compliance

The primary benefit of building safety compliance is preserving and protecting human life. OSHA hands out thousands of citations each year, most of which are fall protection or height-related. National Safety Council (NSC) President and CEO Lorraine M. Martin states, “Although incredible advancements are made in safety each year, we continue to see many of the same types of violations appear on OSHA’s Top 10 list.” The cost of violations rose again this year and can exceed $160,000 per violation.

Protect Yourself from Financial Catastrophes

When you employ vendors without proper insurance, you essentially assume the role of their insurer and take on the risks for their actions. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates the financial impact of workplace falls at $70 billion each year just for worker’s compensation and medical expenses. Add litigation, disruption to your operations, and perhaps a tarnished reputation, and you will see why using a building service provider with inadequate insurance isn’t worth the risk.

Trust A1’s Safety Expertise and Comprehensive Coverage

As a building owner, you have a lot at stake. It’s not just about protecting your investment; it’s about creating and maintaining a safe environment for occupants, workers, and visitors. When you choose a vendor who lacks safety training or awareness or fails to protect themselves and others with insurance, the risk transfers to you.

Our teams traverse thousands of building facades and rooftops each year. We are committed to keeping them and their families safe. That’s why we place a premium on safety and insurance coverage to protect our workers and your investment. Contact us today and take the worry out of building maintenance with our robust safety systems and comprehensive coverage.

Compliance Oversight for Building Owners

How SafeSite Eases Compliance Oversight for Building Owners

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Want to reduce your compliance workload while improving your building’s safety? Our SafeSite program simplifies OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) safety compliance for buildings, specifically for façade access and fall protection equipment. As a SafeSite Program member, you’ll benefit from expertise, testing and certification, inspections, risk mitigation, and training.

Our comprehensive approach to compliance oversight reduces the stress of staying current with evolving compliance regulations and removes the administrative burden. With fines and inspections increasing each year, compliance isn’t something worth leaving to chance. This article explains how the SafeSite program offers the easiest path to meeting compliance standards.

Navigating Through Building Compliance Complexity

With compliance regulations and safety audits, there’s always that concern, “Did we miss something?”. For instance, can you provide supporting documentation of annual anchor inspections and employee safety training? The consequences of noncompliance are steep, with one contractor receiving over $1 million in fines for repeatedly exposing workers to fall hazards.

Our team of experts is deeply entrenched in building compliance regulations and industry standards, so you don’t have to be. As a SafeSite customer, we help you develop a path to achieve compliance and keep you compliant. Our consultative approach leverages proactive communications, building reviews, and training. We know compliance can be a burden and can easily consume a big chunk of your time. Our SafeSite program provides you the opportunity to forego this burden and devote your time where it’s needed most.

Your Safety Compliance Ally

A1 is your compliance ally, helping you navigate regulations. The primary focus of our SafeSite services includes anchor inspections, certifications, and testing to meet OSHA’s varying compliance cadence. When we perform these services, we also address non-compliant areas and make a plan with the client so that they can become compliant.

We do this through our Five Pillars:

  1. Dedicated Team of Compliance Experts – Our team solidifies its expertise in the field, completing over 1,500 rooftop anchor inspections each year. Our team is available where and when you need them, and we are there to focus on all your compliance requirements.
  2. Commitment to Safety & Compliance Standards – Our window cleaners, for instance, rely on the same fall protection equipment we help design, install, and certify. This isn’t a responsibility we take lightly. Our commitment to safety shines in our ability to not only meet industry standards but exceed them.
  3. Exterior Building Maintenance Expertise – A1’s building services teams frequently work at heights, performing not only window cleaning services but also façade repair and restoration, waterproofing, and rapid leak investigation. This expertise is invaluable to training, learning, and reducing the risks of fall-related incidents.
  4. Professional Engineer Partnerships – Just as we count on you to trust us and our expertise, we rely on third-party engineers to help design, certify, and inspect our rooftop anchor systems. In addition to receiving your final certification report, you’ll receive the added assurance of meeting compliance regulations.
  5. Annual Anchor Inspections – OSHA requires annual inspections by a qualified person. After our team completes your required inspection, we provide a fall protection assessment and a comprehensive report. This confirms that you meet the inspection requirement and gives you an action plan to maintain compliance.

We believe in eliminating risk first and foremost, and when that isn’t possible, we provide the next best line of defense through fall protection systems. Our turnkey approach to safety decreases your liabilities, reduces the stress of the unknown, and gives you back the precious resource of time.

Tailored Plans for Tailored Needs

We know not all buildings and budgets are the same. During our building review, we pinpoint any shortfalls in documentation and record-keeping. From there, we dive into compliance requirements and budgetary considerations to identify the best path to bring your rooftop safety into full compliance. You can count on our SafeSite team to tend to your building’s compliance services, including inspections and certifications of anchors.

We get to know your building, which aids in identifying unique risks. Armed with this knowledge, we ensure our third-party engineer identifies and inspects various types of anchor points for integrity and feasibility with your building’s structure. Increasing safety, ensuring compliance, and decreasing liabilities isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. For this reason, we designed our SafeSite program to be comprehensive and flexible, providing you with a one-stop shop for safety compliance.

Key Benefits of Joining SafeSite

For good reason, OSHA will continue to focus heavily on inspections, fines, and awareness campaigns to reduce safety incidents. With SafeSite, you gain a dedicated team of compliance experts, consultation resources, compliance and safety reports, and more. Here are more ways we ease compliance oversight.

Streamlined Compliance Documentation

Documentation plays a critical role in meeting requirements. Our SafeSite Portal keeps you organized with easy access to compliance documents, inspections, testing reports, certifications, and compliance proposals. In addition, the portal helps you stay informed with our education tools, compliance manual, and other resources.

Proactive Risk Management

A proactive approach is the best way to mitigate risk in an environment of rapidly evolving regulations. We take pride in our industry expertise and leverage this knowledge to keep our customers informed through updates and their journey toward meeting compliance regulations. Staying ahead of regulations helps minimize potential legal and safety risks.

Optimizing Time and Resources

As a building owner, you have a lot on your plate. Attempting to manage compliance oversight on your own could result in you stepping over dollars to save a dime. We offer a strategy to optimize your time and resources while assuring your building achieves compliance standards.

Simplified Compliance Oversite with SafeSite

You don’t need to wonder if your building meets compliance requirements. With SafeSite, we take a consultative approach to informing our clients about rooftop safety. The program reduces your compliance risk by covering annual anchor inspection requirements as well as testing and certification. Our combination of industry knowledge backed with hands-on expertise helps spot safety risks and provide fall hazard analyses to deliver you the easiest path to achieving and maintaining building compliance.

To take the first step towards confidence in compliance, you can review your rooftop safety with our Fall Hazard Assessment. Contact us today and see the difference we can make in your building compliance strategy.